Wiener’s Law

Wiener’s Law states that a person’s sensory response to a stimulus is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus’s intensity. In simpler terms, it means that our perception of changes in stimulus strength—like brightness or sound loudness—depends on how much the stimulus differs from a baseline, on a logarithmic scale. For example, a doubling of sound intensity doesn’t seem twice as loud; instead, our perception increases proportionally to the logarithm of the increase. This principle explains why we often don’t notice small changes at high intensities but do at lower levels, helping us understand sensory perception's nonlinear nature.