The problems which that earlier period considered fundamental to all science were those of the theory of knowledge: What is true in our sense perceptions and thought? and In what way do our ideas correspond to reality? Philosophy and the natural sciences attack these questions from opposite directions, but they are the common problems of both. Philosophy, which is concerned with the mental aspect, endeavours to separate out whatever in our knowledge and ideas is due to the effects of the (...) material world, in order to determine the nature of pure mental activity. The natural sciences, on the other hand, seek to separate out definitions, systems of symbols, patterns of representation, and hypotheses, in order to study the remainder, which pertains to the world of reality whose laws they seek, in a pure form. Both try to achieve the same separation, though each is interested in a different part of the divided field. (shrink)
Hyder constructs two historical narratives. First, he gives an account of Helmholtz's relation to Kant, from the famous Raumproblem, which preoccupied philosophers, geometers, and scientists in the mid-19th century, to Helmholtz's arguments in his four papers on geometry from 1868 to 1878 that geometry is, in some sense, an empirical science (chapters 5 and 6). Here, Hyder responds to the reading of Moritz Schlick, according to whom the "chief epistemological result" of Helmholtz's work is his argument that (...) "Euclidean space is not an inescapable form of our faculty of intuition, but a product of experience" (Schlick's note in Helmholtz 1977 [1921], 35). Schlick's story papers over Helmholtz's deep relationship to Kant, especially in Helmholtz's early work. Hyder's work here puts this relationship at center stage, and contributes a much richer picture of the reasons for Helmholtz's later decision to turn away from the Kantian perspective. The second theme is the argument for the necessity of central forces to a determinate scientific description of physical reality, an abiding concern of Helmholtz's, and one that, as Hyder shows, has Kantian roots. Helmholtz's commitment to the necessity of central forces was key to his responses to rival views on electromagnetism, and is a deep and often under-appreciated element of his epistemology of science. (shrink)
Gary Hatfield examines theories of spatial perception from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century and provides a detailed analysis of the works of Kant and...
In 1887 Helmholtz discussed the foundations of measurement in science as a last contribution to his philosophy of knowledge. This essay borrowed from earlier debates on the foundations of mathematics (Grassmann / Du Bois), on the possibility of quantitative psychology (Fechner / Kries, Wundt / Zeller), and on the meaning of temperature measurement (Maxwell, Mach). Late nineteenth-century scrutinisers of the foundations of mathematics (Dedekind, Cantor, Frege, Russell) made little of Helmholtz's essay. Yet it inspired two mathematicians with an (...) eye on physics (Poincare and Holder), and a few philosopher-physicists (Mach, Duhem, Campbell). The aim of the present paper is to situate Helmholtz's contribution in this complex array of nineteenth-century philosophies of number, quantity, and measurement. (shrink)
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) participated in two of the most significant developments in physics and in the philosophy of science in the 19th century: the proof that Euclidean geometry does not describe the only possible visualizable and physical space, and the shift from physics based on actions between particles at a distance to the field theory. Helmholtz achieved a staggering number of scientific results, including the formulation of energy conservation, the vortex equations for fluid dynamics, the notion of (...) free energy in thermodynamics, and the invention of the ophthalmoscope. His constant interest in the epistemology of science guarantees his enduring significance for philosophy. (shrink)
This paper examines Helmholtz's attempt to use empirical psychology to refute certain of Kant's epistemological positions. Particularly, Helmholtz believed that his work in the psychology of visual perception showed Kant's doctrine of the a priori character of spatial intuition to be in error. Some of Helmholtz's arguments are effective, but this effectiveness derives from his arguments to show the possibility of obtaining evidence that the structure of physical space is non-Euclidean, and these arguments do not depend on (...) his theory of vision. Helmholtz's general attempt to provide an empirical account of the "inferences" of perception is regarded as a failure. (shrink)
I analyze the two main theses of Helmholtz's "The Applicability of the Axioms to the Physical World," in which he argued that the axioms of Euclidean geometry are not, as his neo-Kantian opponents had argued, binding on any experience of the external world. This required two argumentative steps: 1) a new account of the structure of our representations which was consistent both with the experience of our (for him) Euclidean world and with experience of a non-Euclidean one, and 2) (...) a demonstration of why geometric propositions are essentially connected to material and temporal aspects of experience. The effect of Helmholtz's discussion is to throw into relief an intermediate category of metrological objects--objects which are required for the properly theoretical activity of doing physical science (in this sense, a priori requirements for doing science), all while being recognizably contingent aspects of experience. (shrink)
