The donders machine: Matter, signs, and time in a physiological experiment, ca. 1865

Configurations

Volumn 13, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 211-256

  Schmidgen, Henning ^a  

^a MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE   (Germany)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 35549007705     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.2007.0018     Document Type: Review

References (135)

1. See, e.g., Hebbel E. Hoff and Leslie A. Geddes, "Graphic Registration before Ludwig: The Antecedents of the Kymograph," Isis 50:159 (1959): 5-21;
2. Robert G. Frank, "The Telltale Heart: Physiological Instruments, Graphic Methods, and Clinical Hopes 1854-1914," in The Investigative Enterprise: Experimental Physiology in Ninenteenth-Century Medicine, ed. William Coleman and Frederic L. Holmes (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 211-290;
3. Robert M. Brain and M. Norton Wise, "Muscles and Engines: Indicator Diagrams and Helmholtz's Graphical Methods," in Universalgenie Helmholtz: Rückblick nach 100 Jahren, ed. Lorenz Krüger (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1994), pp. 124-145;
4. Sven Dierig, "Engines for Experiment: Laboratory Revolution and Industrial Labor in the Nineteenth-Century City," Osiris 18 (2003): 116-134.
5. M. Norton Wise, "Mediating Machines," Science in Context 2:1 (1988): 77-113;
6. Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), esp. pp. 16, 37-67;
7. Peter Galison, Image and Logic: The Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. xvii:
8. "This book is about the machines of physics." See also M. Norton Wise, "Architectures for Steam," in The Architecture of Science, ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson (Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 107-140.
9. See, however, Harry M. Collins and Martin Kusch, The Shape of Actions: What Humans and Machines Can Do (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).
10. For the twofold vision of the machine, see the excellent exhibition catalog by K. G. Pontus Hultén, The Machine, As Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1968).
11. Galison, Image and Logic (above, n. 2), p. 391;
12. Andrew Pickering, "Cyborg History and the World War II Regime," Perspectives on Science 3:1 (1995): 1-48.
13. Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in idem, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991), pp. 149-181.
14. See also the discussion of Haraway In Pickering, Mangle of Practice (above, n. 2), pp. 225-228.
15. Although Hans-Jörg Rheinberger prefers the notion of "system" in this context, my approach is obviously inspired by his work. See Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997). The relation of matter, signs, and time has often been at issue In studies concerning the graphic method and its use in nineteenth-century physiology.
16. See, e.g., Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994);
17. Robert M. Brain, "The Graphic Method: Inscription, Visualization, and Measurement in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1996); Phillip Prodger, Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
18. For an example from neurology, see Hannah Landecker, "New Times for Biology: Nerve Cultures and the Advent of Cellular Life in vitro," Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2002): 667-694.
19. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, "Balance Sheet - Program for Desiring-Machines," Semiotext(e) 2:3 (1977): 117-135, on p. 125 (emphasis in the original). More generally,
20. see Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
21. The article "Balance Sheet" was originally published in the journal Minuit (2 [1973]: 1-25);
22. it was reprinted as an appendix to the second edition of L'Anti-Œdipe (Paris: Minuit, 1973), pp. 463-487, which has become the best-known version of this book in France and other countries. The English translation follows the first French edition-that is, it does not contain the quoted article as an appendix.
23. The sources of Deleuze and Guartari's machine theory are diverse. They range from historical studies by authors such as Lewis Mumford and Lynn White, Jr., to ethnographical, anthropological, and archaeological Investigations by André Leroi-Gourhan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and others. Important references concern Karl Marx's analysis of the factory system and Gilbert Simondon's theory of technological objects. For an extended discussion, see Henning Schmidgen, Das Unbewußte der Maschinen: Konzeptionen des Psychischen bei Guattari, Deleuze und Lacan (Munich: Fink, 1997). See also below, n. 52.
24. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (above, n. 7), p. 36 (emphasis in original).
25. See also Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, "Deleuze and Guattari Fight Back . . .," in Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-1974 (Los Angeles/New York: Semiotexte, 2004), pp. 216-229, on p. 219.
26. A useful overview concerning the machine concept in Deleuze and Guattari is provided by the articles reprinted in Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, vol. 3: Deleuze and Guattari, ed. Gary Genosko (London/New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 1231-1394.
27. On this point, see Schmidgen, Das Unbewußte der Maschinen (above, n. 8), pp. 25-44.
28. Deleuze and Guattari, "Balance Sheet" (above, n. 7), pp. 117-118 (emphasis in the original).
29. On the production of "effects" in scientific laboratories, see, e.g., Jed Z. Buchwald, The Creation of Scientific Effects: Heinrich Hertz and Electric Waves (Chicago: University of Chricago Press, 1994).
