Hermann Von Helmholtz's Mechanism: The Loss of Certainty: A Study on the Transition from Classical to Modern Philosophy of Nature

ISBN-13: 9789048174133 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 284 str.

Gregor Schiemann; Cynthia Klohr

Opis

Focusing on Hermann von Helmholtz, this study addresses one of the nineteenth century's most important German natural scientists. Among his most well-known contributions to science are the invention of the ophthalmoscope and grou- breaking work towards formulating the law of the conservation of energy. The volume of his work, reaching from medicine to physiology to physics and epis- mology, his impact on the development of the sciences far beyond German borders, and the contribution he made to the organization and popularization of research, all established Helmholtz's prominence both in the academic world and in public cultural life. Helmholtz was also one of the last representatives of a conception of nature that strove to reduce all phenomena to matter in motion. In reaction to the increasingly insurmountable difficulties that program had in fulfilling its own standards for s- entific explanation, he developed elements of a modern understanding of science that have remained of fundamental importance to this day.

Spis treści

Introduction A. Mechanism between the Classical and the Modern I. The Concept of Mechanism 1. What is Meant by 'Mechanism'? 2. On the Concept of Classical Mechanics II. Mechanism as a Classical Philosophy of Nature 1. The Classical Concept of Science 2. Two Instances of the Legitimation of Classical Mechanism a) Galileo's Scientism b) Descartes' Metaphysics and his Concept of Hypothesis III. The Three Lines of Traditions of Mechanism 1. Materialist Mechanism (Boyle and Huygens) 2. Dualist Mechanism (Newton and Boscovich) 3. Dynamic Mechanism (Leibniz and Kant) IV. Contours of a Modern Philosophy of Nature 1. Hypotheticity as a Characteristic of the Modern Conception of Science 2. Interpretation of Nature as World-View B. Helmholtz's Mechanism at the Dawn of Modernity I. Helmholtz as Educator, Natural Scientist, and Research Strategist II. Helmholtz's Classical Mechanism 1. The Mechanistic Programmatic of 1847 a) The Grounding of Dual Mechanism b) The Energetic Heuristic of Mechanism 2. Mechanics as Foundation of Geometry 3. Helmholtz's Classical Conception of Science and Nature a) His Conception of Science Until the End of the Eighteen Sixties b) His Classical Mechanistic Conception of Nature III. The Hypothesization of Helmholtz's Mechanism 1. Helmholtz's Conception of Science Since the Beginning of the Eighteen Seventies 2. Helmholtz's Model-Theoretical Mechanism. Mechanistic Analogies and Mathematical Unification IV. Conditions and Causes of the Change in Helmholtz's Conception of Nature and Science Bibliography Index

Blurb

Two seemingly contradictory tendencies have accompanied the development of the natural sciences in the past 150 years. On the one hand, the natural sciences have been instrumental in effecting a thoroughgoing transformation of social structures and have made a permanent impact on the conceptual world of human beings. This historical period has, on the other hand, also brought to light the merely hypothetical validity of scientific knowledge. As late as the middle of the 19th century the truth-pathos in the natural sciences was still unbroken. Yet in the succeeding years these claims to certain knowledge underwent a fundamental crisis. For scientists today, of course, the fact that their knowledge can possess only relative validity is a matter of self-evidence.

The present analysis investigates the early phase of this fundamental change in the concept of science through an examination of Hermann von Helmholtz's conception of science and his mechanistic interpretation of nature. Helmholtz (1821-1894) was one of the most important natural scientists in Germany. The development of this thought offers an impressive but, until now, relatively little considered report from the field of the experimental sciences chronicling the erosion of certainty.