: Understanding Helmholtz's philosophy of science requires attention to his experimental practice. I sketch out such a project by showing how experiment shapes his theory of perception in three ways. One, the theory emerged out of empirical and experimental research. Two, the concept of experiment fills a critical conceptual gap in his theory of perception. Experiment functions not merely as a scientific technique, but also as a general epistemological strategy. Three, Helmholtz's experimental practice provides essential clues to the (...) interpretation of his theory of perception. A case study from experimental investigation of hearing shows how he designed such studies in accordance with the epistemological commitments of the theory of perception. Yet, while the theory was important to his experiments, the soundness of the experimental strategy was epistemically independent of those commitments. Secondly, the case study illustrates how Helmholtz consistently held that causal inferences underwrite reference to a real, but indirectly experienced external world. (shrink)
Berkeley and Helmholtz proposed different indirect mechanisms for size perception: Berkeley, that size was conditioned to various cues, independently of perceived distance; Helmholtz, that it was unconsciously calculated from angular size and perceived distance. The geometrical approach cannot explain size-distance paradoxes (e.g., moon illusion). The dorsal/ventral solution is dubious for close displays and untestable for far displays.
Helmholtz's theory of space had significant impact on Schlick's early ?critical realist? point of view. However, it will be argued in this paper that Schlick's appropriation of Helmholtz's ideas eventually lead to a rather radical transformation of the original Helmholtzian position.
In spite of the fact that Helmholtz made a decisive contribution to the first principle of thermodynamics by his Erhaltung der Kraft of 1847 he did not participate actively in the following debates about the nature of heat. Probably he was cautious in some way as he did not yet belong to the community of university physicists. His research concentrated on physiology at that time. On the other hand he was rather influential by his public speeches and his comprehensive (...) reviews on problems of heat even without further publications. Insofar the discussion of Helmholtz's activities on heat of the time before he became chairholder of physics in 1871 will help to understand his special relation to physics in this early period. (shrink)
This essay review, originally presented an APA symposium on Alberto Coffa's The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap, argues that the logical tradition Coffa studied, while embedded in neo and anti-Kantianism, entirely missed the more lasting developments in psychology that Kant provoked.
Hermann von Helmholtz was a leading figure of nineteenth-century European intellectual life, remarkable even among the many scientists of the period for the range and depth of his interests. A pioneer of physiology and physics, he was also deeply concerned with the implications of science for philosophy and culture. From the 1850s to the 1890s, Helmholtz delivered more than two dozen popular lectures, seeking to educate the public and to enlighten the leaders of European society and governments about (...) the potential benefits of science and technology to a developing modern society. David Cahan has selected fifteen of these lectures, which reflect the wide range of topics of crucial importance to Helmholtz and his audiences. Among the subjects discussed are the origins of the planetary system, the relation of natural science to science in general, the aims and progress of the physical sciences, the problems of perception, and academic freedom in German universities. This collection also includes Helmholtz's fascinating lectures on the relation of optics to painting and the physiological causes of harmony in music, which provide insight into the relations between science and aesthetics. Science and Culture makes available again Helmholtz's eloquent arguments on the usefulness, benefits, and, intellectual pleasures of understanding the natural world. With Cahan's Introduction to set these essays in their broader context, this collection makes an important contribution to the philosophical and intellectual history of Europe at a time when science played an increasingly significant role in social, economic, and cultural life. (shrink)
