Hermann von Helmholtz: Vortrage eines Heidelberger Symposiums anlasslich des einhundertsten Todestages

This volume contains ten essays originally presented at a symposium in September 1994 at the Heidelberg Akademie der Wissenschaften convened to mark the centennial of Hermann von Helmholtz’s death. The editors modestly state (pp. v–vi) that their aim was neither to celebrate Helmholtz in an uncritical fashion nor to produce the sort of comprehensive and critical assessment that I have sought to do (David Cahan, ed., Hermann von Helmholtz and the Foundations of Nineteenth-Century Science [1993]). Instead, they have sought to give a general appreciation of Helmholtz’s career and achievements in physics, physiology, mathematics, and culture in general, and to do so in a way that might attract the attention of those who are broadly interested in the history of science. In my judgment, this volume will indeed be of greater use to the general reader interested in knowing more about Helmholtz than to those with more specialized interests.

Brigitte Lohff’s essay gives a clear account of Helmholtz’s epistemological views and his philosophy of science, but does so without taking into account the important recent studies by Michael Heidelberger and Gregor Schiemann, both of whom have shown the evolving nature of Helmholtz’s views in these areas. Kazimir-Boleslav Lavrynovicz retells Helmholtz’s years in Königsberg (1849–55) in a more historical way, though the documentation is scarce and he says almost nothing about Helmholtz’s invention of the ophthalmoscope in 1850–51; again, referring to Franz Neumann’s role in Helmholtz’s decision to leave Königsberg, he could have benefited from using the results of Kathryn Olesko’s recent study of Neumann’s seminar there. (Readers of the Bulletin will want to know that the volume contains no discussion of Helmholtz as a medical doctor or of his influence on the medical profession.) By contrast, Christoph Gradmann’s “biographical interpretation” of Helmholtz’s involvement with the organic physics movement of 1847 is a solidly documented essay that takes issue with Timothy Lenoir’s attempt to account for Helmholtz’s attitudes toward science and politics in terms of the failed revolution of 1848. Franz Werner also carefully recounts Helmholtz’s call to Heidelberg, though he does not present the context for that call and does not refer to Arleen Tuchman’s book on this very topic.

Four essays are almost exclusively devoted to recounting some of Helmholtz’s scientific work. Wolfgang Eckart lightly reviews Helmholtz’s scientific activities during his Heidelberg period (1858–71), though again there is insufficient reference to those who have discussed Helmholtz’s physical and physiological research during his Heidelberg years. Otto-Joachim Grüsser presents an unrelenting scientist’s history of Helmholtz’s work on the physiology of sight and vision, doing so without context and without mentioning such a fundamental study as R. Steven Turner’s recent book on the Helmholtz-Hering controversy. Similarly, Klaus Volkert offers a largely technical account of Helmholtz’s work on the foundations of geometry, while Horst Kant recounts Helmholtz’s work in theoretical physics, above all that on the conservation of energy and electrodynamics.

The two final essays in the volume are devoted to the more socioeconomic and political dimensions of Helmholtz’s career. Ulrich Kern draws heavily on work by Gisela Buchheim and myself to retell something of the origins of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt and its fate under Helmholtz’s leadership. And Bernhard vom Brocke recycles many well-known facts about Helmholtz’s life and career, along with quotations from his writings, to argue that Helmholtz “had been involved in politics much more than his biographers are willing to admit” (p. 267). Yet vom Brocke’s evidence, by his own admission, is circumstantial, and his principal argument for explaining Helmholtz’s apparent lack of involvement in politics is circular—namely, that Helmholtz did not participate in or comment...