Music, Color, Shape, and Synesthesia (1890)

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

• "A studious blind man, who had mightily beat his head about visible objects, and made use of the explication of his books and friends, to understand those names of light and colours which often came in his way, bragged one day, That he now understood what scarlet signified. Upon which, his friend demanding what scarlet was? The blind man answered, It was like the sound of a trumpet."— John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

This is a big subject for a quick post, the subject of synesthesia having an origin enfogged in mist and with ill-defined boundaries, or at least that is until we get to the 19^th century. If we leave aside the earlier thinking (by folks like the quoted Mr. Locke, above) we can speed ahead to Gutav Fechner (the father of psychophysics) with his empirical study of a group of synesthetes in 1871. He was quickly followed by Francis Galton (in 1881, a paper that I write about elsewhere on this blog), though neither Fechner nor Galton's work in this area achieved very much recognition beyond pale acknowledgment. Things speed up somewhat in the early 20thc when the empirical work is taken more seriously.

But stepping back for a moment, I'd just like to share this unusual and interesting 1890 paper from Nature. I never bumped into it before nor could I find more than a couple of bare references to it. So I'm wondering if anyone out there knows anything about it—this is done in the spirit of the original author of the paper, George Newton, who posted his story ("Visualized Images Produced by Music", March 6, 1890) to see if anyone else in nature-world recognized anything like the situation he describes.

The opening paragraph of the paper:

“IN the annexed paper, and in her own words, are related the very curious effects produced on a lady friend by certain musical tones and orchestral combinations. They are so very singular, entirely outside my experience, and, withal, so inexplicable, that I shall be glad if you will give them a place in your columns, in the hope that some of your readers-physiological or psychological-may be able to throw some light on them.”