This is a charming and engaging book that combines careful attention to the phenomenology of experience with an appreciation of the psychology and neuroscience of perception. In some of its aimsfor example, to show problems with a rigid version of a view of visual perception as an inverse optics process of constructing a static 3-D representation from static 2-D information on the retina--it succeeds admirably. As No points out, vision is a process that depends on interactions between the perceiver and (...) the environment and involves contributions from sensory systems other than the eye. He is at pains to note that vision is not passive. His analogy with touch is to the point: touch involves skillful probing and movement, and so does vision, although less obviously and in my view less centrally so. This much is certainly widely accepted among vision scientistsalthough mainstream vision scientists (represented, for example, by Stephen Palmers excellent textbook<sup>2</sup>) view these points as best seen within a version of the inverse optics view that takes inputs as non-static and as including motor instructions (for example, involving eye movements and head movements).<sup>3</sup> The kind of point that No raises is viewed as important at the margins, but as not disturbing the main lines of the picture of vision that descendswith many changesfrom the pioneering work of David Marr in the 1980s (and before him, from Helmholtz). But No shows little interest in mainstream vision science, focusing on non-mainstream ideas in the science of perception, specifically ideas from the anti-representational psychologist J.J. Gibson, and also drawing on Wittgenstein and the phenomenology tradition. There is a sense throughout the book of revolution, of upsetting the applecart. This is a review from the point of view of the applecart. (shrink)
The logical positivists adopted Poincare's doctrine of the conventionality of geometry and made it a key part of their philosophical interpretation of relativity theory. I argue, however, that the positivists deeply misunderstood Poincare's doctrine. For Poincare's own conception was based on the group-theoretical picture of geometry expressed in the Helmholtz-Lie solution of the space problem, and also on a hierarchical picture of the sciences according to which geometry must be presupposed be any properly physical theory. But both of this (...) pictures are entirely incompatible with the radically new conception of space and geometry articulated in the general theory of relativity. The logical positivists's attempt to combine Poincare's conventionalism with Einstein's new theory was therefore, in the end, simply incoherent. Underlying this problem, moreover, was a fundamental philosophical difference between Poincare's and the positivists concerning the status of synthetic a priori truths. (shrink)
The Marburg neo-Kantians argue that Hermann von Helmholtz's empiricist account of the a priori does not account for certain knowledge, since it is based on a psychological phenomenon, trust in the regularities of nature. They argue that Helmholtz's account raises the 'problem of validity' (Gueltigkeitsproblem): how to establish a warranted claim that observed regularities are based on actual relations. I reconstruct Heinrich Hertz's and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Bild theoretic answer to the problem of validity: that scientists and philosophers can (...) depict the necessary a priori constraints on states of affairs in a given system, and can establish whether these relations are actual relations in nature. The analysis of necessity within a system is a lasting contribution of the Bild theory. However, Hertz and Wittgenstein argue that the logical and mathematical sentences of a Bild are rules, tools for constructing relations, and the rules themselves are meaningless outside the theory. Carnap revises the argument for validity by attempting to give semantic rules for translation between frameworks. Russell and Quine object that pragmatics better accounts for the role of a priori reasoning in translating between frameworks. The conclusion of the tale, then, is a partial vindication of Helmholtz's original account. (shrink)
If one formulates Helmholtz's ideas about perception in terms of modern-day theories one arrives at a model of perceptual inference and learning that can explain a remarkable range of neurobiological facts. Using constructs from statistical physics it can be shown that the problems of inferring what cause our sensory inputs and learning causal regularities in the sensorium can be resolved using exactly the same principles. Furthermore, inference and learning can proceed in a biologically plausible fashion. The ensuing scheme rests (...) on Empirical Bayes and hierarchical models of how sensory information is generated. The use of hierarchical models enables the brain to construct prior expectations in a dynamic and context-sensitive fashion. This scheme provides a principled way to understand many aspects of the brain's organisation and responses. In this paper, we suggest that these perceptual processes are just one emergent property of systems that conform to a free-energy principle. The free-energy considered here represents a bound on the surprise inherent in any exchange with the environment, under expectations encoded by its state or configuration. A system can minimise free-energy by changing its configuration to change the way it samples the environment, or to change its expectations. These changes correspond to action and perception, respectively, and lead to an adaptive exchange with the environment that is characteristic of biological systems. This treatment implies that the system's state and structure encode an implicit and probabilistic model of the environment. We will look at models entailed by the brain and how minimisation of free-energy can explain its dynamics and structure. (shrink)
