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Renal Blood Flow and Dynamics of Glomerular Filtration: Evolution of a Concept from Carl Ludwig to the Present Day

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Renal Physiology

Part of the book series: People and Ideas ((PEOPL))

Abstract

Physiologists today gain knowledge by the application of two principles introduced into physiology in the early part of the last century. First, they employ a hypothetico-deductive method in that their scientific endeavour begins with a “working hypothesis,” the correctness of which is then established by systematic experimental examination of its logical consequences. This “new” method stands in stark contrast to the inductive method advocated by Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), a conflict of which the scientists of the period were well aware, as an essay by Justus von Liebig in 1863 shows.1 As a rule this experimental examination generates observations that require further hypotheses for their explanation, and so the process results in the gradual development of concepts that in truth are systems of more or less well substantiated hypotheses reflecting the imagination of individual researchers. Second, physiologists employ physicochemical methods to carry out experiments, a procedure that originated in a temporary constellation of certain philosophical systems at the beginning of the nineteenth century (see next section).

Der schöpferische Geist des Menschen ist damit ausgezeichnet ...

“etwas zu denken das niemand zuvor gedacht hat wenn er etwas sieht was jeder sieht.”

Man’s creative intellect is distinguished by the ability ...

“to think something which no-one ever thought before whilst seeing something which everybody sees.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

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Authors
  1. Klaus Thurau
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  2. John M. Davis
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  3. Dieter A. Häberle
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. American Heart Association, Department of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    Carl W. Gottschalk (Career Investigator, Kenan Professor of Medicine and Physiology) (Career Investigator, Kenan Professor of Medicine and Physiology)

  2. Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Robert W. Berliner (Professor Emeritus of Physiology and Medicine) (Professor Emeritus of Physiology and Medicine)

  3. Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Gerhard H. Giebisch (Sterling Professor of Physiology) (Sterling Professor of Physiology)

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© 1987 American Physiological Society

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Thurau, K., Davis, J.M., Häberle, D.A. (1987). Renal Blood Flow and Dynamics of Glomerular Filtration: Evolution of a Concept from Carl Ludwig to the Present Day. In: Gottschalk, C.W., Berliner, R.W., Giebisch, G.H. (eds) Renal Physiology. People and Ideas. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7545-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7545-3_2

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