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Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann von Helmholtz Books

Physician

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“During the first half of the present century we had an Alexander von Humboldt, who was able to scan the scientific knowledge of his time in its details, and to bring it within one vast generalization. At the present juncture, it is obviously very doubtful whether this task could be accomplished in a similar way, even by a mind with gifts so peculiarly suited for the purpose as Humboldt's was, and if all his time and work were devoted to the purpose.”

IfsKnowsWayMindFirstsAbleSciencePurposeHalfKnowledgeCenturyTasksDetailsAccomplishedDevotedDoubtfulGeneralizationScientific KnowledgeJuncture
Author:Hermann von Helmholtz
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“Heat can also be produced by the impact of imperfectly elastic bodies as well as by friction. This is the case, for instance, when we produce fire by striking flint against steel, or when an iron bar is worked for some time by powerful blows of the hammer.”

WellsBodyPowerfulCasesFireProduceImpactBlowBarsInstanceHeatIronSteelHammersFriction
Book:Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays
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“As you are aware, no perceptions obtained by the senses are merely sensations impressed on our nervous systems. A peculiar intellectual activity is required to pass from a nervous sensation to the conception of an external object, which the sensation has aroused. The sensations of our nerves of sense are mere symbols indicating certain external objects, and it is usually only after considerable practice that we acquire the power of drawing correct conclusions from our sensations respecting the corresponding objects.”

CertainPracticeObjectsActivityPerceptionIntellectualMereDrawingSensesConclusionNervousSymbolsAcquireSensationsNervesConceptionPeculiarImpressedNervous SystemCorresponding
Author:Hermann von Helmholtz
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“In speaking of the work of machines and of natural forces we must, of course, in this comparison eliminate anything in which activity of intelligence comes into play. The latter is also capable of the hard and intense work of thinking, which tries a man just as muscular exertion does.”

ThinkingMenTryingDoeHardPlayCoursesForceNaturalActivityCapableMachinesIntenseLatterComparisonExertion
Book:Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays
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“The total quantity of all the forces capable of work in the whole universe remains eternal and unchanged throughout all their changes. All change in nature amounts to this, that force can change its form and locality, without its quantity being changed. The universe possesses, once for all, a store of force which is not altered by any change of phenomena, can neither be increased nor diminished, and which maintains any change which takes place on it.”

WholeFormScienceUniverseForceChangedAmountEternalCapableRemainsStoresQuantityAlteredLocality
Book:Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects
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“Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.”

KnowsGivingMayFactsLawScienceValuesPerfectResultsViewsNumbersKnowledgeNegativeSeriesValuablePoint Of ViewPracticalsExperimentsIsolatedTheoreticalRecurringIncompleteness
Book:Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays
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“When young Galileo, then a student at Pisa, noticed one day during divine service a chandelier swinging backwards and forwards, and convinced himself, by counting his pulse, that the duration of the oscillations was independent of the arc through which it moved, who could know that this discovery would eventually put it in our power, by means of the pendulum, to attain an accuracy in the measurement of time till then deemed impossible, and would enable the storm-tossed seaman in the most distant oceans to determine in what degree of longitude he was sailing?”

KnowsMeanYoungScienceTimeChurchImpossibleStudentsDivineOne DayDegreesOceanDiscoveryIndependentMovedDetermineStormConvincedSailingBackwardsCountingPulseMeasurementAccuracyArcsDurationPendulumsSeamenChandeliersOscillationPisa
Book:Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays
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“The most startling result of Faraday's Law is perhaps this. If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity.”

IfsWellsLawScienceResultsAcceptingNegativeSubstanceBehaveDividedAtomsPortionsDefiniteElectricityHypothesisConcluding
Book:Selected writings of Hermann von Helmholtz
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