Philosophers of music (and also music theorists) have recognized for a long time that research in the sciences, especially psychology, might have import for their own work. (Langer 1941 and Meyer 1956 are good examples.) However, while scientists had been interested in music as a subject of research (e.g., Helmholtz 1912, Seashore 1938), the discipline known as psychology of music, or more broadly cognitive science of music, came into its own only around 1980 with the publication of several landmark (...) works. Among the most important of these were The Psychol- ogy of Music (1980), a collection of papers edited by the psychologist Diana Deutsch, and A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (1983) by music theorist and composer Fred Lerdahl and linguist Ray Jackendoff. These works and others made possible the first attempts to apply scientific research to philosophical issues concerning music (e.g., Raffman 1993, DeBellis 1995). Since the 1980’s, of course, a great deal of research has been done in cognitive science, philosophy, and music. For philosophers, there are perhaps three topics with respect to which findings in the cognitive sciences are most likely to be germane—the nature of musical understanding, the role of emotions or feelings in music, and the evaluation of musical works. This brief overview will describe some of the scientific research that has been done on these topics, and then indicate how it might be philosophically significant. (shrink)
A neighbor who strikes it rich evokes both admiration and envy, and a similar mix of emotions must be aroused in many neighborhoods of cognitive science when the residents look at the results of research in color perception. It provides what is probably the most widely acknowledged success story of any domain of scientific psychology: the success, against all expectation, of the opponent process theory of color perception. Initially proposed by a Ewald Hering, a nineteenth century physiologist, it drew its (...) inspiration from the existence of opposing muscle groups. Hering thought that analogous opposing processes could explain some aspects of color perception, but the resulting theory was more complicated and less intuitive than that proposed by the great Hermann von Helmholtz. Helmholtz carried his day, but in the long run Hering turned out to be right. (shrink)
Richard Tieszen [Tieszen, R. (2005). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXX(1), 153–173.] has argued that the group-theoretical approach to modern geometry can be seen as a realization of Edmund Husserl’s view of eidetic intuition. In support of Tieszen’s claim, the present article discusses Husserl’s approach to geometry in 1886–1902. Husserl’s first detailed discussion of the concept of group and invariants under transformations takes place in his notes on Hilbert’s Memoir Ueber die Grundlagen der Geometrie that Hilbert wrote during the winter 1901–1902. (...) Husserl’s interest in the Memoir is a continuation of his long-standing concern about analytic geometry and in particular Riemann and Helmholtz’s approach to geometry. Husserl favored a non-metrical approach to geometry; thus the topological nature of Hilbert’s Memoir must have been intriguing to him. The task of phenomenology is to describe the givenness of this logos, hence Husserl needed to develop the notion of eidetic intuition. (shrink)
Quantities are naturally viewed as functions, whose arguments may be construed as situations, events, objects, etc. We explore the question of the range of these functions: should it be construed as the real numbers (or some subset thereof)? This is Carnap's view. It has attractive features, specifically, what Carnap views as ontological economy. Or should the range of a quantity be a set of magnitudes? This may have been Helmholtz's view, and it, too, has attractive features. It reveals the (...) close connection between measurement and natural law, it makes dimensional analysis intelligible, and explains the concern of scientists and engineers with units in equations. It leaves the philosophical problem of the relation between the structure of magnitudes and the structure of the reals. What explains it? And is it always the same? We will argue that on the whole, construing the values of quantities as magnitudes has some advantages, and that (as Helmholtz seems to suggest in "Numbering and Measuring from an Epistemological Viewpoint") the relation between magnitudes and real numbers can be based on foundational similarities of structure. (shrink)
