Henning Schmidgen

General physiology, experimental psychology, and evolutionism. Unicellular organisms as objects of psychophysiological research, 1877-1918.

This essay aims to shed new light on the relations between physiology and psychology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by focusing on the use of unicellular organisms as research objects during that period. Within the frameworks of evolutionism and monism advocated by Ernst Haeckel, protozoa were perceived as objects situated at the borders between organism and cell and individual and society. Scholars such as Max Verworn, Alfred Binet, and Herbert Spencer Jennings were provoked by these organisms to undertake experimental investigations situated between general physiology and psychology that differed from the physiological psychology advocated by Wilhelm Wundt. Some of these investigations sought to locate psychological properties in the molecular structure of protoplasm; others stressed the existence of organic and psychological individuality in protozoa. In the following decades, leading philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Henri Bergson, as well as psychological researchers like Sigmund Freud, integrated the results of these investigations into their reflections on such problems as the nature of the will, the structure of the ego, and the holistic nature of the reactions of organisms to their environment.

Physics, ballistics, and psychology: a history of the chronoscope in/as context, 1845-1890.

In Wilhelm Wundts (1832-1920) Leipzig laboratory and at numerous other research sites, the chronoscope was used to conduct reaction time experiments. The author argues that the history of the chronoscope is the history not of an instrument but of an experimental setup. This setup was initially devised by the English physicist and instrument maker Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) in the early 1840s. Shortly thereafter, it was improved by the German clockmaker and mechanic Matthäus Hipp (1813-1893). In the 1850s, the chronoscope was introduced to ballistic research. In the early 1860s, Neuchâtel astronomer Adolphe Hirsch (1830-1901) applied it to the problem of physiological time. The extensions and variations of chronoscope use within the contexts of ballistics, physiology, and psychology presented special challenges. These challenges were met with specific attempts to reduce the errors in chronoscopic experiments on shooting stands and in the psychological laboratory.

Time and noise: the stable surroundings of reaction experiments, 1860-1890

Abstract The ‘Reaction experiment with Hipp chronoscope’ is one of the classical experiments of modern psychology. This paper investigates the technological contexts of this experiment. It argues that the development of time measurement and communication in other areas of science and technology (astronomy, the clock industry) were decisive for shaping the material culture of experimental in psychology. The chronoscope was constructed by Matthaus Hipp (1813–1893) in the late 1840s. In 1861, Adolphe Hirsch (1830–1901) introduced the chronoscope for measuring the ‘physiological time’ of astronomical observers. Hirsch’s observatory at Neuchâtel (Switzerland) served to control the quality of clocks produced in the nearby Jura mountains. Hipp provided the observatory with a telegraphic system that sent time signals to the centers of clock production. Time telegraphy constituted the stable surroundings of the reaction time experiments carried out by both astronomers and psychologists. This technology permitted precise measurements of short time intervals and offered to Hirsch, as well as to Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), a useful metaphor for conceptualizing their respective ‘epistemic objects’. But time telegraphy also limited the possibilities of the experimental work conducted within its framework. In particular, noise from outside and inside the research sites at Neuchâtel, Leipzig and elsewhere disturbed the precise communication of time.

Of frogs and men: the origins of psychophysiological time experiments, 1850-1865

Towards the end of the 1840s, Hermann von Helmholtz began to investigate experimentally the propagation of stimuli within nerves. Helmholtzs experiments on animals and human subjects opened a research field that in the following decades was intensively explored by neurophysiologists and experimental psychologists. Helmholtzs pioneering investigations justify the central place he occupies in accounts of the history of modern psychophysiology. Studying the concrete experimental settings and their local contexts shows how deeply the work of scholars such as Helmholtz is embedded in the history of culture and technology. In particular, the rapidly growing technologies of electromagnetism, which gave rise to telegraphy and electric clocks, facilitated the time measurements of 19th-century physiologists and psychologists.

The materiality of things? Bruno Latour, Charles Péguy, and the history of science

This article sheds new light on Bruno Latour’s sociology of science and technology by looking at his early study of the French writer, philosopher and editor Charles Péguy (1873–1914). In the early 1970s, Latour engaged in a comparative study of Péguy’s Clio and the four gospels of the New Testament. His 1973 contribution to a Péguy colloquium (published in 1977) offers rich insights into his interest in questions of time, history, tradition and translation. Inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, Latour reads Clio as spelling out and illustrating the following argument: ‘Repetition is a machine to produce differences with identity’. However, in contrast to Deleuze’s work (together with Félix Guattari) on the materiality of machines, or assemblages [agencements], Latour emphasizes the semiotic aspects of the repetition/difference process. As in Péguy, the main model for this process is the Roman Catholic tradition of religious events. The article argues that it is this reading of Péguy and Latour’s early interest in biblical exegesis that inspired much of Latour’s later work. In Laboratory Life (Latour and Woolgar, 1979) and The Pasteurization of France (1988) in particular, problems of exegesis and tradition provide important stimuli for the analysis of scientific texts. In this context, Latour gradually transforms the question of tradition into the problem of reference. In a first step, he shifts the event that is transmitted and translated from the temporal dimension (i.e. the past) to the spatial (i.e. from one part of the laboratory to another). It is only in a second step that Latour resituates scientific events in time. As facts they are ‘constructed’ but nevertheless ‘irreducible’. They result, according to Latour, from the tradition of the future. As a consequence, the Latourian approach to science distances itself from the materialism of Deleuze and other innovative theoreticians.

