This book reconstructs the emergence of the phenomenon of "lost time" by engaging with two of the most significant time experts of the nineteenth century: the German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz and the French writer Marcel Proust. Its starting point is the archival discovery of curve images that Helmholtz produced in the context of pathbreaking experiments on the temporality of the nervous system in 1851. With a "frog drawing machine," Helmholtz established the temporal gap between stimulus and response that has remained a core issue in debates between neuroscientists and philosophers. When naming the recorded phenomena, Helmholtz introduced the term temps perdu, or lost time. Proust had excellent contacts with the biomedical world of late-nineteenth-century Paris, and he was familiar with this term and physiological tracing technologies behind it. Drawing on the machine philosophy of Deleuze, Schmidgen highlights the resemblance between the machinic assemblages and rhizomatic networks within which Helmholtz and Proust pursued their respective projects.
...MoreReview Laura Otis (2016) Review of "The Helmholtz Curves: Tracing Lost Time". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 191-192).
Similar Citations
Article
Henning Schmidgen;
(2015)
Leviathan and the Myograph: Hermann Helmholtz's “Second Note” on the Propagation Speed of Nervous Stimulations
(/isis/citation/CBB627949969/)
Book
Hagner, Michael;
(1999)
Ecce Cortex: Beiträge zur Geschichte des modernen Gehirns
(/isis/citation/CBB000110603/)
Article
Chátal, Alexandr;
(2014)
Jiří Procháska (1749--1820): Part 2: “De structura nervorum”---Studies on a Structure of the Nervous System
(/isis/citation/CBB001551842/)
Article
Finger, Stanley;
Wade, Nicholas J.;
(2002)
The Neuroscience of Helmholtz and the Theories of Johannes Müller, Part 1: Nerve Cell Structure, Vitalism, and the Nerve Impulse
(/isis/citation/CBB000202036/)
Book
Schmidgen, Henning;
(2009)
Die Helmholtz-Kurven: Auf der Spur der verlorenen Zeit
(/isis/citation/CBB001220074/)
Article
De Leo, A.;
(2008)
Enrico Sereni: Research on the Nervous System of Cephalopods
(/isis/citation/CBB000831387/)
Book
John J. Stuhr;
(2022)
No Professor's Lectures Can Save Us: William James's Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and Pluralism
(/isis/citation/CBB512993699/)
Thesis
McDonald, Patrick Joseph;
(2001)
Epistemology of Experiment and the Physiological Acoustics of Hermann von Helmholtz
(/isis/citation/CBB001560590/)
Article
Bock, Ortwin;
(2013)
Cajal, Golgi, Nansen, Schäfer and the Neuron Doctrine
(/isis/citation/CBB001213638/)
Article
Wübben, Yvonne;
Vöhringer, Margarete;
(2009)
Reflexe in Hirnforschung, Kunst und Technik. Einleitende Bemerkungen
(/isis/citation/CBB000932088/)
Article
Gelfand, Toby;
(2000)
Jules Soury, Le Système Nerveux Central (Paris, 1899)
(/isis/citation/CBB000111776/)
Thesis
Guenther, Katja;
(2009)
A Body Made of Nerves---Reflexes, Body Maps and the Limits of the Self in Modern German Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001561087/)
Article
Lazar, J. Wayne;
(2015)
A Contextual Analysis of Nervous Force in Medico-Scientific and Literary Writings in English of the Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001551881/)
Article
Lazar, J. Wayne;
(2008)
An American Controversy about the Localization of Cutaneous Sensory Regions and their Relation to Motor Regions
(/isis/citation/CBB000930685/)
Article
Ueda, Risa;
Sugiyama, Shigeo;
(2003)
“Nerve Impulse” in the 19th Century---Its Nature and the Method of Research
(/isis/citation/CBB000600614/)
Book
Fedi, Laurent;
Salanskis, Jean-Michel;
(2001)
Les philosophies françaises et la science: dialogue avec Kant
(/isis/citation/CBB000774827/)
Article
Antonello La Vergata;
(2019)
Food, Nerves, and Fertility. Variations on the Moral Economy of the Body, 1700–1920
(/isis/citation/CBB469967440/)
Article
Otis, Laura;
(2002)
The Metaphoric Circuit: Organic and Technological Communication in the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000300931/)
Article
Berkowitz, Carin;
(2006)
Disputed Discovery: Vivisection and Experiment in the 19th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000771702/)
Book
Salisbury, Laura;
Shail, Andrew;
(2010)
Neurology and Modernity: A Cultural History of Nervous Systems, 1800--1950
(/isis/citation/CBB001034355/)
Be the first to comment!