Information, Sensation, and Perception

Book excerpt: One of the primary aims of this book is to show that nearly all of the empirical laws of sensory science discovered by laboratory measurement during the past 130 years can be derived theoretically from one fundamental equation. The other primary aim of the book is to demonstrate the philosophical origins of this single equation, and to show how it must change the way in which we view the nervous system and the process of perception. This fundamental equation and the philosophy of perception which it embodies comprise what Norwich and his colleagues term as the entropy theory of perception.