The Neuroscience of Helmholtz and the Theories of Johannes Müller

In this, our continuation paper on Helmholtz and Müller, we examine Helmholtz’s contributions to sensation and perception, with emphasis on his extension and modification of Müller’s theory of specific nerve energies. The material is again presented in biographical-chronological context. We also examine Helmholtz’s views on depth and space perception, and his empirical theory of knowledge, which are also compared to Mutter’s views. It will be shown that Helmholtz remained stimulated by the thoughts and doctrines of Johannes Müller in the sensory-perceptual part of his career, which began early in the 1850s and ended with his death. Nevertheless, Helmholtz’s own experiments and new discoveries by others sometimes led him to quite different conclusions.     

The Rise of Vo¨lkisch-Nationalism and the Decline of German Liberalism: A Comparison of Liberal Political Cultures in Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia 1912-1924

Historians have tended to focus on political economic and political organisational factors in order to explain the rise of liberalism in the nineteenth century and the decline of liberalism in the twentieth. But these factors tell only part of the story, particularly in the German case. For the precipitous decline of German liberalism after 1890 cannot be understood without examining the rise of Austro-German völkisch (ethnic) nationalism in the same period. Comparing Germany's two most liberal regions, Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia, this article argues that liberalism became increasingly dependent for its political survival on an accomodation with ethnic nationalism. It is hoped that such a comparison will lead to a reexamination of the conventional ways in which German liberal success and failure are understood, and a re-evaluation of what it meant to be a liberal in Germany and Europe during the first third of the twentieth century.     

The neuroscience of Helmholtz and the theories of Johannes Müller. Part 2: Sensation and perception

In this, our continuation paper on Helmholtz and Müller, we examine Helmholtz's contributions to sensation and perception, with emphasis on his extension and modification of Müller's theory of specific nerve energies. The material is again presented in biographical-chronological context. We also examine Helmholtz's views on depth and space perception, and his empirical theory of knowledge, which are also compared to Müller's views. It will be shown that Helmholtz remained stimulated by the thoughts and doctrines of Johannes Müller in the sensory-perceptual part of his career, which began early in the 1850s and ended with his death. Nevertheless, Helmholtz's own experiments and new discoveries by others sometimes led him to quite different conclusions.     

The Eighteenth-Century ‘Restoration’ of the West Portals of Saint-Denis and the Problem of the Lintels

Abstract

The west portals of Saint-Denis are believed to have incorporated lintels which would have been engaged with the doorposts below impost level. The lintels are presumed to have been removed in 1771 when various damaging work was carried out on the doorways. Irregularities in the upper courses of the doorposts appear to confirm this theory and many scholars have speculated upon the form of the lost lintels. It can be demonstrated, however, that the narrow nineteenth-century lintels in situ above impost level follow the original twelfth-century design: substantial lintels were at no time engaged with the doorposts. The disorder of the upper doorposts can nevertheless be attributed to the 1771 campaign. At that time the doorposts were dismantled and reassembled carelessly, without leaving enough room for the reinsertion of the upper courses: those of the central portal were merely trimmed while those of the lateral portals were replaced.     

The Neuroscience of Helmholtz and the Theories of Johannes Müller Part 1: Nerve Cell Structure,Vitalism, and the Nerve Impulse

Hermann Helmholtz made monumental contributions to the neural sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century. Among his earliest achievements were experiments that challenged vitalism, microscopic studies on the structure of the nerve cell and its processes, and the first reasonable estimates of the speed of nerve transmission based on physiological experiments. In this, the first of a two-part article, we review Helmholtz's early contributions in biographical context and with reference to Johannes Müller's own thoughts.We reveal how Johannes Müller, considered by many to be the greatest physiologist of the first half of the nineteenth century, helped to launch and shape Helmholtz's career. We also show that Helmholtz was only willing to accept some of his mentor's theories, even though he had great admiration for Müller. The point will be made that Helmholtz owed a great debt to Müller, but even from his student days in Berlin he was an independent thinker with his own agenda, and never his strict disciple.     

The neuroscience of Helmholtz and the theories of Johannes Müller. Part 1: Nerve cell structure,vitalism, and the nerve impulse

Hermann Helmholtz made monumental contributions to the neural sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century. Among his earliest achievements were experiments that challenged vitalism, microscopic studies on the structure of the nerve cell and its processes, and the first reasonable estimates of the speed of nerve transmission based on physiological experiments. In this, the first of a two-part article, we review Helmholtz's early contributions in biographical context and with reference to Johannes Müller's own thoughts. We reveal how Johannes Müller, considered by many to be the greatest physiologist of the first half of the nineteenth century, helped to launch and shape Helmholtz's career. We also show that Helmholtz was only willing to accept some of his mentor's theories, even though he had great admiration for Müller. The point will be made that Helmholtz owed a great debt to Müller, but even from his student days in Berlin he was an independent thinker with his own agenda, and never his strict disciple.     

Abolish the army? The ideal of democracy and the transformation of the Czechoslovak military after 1918 and 1989

This article deals with the relationship between the democratic transformations in Czechoslovakia after 1918 and 1989 and the armed forces. The democratic ideal of transformation seemed to be alien to the military institution, which upheld the old regime and paradigmatically represented undemocratic patterns of governance. In order to accommodate the popular demand to ‘abolish’ the army, the new political elite strived to initiate an institutional transformation that would re-legitimize the armed forces. Whereas after 1918 the military improved its reputation by changing into a ‘school of nation’, after 1989 the military, expected to become fully professional, went through a period in which its inner organisational culture was liberalized and personal freedoms of the soldiers were strengthened. The decline of previous authorities and the rise of civic self-confidence connected to the process of democratisation also led to the demoralisation of the soldiers. The liminal phase of military transformation was marked by the experience of the first ‘post-war war’, the Czechoslovak-Hungarian War in 1919 and the Gulf War in 1991, which indicated the needs of the new security environment and gave the idealistic thinking about the democratic military a touch of reality.     

“The artifice of eternity”: The Wanderings of Oisin and the Byzantium poems

Yeats’s poetry and drama centre on conflict, and crucially, on the clash between the mortal and the eternal. In this essay, I focus on the way in which The Wanderings of Oisin foreshadows and informs the treatment of eternity in Yeats’s later Byzantium poems. The Wanderings of Oisin explores the intensity of human longing for the eternal despite our time-bound nature, prefiguring his later impassioned though analytical Byzantium poems. Although the Byzantium poems seem initially to glorify eternity at the expense of human life, this essay traces the complexity of Yeats’s desire. Previous criticism has understated the extent to which Yeats’s poetry actively resists the siren song of eternity. The Byzantium poems problematise the eternity that they seem to desire, and this article reveals them as inflected by the way in which The Wanderings of Oisin questions the value of the eternal realm in the light of mortal heroic values. The “intensity, solitude, defeat” of the artist are inevitable, but there is a victory of sorts won from the poet’s deliberate inability to commit to any version of the eternal that preclude his own power and humanity. Yeats’s poetry runs the gamut between versions of desire that express an overweening desire for resolution even as they retain their resistance to any single pure state of being, if any such state is possible.