30. Bruno Latour, "Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Rain Forest," in idem, Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 24-79
31. . On laboratory instruments as "inscription devices," see Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 68.
32. Félix Guattari, "The Place of the Signifier in the Institution," in idem, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (Middlesex: Penguin, 1984), pp. 73-81.
33. Guattari, in his recently published notes for Anti-Oedipus, clearly states: "Desiring machines produce time" (Félix Guattari, Écrits pour l'Anti-Œdipe [Paris: Lignes et Manifestes, 2004], p. 83).
34. More generally, see Foucault's observations concerning the role of time in the emergence of the "body-weapon, body-tool, body-machine complex," in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 152-153;
35. Isabelle Stengers and Didier Gille, "Time and Representation, " in Isabelle Stengers, Power and Invention: Situating Science (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 176-211.
36. In science and technology studies, Pickering has argued most explicitly for a "real-time understanding of [scientific] practice" (Pickering, Mangle of Practice [above, n. 2], p. 3) .
37. On Donders, see Bert Theunissen, "Turning Refracting into a Science: F. C. Donders' 'Scientific Reform' of Lens Prescription," Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31C/4 (2000): 557-578;
38. Godelieve van Heteren, "Wirkmacht und Verläßlichkeit: Das Verhältnis von Menschen und Dingen in den Untersuchungen zur Akkommodation des Auges unter F. C. Donders," in Objekte, Differenzen und Konjunkturen: Experimentalsysteme im historischen Kontext, ed. Michael Hagner, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, and Bettina Wahrig-Schmidt (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), pp. 49-82.
39. In addition, see F. C. Donders: Reden, gehalten bei der Enthüllung seines Denkmals in Utrecht am 22. Juni 1921 (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1922);
40. E. C. van Leersum, Het Levenswerk van Franciscus Cornelis Donders (Haarlem: Bohn, 1932);
41. F. P. Fischer and G. Ten Doesschate, Franciscus Cornelis Donders (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1953);
42. Franciscus C. Donders, "Autobiographie, entnommen aus der Festrede vom 28. Mai 1868," Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde 25 (1889): 384-404.
43. See, e.g., Josef Brozek and Maarten S. Sibinga, "Introduction," in Origins of Psychometry: Johan Jacob de Jaager, Student of F. C. Donders on Reaction Time and Mental Processes (1865), ed. Brozek and Sibinga (Nieuwkoop: de Graaf, 1970), pp. 9-27;
44. Douwe Draaisma, The Age of Precision: F. C. Donders on the Measurement of Mind (Nijmegen: University of Nijmegen, 2002).
45. Franciscus Cornelis Donders, "Over de Snelheid van Psychische Processen," Onderzoekingen, gedaan in het Physiologisch Laboratorium der Utrechtsche Hoogeschool, Tweede Reeks 2 (1868-1869): 92-120;
46. idem, "Die Schnelligkeit psychischer Processe," Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medicin (1868): 657-681;
47. idem, "La vitesse des actes psychiques," Archives néerlandaises des sciences exactes et naturelles 3 (1868): 296-317.
48. An English translation was published much later under the title "On the Speed of Mental Processes," Acta Psychologica 30 (1969): 412-431. In the following, I will always make reference first to the English translation ("Speed") and second to the German text ("Schnelligkeit"). In many instances, I have modified the English translation; all other translations from Donders's texts and others are by myself, unless otherwise stated.
49. See Adolphe Hirsch, "Expériences chronoscopiques sur la vitesse des différentes sensations et de la transmission nerveuse," Bulletin de la Société des Sciences Naturelles de Neuchâtel 6:1 (1862): 100-114;
50. Rudolph Schelske, "Neue Messungen der Fortpflanzungsgeschwindigkeit des Reizes in den menschlichen Nerven," Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin (1862): 151-173.
51. See Henning Schmidgen, "Die Geschwindigkeit von Gefühlen und Gedanken: Die Entwicklung psychophysiologischer Zeitmessungen, 1850-1865," N.T.M. 12 (2004): 100-115.
52. On Helmholtz's later investigations on the psychophysiology of time, see Claude Debru, "Helmholtz and the Psychophysiology of Time," Science in Context 14:3 (2001): 471-492.
53. On diagrams and machines, see Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 33-44.
54. Deleuze and Guattari, "Balance Sheet" (above, n. 7), p. 125.
55. The art historian Michel Carrouges has isolated the "bachelor machine" as an important motive in the works of Marcel Duchamp and Franz Kafka: Michel Carrouges, Les machines célibataires (Paris: Arcanes, 1954).