The initial obstacle to the development of a hermeneutics of the natural sciences has been the inadequate translation, and thus misunderstanding, of the basic terms of Heidegger's ontological analysis ofthe protopractical human situation and its progressive technicization. Pragmatism's parallel analyses of the problem situation of scientists has promoted a more idiomatically English vocabulary. But 1) Gadamer's exclusion of domains and disciplines working with technical methods from his universal hermeneutics continues to be influential, this in spite of the genesis of his (...) project in Helmholtz's insights into the process of scientific discovery. 2) Markus thus depicts a distinctly different style of production, transmission, and reception of the technological texts of natural science. 3) Rouse's 1987 extension of pragmatic hermeneutics into the incipient politics of knowledge/power relations in laboratory science presents the usual frightening prospects connected with laboratory experimentation impacting on disciplinary social institutions. 4) Rouse's 1996 analysis of scientific practices in local narrative situations eschews the banner of hermeneutics and instead proposes to examine scientific-technological work by way of interdisciplinary â cultural studies, once the traditional loci of hermeneutic methodology. 5) A hermeneutic phenomenology of the natural sciences thus finds itself fundamentally challenged with respect to its rightful topics and roles in the analysis of increasingly technicized disciplines and domains. (shrink)
In Part I we saw that the works of Helmholtz, Holder, Campbell and Stevens contain the main ingredients for the analysis of the conditions which make (fundamental) measurement possible, but, so to speak, that what is lacking in the work of the first three is to be found in the work of the last, and vice versa. The first tradition focuses on the conditions that an empirical qualitative system must satisfy in order to be numerically representable, but pays (...) no attention to the relation between possible different representations. The second tradition focuses on the study of scale types and the mathematical properties of the transformations that characterize the scales, but says nothing about the empirical facts these scales represent and the nature of such representation. Then, these two lines of research need to be appropriately integrated. In this Part II, we shall see how this integration is brought about in the foundational work of Suppes, the extensions and modifications which are generated around this work and the mature theory which results from all of this. (shrink)
In 1853, two decades after Goethe’s death, Hermann von Helmholtz, who had just become professor of anatomy at Königsberg, delivered an evaluation of the poet=s contributions to science.1 The young Helmholtz lamented Goethe=s stubborn rejection of Newton=s prism experiments. Goethe=s theory of light and color simply broke on the rocks of his poetic genius. The tragedy, though, was not repeated in biological science. In Helmholtz=s estimation, Goethe had advanced in this area two singular and “uncommonly fruitful” (...) ideas.2 The poet recognized, first, that the anatomical structures of various kinds of animals revealed a unity type underlying the superficial differences arising from variability of food, habit, and locality. His second lasting achievement was the related theory of the metamorphosis of organisms: the thesis that the various articulations within an organism developed out of a more basic kind of structure—that, for instance, the different parts of plants were metamorphosed leaves or that the various bones of the animal skull were but transformed vertebrae. These two general morphological conceptions, according to Helmholtz, grounded the biology flourishing at 1 mid-century. Goethe came to these ideas, Helmholtz shrewdly maintained, as the result of a poetically intuitive conception (anschauliche Begriffe).3 He described, for instance, Goethe=s immediate recognition, while playfully tossing around a sheep=s skull on the Lido in Venice, that the fused bones of the battered cranium consisted of transmuted vertebrae. This experience resulted in the poet=s vertebral theory of the skull, which became a standard conception in later morphology.4 Poetic intuition thus liberated an idea initially embedded in matter and made it available to the analytic understanding of the scientist. Forty years later, in 1892, at the meeting of the Goethe Society in Weimar, Helmholtz returned to reexamine the poet=s scientific accomplishments, and, it would seem, implicitly his own; for by the end of his career, Helmholtz himself had achieved a position in German culture only a few steps below that of Goethe.5 His evaluation of Goethe=s achievements in physical science was now more complex than his earlier assessment had been.. (shrink)
