The ear is about as complex a piece of mechanism as the eye. We speak of the "outer", "middle" and "inner" ear. The outer, in such an animal as the horse, serves as a movable ear trumpet, catching the sound waves and concentrating them upon the ear drum, or middle ear. The human external ear seems to accomplish little; it can be cut off without noticeably affecting hearing. The most essential part of the external ear is the "meatus" or hole that allows the sound waves to pass through the skin to the tympanic membrane or drum head. The sound waves throw this membrane into vibration, and the vibration is transmitted, by an assembly of three little bones, across the air-filled cavity [{196}] of the middle ear to an opening leading to the water-filled cavity of the inner ear. This opening from the middle to the inner ear is closed by a membrane in which one end of the assembly of little bones is imbedded, as the other end is imbedded in the tympanic membrane; and thus the vibrations are transmitted from the tympanic membrane to the liquid of the inner ear. Once started in this liquid, the vibrations are propagated through it to the sense cells of the cochlea and stimulate them in the way already suggested.
Fig. 31.--A small sample of the sense cells of the cochlea. The hairs of the sense cells are shaken by the vibration of the water, and pass the impulse back to the end-brushes of the auditory axons, The tectorial membrane looks as if it might act as a damper, but may be concerned, as "accessory apparatus," in the stimulation of the hair cells. The basilar membrane consists in part of fibers extending across between the ledges of bone; these fibers are arranged somewhat after the manner of piano strings, and have suggested the "piano theory" of hearing, to be mentioned later in the chapter. (Figure text: water space, membrane, Tectorial membrane, bone, soft tissue, basilar membrane, auditory axons to brain stem, nerve cells of auditory nerves, auditory hair cells with end brushes of auditory axons)
Further study of the accessory apparatus of the eye and ear can be recommended as very interesting, but the little that has been said will serve as an introduction to the study of sensation.
Analysis of Sensations
Prominent among the psychological problems regarding sensation is that of analysis. Probably each sense gives comparatively few elementary sensations, and many blends or compounds of these elements. To identify the elements is by no means a simple task, for under ordinary circumstances what we get is a compound, and it is only by carefully controlling the stimulus that we are able to get the elements before us; and even then the question whether these are really elementary sensations can scarcely be settled by direct observation.
Along with the search for elementary sensations goes identification of the stimuli that arouse them, and also a study of the sensations aroused by any combination of stimuli. Our task now will be to ask these questions regarding each of the senses.