Abstract
Helmholtz’s works in physical geometry, the semiotics associated with his theory of perception and, in a more general vein, the Kantian influence of his epistemology have not failed to draw the attention of philosophers. However, Helmholtz’s attitude towards scientific realism has scarcely been discussed.1 While Helmholtz surely held a realist position toward laws of nature (thus espousing what could be called nomological realism), I want to underline significant aspects of his epistemology that indicate a rather sceptical stand towards the realist thesis, and put these aspects in a historical-philosophical perspective. With this in view, I will first indicate how Helmholtz, on the basis of his investigations in physiology, came to consider sensations as signs, this semiotic conception of sensations being at the center of his views on scientific realism. I will then discuss ensuing aspects of Helmholtz’s theory of science that show strong anti-realist tendencies and appear to anticipate major themes of latter-day empiricism.
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Notes
Notorious analyses are found in Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), which is essentially polemical, and Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, III (1929), which treats the question in an incidental manner. Russell Kahl, editor and translator of Selected Writings of Hermann von Helmholtz (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971) addresses the issue in the introduction; his main contention (to which I will come back later) is that: “On the whole he [Helmholtz] continued to be a persistent realist, arguing among other things that a correct analysis of perception, while it does not provide conclusive evidence, does support the realist position” (p. xx).
More recently, G. Hatfield (The Natural and the Normative. Theories of Spatial Perception from Kant to Helmholtz. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, 1990) has provided a thoroughgoing discussion of the question with respect to spatial realism and idealism.
Taking a look at the physics textbooks of the epoch, C. Jungnickel and R. McCommach (Intellectual Mastery of Nature. Vol. I: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) note that “almost to a man”, the early nineteenth century German university physicists declared themselves to be influenced by Kant’s work and demonstrated it in their publications. “The move away from Aristotelian textbooks, which had occurred not long before, to textbooks that stressed experience had been followed by renewed attention to the nature of objective knowledge and particularly to the process by which experience becomes scientific knowledge” (p. 24). Further on, they add: “Except for matters of emphasis, the physicists’ quarrel was not with philosophy as a whole but only with a part of it, Naturphilosophie, which they often did not even dignify with the name of philosophy. The heated campaign of the physicists against the nature philosophers did not stop with denunciations in their textbooks. These were faint echoes of what they said in private letters, reviews, addresses, periodicals, and elsewhere” (p. 27).
‘Über das Verhältnis der Naturwissenschaften zur Gesamtheit der Wissenschaft’ (1862), p. 126 in Kahl, Selected Writings, trans, as ‘The Relation of the Natural Sciences to Science in General’, pp. 122–143.
‘Die Tatsachen in der Wahrnehmung’ (1878), p. 390 in Kahl, Selected Writings, trans, as ‘The Facts of Perception’, pp. 366–408.
Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, III (1867), p. 33 in J. P. Southhall ed., Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics, III. New York: Dover, 1962.
‘The Facts of Perceptions’, p. 372 in Kahl, Selected Writings.
Die Prinzipien der Mechanik (1894), pp. 1–2 in The Principles of Mechanics, trans, by D. E. Jones and J. T. Walley. New York: Dover, 1956.
This translation differs somewhat from Kahl’s (p. 388 in Selected Writings). Cf. H. von Helmholtz, Die Tatsachen in der Wahrnehmung/Zählen und Messen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1959, p. 45.
‘Über die Erhaltung der Kraft’ (1847), pp. 12–75 in Wissenschftliche Abhandlungen, I(Leipzig: Barth, 1882), also reproduced as monograph, Über die Erhaltung der Kraft. Weinheim: Physik-Verlag, 1883, trans, as ‘The Conservation of Force: A Physical Memoir’, pp. 3–55 in Kahl, Selected Writings.
Memoir, p. 3 in Kahl, Selected Writings.
Memoir, Appendix I, pp. 49–50. in Kahl, Selected Writings.
Cf. Gustav Kirchhoff, Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik: Mechanik. 2nd. ed., Leipzig, 1877. Preface: “We usually define Mechanics as the science of forces, and forces, as causes which produce movements or have the capacity to produce movements. […]. However, [this definition] is beset with the obscurity inherent in the concepts of cause and capacity. Given the rigor of demonstrations otherwise obtained in Mechanics, it has appeared desirable to me to remove such obscurities, even if this proves to be only feasible at the cost of restricting its assigned task. Hence I give to Mechanics the task to describe the movements that occur in nature, in a complete and simplest possible way. By this, I mean that Mechanics has soley to determine what are the phenomena that occur, and not to search for their causes.” (My translation)
Einleitung zu den Vorlesungen über theoretische Physik [Koenig & Runge (eds.). Leipzig: Barth, 1903], p. 521 in Kahl, Selected Writings (trans, as ‘Introduction to the Lectures on Theoretical Physics’, pp. 513–529).
Ibid., pp. 521–4.
Cf. Rudolf Carnap, ‘On the Character of Philosophical Problems’, Philosophy of Science 1 (1934) 5–19.
E. Nagel, The Structure of Science. 2nd ed., Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979, p. 152.
‘The Facts of Perception, Appendix I’, in Kahl, Selected Writings, p. 398.
Ibid., p. 19.
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Leroux, J. (1995). Helmholtz and Modern Empiricism. In: Marion, M., Cohen, R.S. (eds) Québec Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 177. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1575-6_17
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