56. See also Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (above, n. 7), p. 18.
57. More generally, see the exhibition catalog Le macchini celibi / Bachelor Machines (Venice: Alfieri, 1975).
58. Jacob Moleschott, Für meine Freunde: Lebenserinnerungen (Gießen: Roth, 1901), p. 133.
59. Donders to Hermann von Helmholtz, 11 February 1858, Archive of the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (B-BAW), NL Helmholtz 116, p. 2.
60. On the history of the phonautograph, see David A. Pantalony, "Rudolph Koenig (1832-1901), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) and the Birth of Modern Acoustics" (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2002), pp. 125-132;
61. Robert Brain, "Standards and Semiotics," in Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication, ed. Timothy Lenoir (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 249-284;
62. Paul Charbon, La machine parlante (Paris: Gyss, 1981), pp. 9-16;
63. Thomas L. Hankins and Robert J. Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 133-137.
64. Donders to Helmholtz, 11 February 1858 (above, n. 25), p. 2.
65. See also "Fixation graphique de la voix," L'illustration: Journal universel 30:770 (1857): 563.
66. Hermann Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1863), pp. 34, 248.
67. Rudolph Koenig, Catalogue des principaux appareils d'acoustique (Paris: Koenig, 1859), Appendix "Le phonautograph, appareil pour la fixation graphique des bruits, des sons, de la voix . . . ." On Koenig,
68. see Paolo Brenni, "The Triumph of Experimental Acoustics: Albert Marloye (1795-1874) and Rudolph Koenig (1832-1901)," Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society 44 (1995): 13-17; Pantalony, "Rudolph Koenig" (above, n. 26).
69. Donders, "Speed," p. 430;
70. "Schnelligkeit," p. 680.
71. See John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, Books I-III (1843; London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 849-860.
72. On this and the following, see Johan Jacob de Jaager, De physiologische tijd bij psychische processen (Utrecht: van de Weijer, 1865).
73. Donders, "Speed," p. 419;
74. "Schnelligkeit," p. 665 (emphasis in the original).
75. Jaager, De physiologische tijd (above, n. 32), p. 38.
76. Donders, "Speed," p. 419;
77. "Schnelligkeit," p. 665.
78. Franciscus Cornelis Donders, "Onderzoekingen over den duur der psychische processen," Utrecht University Museum, Donders Papers, Do. 01.11.I, pp. 8-9.
79. Donders, "Speed," p. 421;
80. "Schnelligkeit," p. 669.
81. Donders, "Speed," p. 429;
82. "Schnelligkeit," p. 678.
83. John V. Pickstone, Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 83-134.
84. Donders, "Speed," pp. 420-421;
85. "Schnelligkeit," p. 664.
86. Donders, "Speed," pp. 413;
87. "Schnelligkeit," p. 658.
88. With respect to psychology, see Mill, System of Logic (above, n. 31), pp. 849-860.
89. Hermann Helmholtz, "On the Methods of Measuring Very Small Portions of Time, and Their Application to Physiological Purposes," Philosophical Magazine 6:40 (1853): 313-325, esp. pp. 323-324.
90. See also idem, "Mittheilung für die physikalische Gesellschaft in Berlin betreffend Versuche über die Fortpflanzungsgeschwindigkeit der Reizung in den sensiblen Nerven des Menschen" [15 December 1850], B-BAW, NL Helmholtz 540.
91. Helmholtz, "On the Methods" (above, n. 43), p. 324.
92. See Brain and Wise, "Muscles and Engines" (above, n. 1);
93. Kathryn M. Olesko and Frederic L. Holmes, "Experiment, Quantification, and Discovery: Helmholtz's Early Physiological Researches, 1843-1850," in Hermann von Helmholtz and the Foundations of Nineteenth-Century Science, ed. David Cahan (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 50-108.
94. Franciscus Cornelis Donders, "De rhythmus der hartstonen," Nederlandsch Archief voor Genees- en Naturkunde 2 (1865): 139-164.
95. Ernst Brücke, Grundzüge der Physiologie und Systematik der Sprechlaute für Linguisten und Taubstummenlehrer (Vienna: Gerold, 1856), pp. 29-30 (emphasis in the original).
96. Franciscus Cornelis Donders, "Ueber die Natur der Vocale (Erste briefliche Mittheilung an Herrn Prof. Bruecke von F. C. Donders)," Archiv für die holländischen Beiträge zur Natur- und Heilkunde (1858): 157-162.
97. Franciscus Cornelis Donders, "Zur Klangfarbe der Vocale: Vorläufige Notiz," Annalen der Physik 123 (1864): 527-528, on p. 528.
