Abstract
Understanding how the eyes work together to determine the direction of objects provided the impetus for examining integration of signals from the ears to locate sounds. However, the advantages of having two eyes were recorded long before those for two ears were appreciated. In part, this reflects the marked differences in how we can compare perception with one or two organs. It is easier to close one eye and examine monocular vision than to “close” one ear and study monaural hearing. Moreover, we can move our eyes either in the same or in opposite directions, but humans have no equivalent means of moving the ears in unison. Studies of binocular single vision can be traced back over two thousand years and they were implicitly concerned with visual directions from each eye. The location of any point in visual or auditory space can be described by specifying its direction and distance, from the vantage point of an observer. From the late 18th century experiments indicated that binocular direction involved an eye movement component and experimental studies of binaural direction commenced slightly later. However, these early binocular and binaural experiments were not incorporated into theoretical accounts until almost a century later. The early history of research on visual direction with two eyes is contrasted to that on auditory direction with two ears.
Highlights
History has looked more favorably on vision than on audition, if favor is measured by the pages devoted to each in texts on the senses
In surveys of Greek theories more than twice the space is given to vision than hearing [1,2] and the bias towards vision was even greater for Galen [3]
A wider range of auditory phenomena was given by Boring [10] in his book on the senses but the disparity was maintained; it did contain a section on auditory localization
Summary
History has looked more favorably on vision than on audition, if favor is measured by the pages devoted to each in texts on the senses (see Table 1). It could relate to the knowledge about the stimulus for hearing (sound) in contrast to the ignorance about the nature of light One consequence of this is that the study of vision was observational (and psychological) whereas that for audition was essentially physical. These principles of binocular visual direction were redescribed by Ibn al-Haytham and rediscovered by Wells [24] and by Hering [25] Over this large timescale, very little was written about binaural hearing, in contrast to the wealth of binocular phenomena that was discussed and investigated experimentally. Steinhauser [37,38,39] published a formal appreciation that hearing with two ears differed from that early to binaural hearing, Steinhauser’s initial interests were in binocular vision. Like most early contributors to binaural hearing, Steinhauser’s initial interests in extensively on stereoscopic as stereoscopic well as publishing what was the first monograph binocular vision.
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