An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
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A physiological relationship stating that to make a sensation increase in arithmetical proportion, the stimulus must increase in geometrical progression. In acoustics, the → bel (B) unit is used to relate the intensity of sound to an intensity level corresponding to the human hearing sensation. Similarly, the division of stars into a scale of → magnitudes is based upon the Weber-Fechner law. Same as Fechner's law.

After Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795-1878), a German physician, was one of the first people to approach the study of the human response to a physical stimulus in a quantitative fashion, and Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887), a German physicist who founded psycho-physics and proposed the mathematical formulation in 1860; → law.