Michel Meulders: Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience (2001/2010)

“Although Hermann von Helmholtz was one of most remarkable figures of nineteenth-century science, he is little known outside his native Germany. Helmholtz (1821-1894) made significant contributions to the study of vision and perception and was also influential in the painting, music, and literature of the time; one of his major works analyzed tone in music. This book, the first in English to describe Helmholtz’s life and work in detail, describes his scientific studies, analyzes them in the context of the science and philosophy of the period—in particular the German Naturphilosophie—and gauges his influence on today’s neuroscience.

Helmholtz, trained by Johannes Müller, one of the best physiologists of his time, used a resolutely materialistic and empirical scientific method in his research. This puts him in the tradition of Kant and the English empirical philosophers and directly opposed to the idealists and naturalists who interpreted nature based on metaphysical presuppositions. Helmholtz’s research on color vision put him at odds with Goethe’s more romantic theorizing on the subject; but at the end of his life, Helmholtz honored Goethe’s contributions, acknowledging that artistic intuition could reveal truths about the human mind that are inaccessible to science.

Helmholtz’s work, eclipsed at the beginning of the twentieth century by new ideas in neurophysiology, has recently been rediscovered. We can now recognize in Helmholtz’s methods–which were based on his belief in the interconnectedness of physiology and psychology–the origins of neuroscience.”

Originally published as Helmholtz: Des lumières aux neurosciences, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2001

Translated and edited by Laurence Garey
Publisher MIT Press, 2010
ISBN 0262014483, 9780262014489
235 pages

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Myron Sharaf: Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich (1983)

In this book, Myron Sharaf explodes the myths that have collected around the name “Wilhelm Reich”–the psychoanalytic myth of the early brilliant Reich, and the later insane Reich of orgone energy; the Marxist myth of the radical Reich, and the conservative myth of the Republican Reich. Sharaf’s Reich is profoundly human: complex and contradictory, a generous, loving person capable of extraordinary bursts of bizarre ideas and impassioned cruelty. Of particular interest are the illuminations of the relationship between Reich’s childhood traumas and his major concepts; and the pivotal personal and scientific significance of Freud for Wilhelm Reich.

In 1944, Sharaf met Reich and for the next decade, as student, patient, and coworker, kept careful notes toward the eventual preparation of this biography. He has interviewed Reich’s colleagues, family, friends and enemies, and gathered important papers. From these many sources he has discovered significant unpublished connections between Reich’s personality, his social-intellectual milieu, and his work.

Publisher St Martin’s Press, New York, 1983.
ISBN 0312313705
550 pages

Reich at Wikipedia

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Urs Stäheli: Spectacular Speculation: Thrills, the Economy, and Popular Discourse (2007/2013)

Spectacular Speculation is a history and sociological analysis of the semantics of speculation from 1870 to 1930, when speculation began to assume enormous importance in popular culture. Informed by the work of Luhmann, Foucault, Simmel and Deleuze, it looks at how speculation was translated into popular knowledge and charts the discursive struggles of making speculation a legitimate economic practice. Noting that the vocabulary available to discuss the concept was not properly economic, the book reveals the underside of putting it into words. Speculation’s success depended upon non-economic language and morally questionable thrills: a proximity to the wasteful practice of gambling or other “degenerate” behaviors, the experience of financial markets as seductive, or out of control. American discourses of speculation take center stage, and the book covers an unusual range of material, including stock exchange guidebooks, ticker tape, moral treatises, plays, advertisements, and newspapers.

Originally published in German as Spektakuläre Spekulation: Das Populäre der Ökonomie, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2007
Translated by Eric Savoth
Publisher Stanford University Press, 2013
ISBN 0804788251, 9780804788250
312 pages

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