Weber–Fechner law
Ley de Weber-Fechner
- Date
- 1860 · confidence high
- Place
- Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
- Credited to
- Gustav Fechner (law), building on Ernst Heinrich Weber's experiments
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Building on Weber's experiments on the smallest perceptible change in a stimulus, Fechner formulated that subjective sensation grows as the logarithm of the stimulus's physical intensity: the founding law of psychophysics as a discipline.
Weber published his experimental results from 1834; Fechner, his student, formulated the logarithmic law in "Elemente der Psychophysik" (1860) and named the first law after his teacher.
What it led to
- Psychophysics as an experimental field of perception
- Logarithmic measurement scales (decibels, stellar magnitude, Richter scale)
- Stevens's power law (1960s), which qualified it