“To investigate the essence, I take it to be an impossible endeavour”

Here I introduce my story of conceptual interdisciplinary connections, impacting fields as diverse as psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and everyday behaviours. A conceptual history of psychophysics, a relatively unknown but fundamental discipline, showing how early insights into sensation measurement evolved into modern theories of decision-making and a Nobel prize in economics. An unusual approach to desire, defined as a mental content whose intensity drives preferences between alternatives.