98. Ibid., p. 527.
99. Franciscus Cornelis Donders, "De phonautograaf, een milddel tot bepaling van de absolute quantitelt der vocalen," Nederlandsch Archief voor Genees- en Natuurkunde 2 (1865): 466-467, on p. 467.
100. In this context, see Georges Canguilhem, "Machine and Organism," in Incorporations, ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone, 1992), pp. 45-69;
101. Canguilhem refers to Raymond Ruyer, Éléments de psycho-biologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1946), pp. 46-47 (on p. 67n28) and claims that Bergson's Creative Evolution "is, in some sense, a treatise of general organology" (p. 69n50).
102. See also the discussion of the influence of Ruyer's biophilosophy on Deleuze and Guattari in Paul Bains, "Subjectless Subjectivities," Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 24:3 (1997): 511-528.
103. Franciscus Cornelis Donders, Physiologie des Menschen, Vol. 1: Die Ernährung, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1859), p. 4.
104. On Scott's interest in writing, language, and speech, see also Brain, "Standards and Semiotics" (above, n. 26), p. 264.
105. François Longet, Traité de physiologie (Paris: Masson, 1850), vol. 2, pp. 137-146.
106. Édouard-Léon Scott, "Phonautographe et fixation graphique de la voix," Cosmos 14 (1859): 314-320, on p. 314.
107. Ibid., p. 319.
108. Ibid., p. 317
109. Ibid., p. 319
110. This term ("Sprechschreibmaschine") is used in Giulio Panconcelli-Calzia, Phonetik und Kultur (Hamburg: Hansischer Gildenverlag, 1938).
111. Letter, Koenig to Donders, quoted after Franciscus Cornelis Donders, "Snelheid der Werking in 't Zenuwstelsel" [ca. 1865], Utrecht University Museum, Donders Papers, Do. 07.77, p. 4.
112. See Guillaume [Wilhelm] Wertheim, "Recherches sur l'élasticité, Premier mémoire: De l'é lasticité et de la cohésion des métaux," Annales de chimie et de physique 12 (1844): 385-455, 581-625.
113. Félix Savart, "Recherches sur les usages de la membran du tympan et de l'oreille externe," Journal de physiologie expérimentale 4 (1824): 183-219;
114. Johannes Müller, Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen, Vol. 2 (Koblenz: Hölscher, 1840), pp. 425-459. In his communication from 1857, Scott refers to Savart and Müller.
115. Rudolph Koenig, Quelques expériences d'acoustique (Paris: Koenig, 1882), p. 29.
116. See also Adam Politzer, "Beiträge zur Physiologie des Gehörorgans," Sitzungsberichte der Mathematisch- Naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse 43 (1861): 427-438.
117. Rudolph Koenig, "[Letter to Donders referring to the phonautograph and Helmholtz resonators, ca. 1860]," Utrecht University Museum, Archive of the Collection, p. 3.
118. Donders, "Zur Klangfarbe der Vocale" (above, n. 49), p. 527.
119. Letter, Koenig to Donders (above, n.64), p. 4.
120. Franz Joseph Pisko, Die neuen Apparate der Akustik: Für Freunde der Naturwissenschaft und der Tonkunst (Vienna: Gerold, 1865), pp. 73-74.
121. Donders, "Speed," p. 427;
122. "Schnelligkeit," p. 677.
123. Donders, "Snelheid der Werking" (above, n. 61).
124. Ibid., p. 3.
125. Donders, "Speed," p. 414.
126. "Schnelligkeit," pp. 659-660.
127. Donders, "Onderzoekingen over den duur" (above, n. 36), p. 7.
128. Ibid., p. 8.
129. Franciscus Cornelius Donders, "Over de snelheid der gedachte en der wilsbepaling: Voorloopige mededeeling," Nederlandsch Archief voor Genees- en Natuurkunde 1 (1865): 518-520.
130. Franciscus C. Donders, "Deux instruments pour la mesure du temps nécessaire pour les actes psychiques," Archives néerlandaises des sciences exactes et naturelles 2 (1867): 247-250.
131. See Rudolf Biedermann, Bericht über die Ausstellung wissenschaftlicher Apparate im South Kensington Museum zu London, 1876: Zugleich vollständiger und beschreibender Katalog der Ausstellung (London: Strangeways, 1876), pp. 1022-1023.
132. Donders to Helmholtz, 18 May 1868, B-BAW, NL Helmholtz 116, p. 1. 78. Ibid.
133. Deleuze and Guattari, "Balance Sheet" (above, n. 7), p. 125.
134. Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d'existence des objets techniques, 3rd ed. (Paris: Aubier, 1989), p. 73.
135. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 201.