Statistical regularities of the environment are important for learning, memory, intelligence, inductive inference, and in fact, for any area of cognitive science where an information-processing brain promotes survival by exploiting them. This has been recognised by many of those interested in cognitive function, starting with Helmholtz, Mach, and Pearson, and continuing through Craik, Tolman, Attneave, and Brunswik. In the current era, many of us have begun to show how neural mechanisms exploit the regular statistical properties of natural images. Shepard (...) proposed that the apparent trajectory of an object when seen successively at two positions results from internalising the rules of kinematic geometry, and although kinematic geometry is not statistical in nature, this is clearly a related idea. Here it is argued that Shepard's term, “internalisation,” is insufficient because it is also necessary to derive an advantage from the process. Having mechanisms selectively sensitive to the spatio-temporal patterns of excitation commonly experienced when viewing moving objects would facilitate the detection, interpolation, and extrapolation of such motions, and might explain the twisting motions that are experienced. Although Shepard's explanation in terms of Chasles' rule seems doubtful, his theory and experiments illustrate that local twisting motions are needed for the analysis of moving objects and provoke thoughts about how they might be detected. Key Words: Chasles' rule; evolution; geometry; perception; redundancy; statistics; twisting. (shrink)
Ewald Hering's color-opponent-theory is still considered one of the foundations of the visual sciences. Prior to Hering, Hermann v. Helmholtz introduced a theory of color appearance, which was based primarily on the physical aspects of the stimulus. In contrast to Helmholtz, Hering's theory strongly emphasized the subject's perception of color. As a consequence, Hering considered Helmholtz' theory inadequate. Contrary to some historical accounts, he did not object to Helmholtz's three-receptor explanation for color-mixture. Instead of Helmholtz' (...) fundamental colors red, green, and blue, Hering suggested that the colors possess opponent character: blue-yellow; red-green; and, black-white. Helmholtz, on the other hand, refused to accept Hering's theory. Finally, a student with Helmholtz, Johannes v. Kries, developed the so-called zone-theory , which combines both, Young-Helmholtz's and Hering's theory at different stages of the visual information processing system. (shrink)
The International Union of History and Philosophy of Science organizing the 10th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science is at its cross-road: the alternative is mass-performance or creative exchange of ideas. The program is criticized because the thematic center in History and Philosophy of Science has been shifted too far into the realm of micro-fields of Logic and the time reduction for presentation and discussion of papers to 20 minutes should be reconsidered. Several outstanding papers are shortly (...) discussed: Martin-Löw on "Formalized Tarski-Semantics of Type Theory", Hoyningen-Huene on "Feyerabend and Kuhn", Leroux on "Helmholtz and Hertz", and Muller on "Bell meets Dirac". Finally the visiting-program is gratefully appreciated. (shrink)
In Remarks on Colour Wittgenstein discusses a number of puzzling propositions about brown, e.g. that it cannot be pure and that there cannot be a brown light. He does not actually answer the questions he asks, and the status of his projected ?logic of colour concepts? remains unclear. I offer a real definition of brown from which the puzzle propositions follow logically. It is based on two experiments from Helmholtz. Brown is shown to be logically complex in the sense (...) that the concept of brown can be ?unpacked? or resolved into simpler concepts. If my solutions to Wittgenstein's puzzles are the right ones, then science does bear upon the ?logic of colour concepts?, and the contrast between logic and science which Wittgenstein sets up is a false one. At best it will appear as the contrast between the demands of logic and the demands of a particular kind of scientific theory and a particular mode of scientific theorizing. The solutions to the puzzles about brown are distinguished from psychological explanations, and the paper ends by suggesting what it was in his own doctrine that prevented Wittgenstein from answering the questions he had set himself. (shrink)
In this contribution, a scientific interpretation of musical harmony is understood as a description in an adequate frame of symbolic forms (in the sense of Cassirer), rather than as a final explanation. I describe different interpretations of musical harmony from the time of the Pythagoreans until the present times. It is noted that a symbolic interpretation of Helmholtz (in the sense of his theory of signs), which was criticized as incomplete by Ernst Mach, is recognized as adequate by Arnold (...) Schönberg. (shrink)
Après avoir dégagé quelques incarnations du rationalisme dont Bouveresse se démarque, j’indique quelques aspects qui ancrent son œuvre dans la tradition de l’Aufklärung (mais en la renouvelant), avant d’insister sur ce qui me semble plus distinctif de ce rationalisme dans lequel parviennent miraculeusement à cohabiter des sources philosophiques, littéraires et scientifiques : Cournot, Vuillemin, Carnap, Peirce, Wittgenstein, Russell, Frege, Sellars, Bolzano, Boltzmann ou Helmholtz, mais aussi Descartes, Kant, Schopenhauer, Fichte, Husserl, Cavaillès, Canguilhem, les pragmatistes James, Putnam, ou encore des (...) écrivains comme Valéry, T.S. Eliot, et, plus que tout peut-être, Lichtenberg, Kraus et Musil. Puis je me concentre particulièrement sur l’examen de ce rationalisme à l’aune des liens de Bouveresse avec la tradition « analytique », et avec Wittgenstein en particulier. (shrink)
