The absence of position sense in the human eye

It has been widely held (e.g. Sherrington, 1918; Hoffmann, 1934, p. 28) that we have a sense of position of the eyeball which depends on afferent nerve fibres from the extraocular muscles. However, the experiments of Helmholtz (1867) indicate that such a position sense, if it exists, is not used to correct visual impressions when the eye is passively displaced. The following experiments, done on four subjects, show that the eye has no position sense.