Helmholtz : from enlightenment to neuroscience /

Although Hermann von Helmholtz was one of most remarkable figures ofnineteenth-century science, he is little known outside his native Germany. Helmholtz (1821--1894)made significant contributions to the study of vision and perception and was also influential in thepainting, music, and literature of the time; one of his major works analyzed tone in music. Thisbook, the first in English to describe Helmholtz's life and work in detail, describes his scientificstudies, analyzes them in the context of the science and philosophy of the period -- in particularthe German Naturphilosophie -- and gauges his influence on today'sneuroscience.

Helmholtz, trained by Johannes Müller, one of the best physiologistsof his time, used a resolutely materialistic and empirical scientific method in his research. Hiswork, eclipsed at the beginning of the twentieth century by new ideas in neurophysiology, hasrecently been rediscovered. We can now recognize in Helmholtz's methods -- which were based on hisbelief in the interconnectedness of physiology and psychology -- the origins ofneuroscience.