The Epistemological Outcome of Helmholtz’s Naturalism. Hypothetical Realism

Abstract

Helmholtz’s original elaborations of Kantian themes in conjunction with his naturalistic attempts to bridge the gap between professional philosophy and science and to combine their respective intellectual resources has made him the victim of serious misunderstandings, especially on the part of his disquieted philosophical critics. The scientist-turned-philosopher had become an uncommon and suspect figure in his days. And the unfamiliar chords Helmholtz struck, with fundamental tones vaguely reminiscent of Kant but with harsh empiricist overtones, bewildered the philosophers’ plenum even more, like a blue grass fiddler contending to direct the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Hence views were ascribed to him which he had never held and the irony of many of his philosophical exchanges was that he was forced to defend himself against the very conceptions he himself had most consistently criticized. Thus he had to reiterate against Land that throughout his life he had combated the assumption

that empirical knowledge is acquired by simple importation or by counterfeit, and not by peculiar operations of the mind, solicited by various impulses from an unknown reality.¹