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Helmholtz: From enlightenment to neuroscience

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"Although Hermann von Helmholtz was one of the most remarkable figures of nineteenth-century science, he is little known outside his native Germany. Helmholtz (1821-1894) made significant contributions to the study of vision and perception and was also influential in the painting, music, and literature of the time; one of his major works analyzed tone in music. This book, the first in English to describe Helmholtz's life and work in detail, describes his scientific studies, analyzes them in the context of the science and philosophy of the period---in particular the German Naturphilosophie---and gauges his influence on today's neuroscience." "Helmholtz, trained by Johannes Muller, one of the best physiologists of his time, used a resolutely materialistic and empirical scientific method in his research. This puts him in the tradition of Kant and the English empirical philosophers and directly opposed to the idealists and naturalists who interpreted nature based on metaphysical presuppositions. Helmholtz's research on color vision put him at odds with Goethe's more romantic theorizing on the subject; but at the end of his life, Helmholtz honored Goethe's contributions, acknowledging that artistic intuition could reveal truths about the human mind that are inaccessible to science." "Helmholtz's work, eclipsed at the beginning of the twentieth century by new ideas in neurophysiology, has recently been rediscovered. We can now recognize in Helmholtz's methods---which were based on his belief in the interconnectedness of physiology and psychology---the origins of neuroscience."--Jacket.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

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Publisher

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press., 2010.

Collation

1 online resource (xvii, 235 pages) :illustrations

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262289641

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

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Subject(s)

Scientists

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Michel Meulders

Other Information

Cataloger

yora

Source

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/2151/HelmholtzFrom-Enlightenment-to-Neuroscience

Validator

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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8673.001.0001

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