Origin+&+Meaning+of+'Psychoacoustics'

Fechner (1860) was the person resposible for the origination of the discipline known as "psychophysics", the job of which was to describe the laws relating "physical" quantities to "psychological" quantities, such as intensity (of a light) to brightness, and frequency (of a tone) to pitch. For the most part, the kinds of relationships he found were //logarithmic//, "Fechner's Law" stating that "sensation" increases with the log of the stimulus.

Just as Acoustics is a branch of Physics, so Psychoacoustics would be a branch of Psychophysics, where the physical variables under consideration would be restricted to acoustical ones. The tacit assumption, shared by many as to obvious to debate, is that the Foundations of Music Perception are Psychoacoustical in nature. But is this necessarily the case?