Wundt as chemist? A fresh look at his practice and theory of experimentation

Mid-19th-century chemistry constituted a practically and theoretically important resource for experimental psychology as conceived by Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920). In the early 1850s, Wundt began working in Gustav Herths private chemical laboratory in Heidelberg. The experimental work Wundt conducted under Herths direction provided the practical model for the psychological methods advocated in Wundts pioneering publication on visual perception in 1862. With respect to theory, Wundt relied on John Stuart Mills System of Logic, a book often referring to the chemical writings by Justus Liebig. Wundt not only read and quoted Mills logic but also was personally acquainted with its German translator, the former Liebig student Jacob Schiel. Thus, in various ways, chemistry influenced Wundts early theory and practice of experiment.

The Virtual Laboratory: A New On-Line Resource for the History of Psychology

The authors provide a description of the Virtual Laboratory at Department III of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. The Virtual Laboratory currently provides Internet links to rooms that present texts, instruments, model organisms, research sites, and biographies. Existing links provide access to a library of journals, handbooks, monographs, and trade catalogues; research institutes and laboratories; biographies and bibliographic essays; and essays by contemporary researchers. Historians of psychology are encouraged to submit photographic material and essays to the Virtual Laboratory.

Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies (review)

Biological laboratories are remarkable spaces. They protect scientists from the fussiness of societal life as well as the buzzing confusion of nature. By means of their walls, doors, and windows, they produce the relative compactness that, conversely, leads to the very openness characteristic of modern research. In contrast to laboratories of physics and chemistry, the biological lab constitutes not just the environment for specific kinds of humans (researchers, assistants, students, etc.); animals and plants as well as bacteria and viruses populate these artificial milieus as well. Placed in stables, cages, and aquaria, put into freezers, Petri dishes, and test tubes, such living beings are bred and prepared and eventually “used” for research purposes in the lab.Viewed from a distance, these spaces within the laboratory seem to repeat the isolation of the scientists from their normal surroundings. When a test tube is put into a centrifuge or a Petri dish placed under a microscope, genuine miniature laboratories, labs within the lab, seem to emerge around the respective living beings. One is tempted to speak here of “laboratory fractals.”This then would be why the biological laboratory is such a remarkable space. It is an architectural structure subdivided into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole. With her book Culturing Life, Hannah Landecker contributes an important chapter to the recent history of these laboratory fractals. Her elegantly written and well-documented narrative demonstrates how, within 20th-century biological laboratories, a whole range of vessels and containers were used in order to store, breed, study, and manipulate cells and tissue outside the body of organic

Neuropsychologischer Screeningtest (NST)

Bei Patienten mit Schädel-Hirn-Traumen tritt häufig die Frage auf, ob eine subjektiv empfundene Verhaltensauffälligkeit Krankheitswert hat und ggf. auf das erlittene Trauma zurückzuführen ist. Diese Frage lässt sich letztlich nur durch einen Kognitionspsychologen valide beantworten. Um ein einfaches und zuverlässiges Werkzeug für den Zweck der Erstuntersuchung zu erhalten, wurde von uns der neuropsychologische Screeningtest (NST) entwickelt. Er ist eine hypothesengeleitete Form einer neuropsychologischen Eingangsuntersuchung in standardisierter und gescorter Form. Die Ergebnisse belegen, dass er ein brauchbares Werkzeug für Kliniker ist, um gezielt die Indikationen für weiterführende neuropsychologische Untersuchungen zu begründen. In einer prospektiven Studie mit 156 neurochirurgischen Patienten und 52 Kontrollpersonen wurden die Validität und die Reliabilität des NST untersucht. Der NST ist in der Lage, Patienten- und Kontrollgruppen mit hoher Signifikanz zu differenzieren. Er ist des Weiteren in der Lage, spezifische neuropsychologische Syndrome aufzudecken.In patients suffering from structural brain damage, one should definitely ask whether their exceptional behavior is a sign of a cognitive deficit and whether it is related to the trauma. Only specialized psychologists will ultimately be capable of giving valid answers to these questions. However, we have developed the Neuropsychological Screening Test (NST) with the aim of improving the management of such patients by incorporating basic cognitive diagnostic tools into the repertoire of clinicians. It was designed to support clinicians with a simple but reliable tool for the initial cognitive examination. It is a standardized and scored test. The results obtained so far with the test substantiate its value as a tool for clinicians to use in deciding whether specific diagnostic investigation and further therapy are indicated. A prospective study involving 156 neurosurgical patients and 52 control persons was performed to check the validity and reliability of the test battery. The NST achieved a highly significant differentiation between patients and controls and also detected specific cognitive syndromes.

Enthauptet und bewußtlos: Zustände der lebenden Maschine in der Psychologie um 1900

In einem klassisch gewordenen Aufsatz uber das Verhaltnis von »Maschine und Organismus« hat sich Georges Canguilhem mit der Rolle von technischen Metaphern und Modellen in den Lebenswissenschaften befast (Canguilhem 1952). Seit Descartes hat man, so fuhrt Canguilhem aus, immer wieder versucht, Organismen mit Hilfe mechanischer Modelle zu erklaren. In La Mettries L’homme machine habe die Maschinentheorie des Lebens umfassenden Ausdruck gefunden. Neueren Datums sei hingegen der Versuch, biologische Metaphern zu verwenden, um die Entwicklung technischer Realitaten zu beschreiben. Erst die Anthropologie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts habe begonnen, das Theorem der Organprojektion auszuarbeiten, und detaillierte Analogien von inneren und auseren Werkzeugen finden sich, so Canguilhem, erst neuerdings in der Ethnologie und, vor allem, in der vitalistischen Philosophie.