DOCSLIB.ORG

The Gottingen School and the Development of Transcendental Naturphilosophie in the Romantic Era 'F

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Gottingen School and the Development of Transcendental Naturphilosophie in the Romantic Era 'F t 4 The Gottingen School and the Development of Transcendental Naturphilosophie in the Romantic Era 'f Tim0 thy L en0 ir * A problem, tantalizing in its possible implications, that has persistently thwarted the efforts of historians is the relationship between empirical science and the speculative movement in philosophy and literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century, known as Naturphilosophie. While some scholars have regarded Naturphilosophie as a skeleton in the closet of nineteenth-century science,' others have indicated that it may have had a positive influence on several major discoveries.' There have been severe difficulties in interpreting the substantive contribution of Naturphilosophie to the development of science, however. One central difficulty in explaining how naturphilosophic systems were able to reign supreme in the German scientific community from 1800 to 1830 lies, of course, in deciphering the actual scientific content of the philosophies of nature proposed by the likes of Schelling, Oken, Hegel, and Carus, and the extent to which they incorpor- ated a careful consideration of the contemporary scientific literature. The verdict on this issue has by no means been unambiguous: Some investigators have argued that in their disdain for empirical research the Naturphilosophen I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor William Coleman for extended discussion of the problems treated in this paper and to Professor Reinhard Low of the Ludwig- Maximilians-Universitat Munchen for many hours of patient discussion of Kant's theory of teleology and its significance for the life sciences in the Romantic era. Research support from the National Science Foundation is also gratefully acknowledged. *Department of History, University of Arizona. Copyright 0 1981 by The Johns Hop- kins University Press. 111 112 Timothy Lenoir were attempting to return science to a simpler age.3 Others have argued that the heart and soul of Naturphilosophie lay in empirical research. Those who defend this latter interpretation-an interpretation that is in rapid ascendance in the literature-point out that while Romantics such as Novalis, who had been trained in the sciences at the Bergakademie in Frieberg under Werner, demonstrated a strong scientific bent, other Naturphilosophen such as Goethe, Ritter, Oken, and Carus conducted extensive empirical researches themselves." The potential sources of confusion in assessing this issue emerge clearly in the work of Hegel; for while he defended a conception of matter based on the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, it is clear that he was deeply immersed in the chemical literature of the day and that he understood it Another problem in assessing the relationship of Naturphilosophie to science is rooted in the fact that no single system of natural philosophy is characteristic of the entire Romantic period. From its first appearance and throughout its stormy career, for instance, the Naturphilosophie of Schelling and his school was severely criticized.6 When we turn to the writings of these critics, however, we discover many of the same conceptual elements and almost invariably refer to the same empirical data.7 Concern is quite naturally generated about identifying the real substance of the issues being debated. Rather than a single systematic approach to nature, it seems more appropriate to regard the science of this era as having been formed from a common fund of scientific concepts and methods, metaphysical predispositions and episte- mological concerns which received differing emphases in the various approaches to natural philosophy of the period. In order to assess the bases for these different styles of Naturphilosophie consideration will have to be given to the role not only of substantive philosophical and scientific issues but of personal factors as well. But a full understanding of these complex issues may ultimately await the exploration of broadly based trends in the popular culture of the period as well as the roles of social and political movements in shaping preferences for organizing and interpreting this common fund of concepts. A better understanding of this period has resulted from recent progress in dispelling the myth of a monolithic Romantic science, and in laying bare the outlines of different traditions of natural philosophy practiced in Germany between 1790 and 1830. This has been achieved chiefly through the efforts of Reinhard Low, H. A. M. Snelders, and Dietrich von Englehardt. Von Englehardt has argued that three different traditions characterize the science of the Romantic era. One tradition, which he identifies as Kantian, is transcendental Naturphil- osophie. In the spirit of Kant's critical writings this tradition views the role of philosophy as examining the logical and epistemological foundations of Development uf Transcendental Naturphilosophie 113 science by establishing the subjective contribution to experience, the a priori forms in terms of which empirical judgments are constituted, and the constraints on reason in constructing an interpretation of nature. The object of transcendental Naturphilosophie was not to explicate the proper method for abstracting lawlike generalizations from nature as given in experience. Rather, it aimed at “determining the a priori conditions for the possibility of experience, which is to provide the source from which general laws of nature are to be deduced.”8 Characteristic of this program is Kant’s deter- mination of the concept of matter in his Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Natunvissenschaft. There, applying the categorical theory of his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant argued that the concept of matter that must underlie mechanics cannot employ irreducible atoms but rather must invoke a dynam- ic interaction of attractive and repulsive forces emanating from nonmaterial points. This dynamic theory of matter, which had been proposed by Boscovich, became one of the central organizing concepts representative of the Kantian tradition of Naturphilosophie, and it was especially significant for the view of organic nature. A second tradition of Naturphilosophie removed the boundaries of possible a priori knowledge of nature considered legitimate by transcendental Natur- philosophie. This second tradition is linked most closely with Schelling and is termed speculative or romantic Naturphilosophie by von Engelhardt. Accord- ing to the speculative Romantics nature is a fundamental unity of matter, process, and spirit. The object of the philosophy of nature, according to this approach, is to construct the entire material system of nature from a single all-embracing unity, to establish the unfolding of the inorganic, organic, and finally the social and moral realms as the final objectification of potencies present in this original unity, which Schelling characterized alternately as the Weltseele, Gott or the Absolut. Characteristic of speculative thought is its claim that the dichotomy between empirical knowledge claims and the world of things in themselves crucial to Kantian or transcendental Natur- philosophie can be overcome in the act of “intellectual intuition,” an empiri- cal intuition in which the logical structure of appearances is also manifest. Also characteristic of this approach is its reliance upon polarity as the motive agent in the process of differentiating and objectifying the primitive unity at the basis of nature. Equally characteristic is the notion that the plant and animal kingdoms are each constituted from the metamorphosis of a funda- mental unitary type, or Urtyp, and accordingly that organic nature can be perceived as a chain of beings. Perhaps most characteristic of speculative Naturphilosophie is the view that since nature is the manifestation of spirit, man must stand at the top of the chain of being. Although it was not always clearly distinguished during the Romantic era, there was a third tradition of Naturphilosophie. This type, which von 114 Timothy Lenoir Engelhardt calls metaphysical Naturphilosophie, was closely allied to the romantic or speculative tradition. Hegel, who was the main theoreticiaa of this line of thought, in fact regarded the position developed by the young Schelling in his Ideen zu einer Naturphilosophie (1797) and in his Von der Weltseele (1798) as in fundamental agreement with the main lines of meta- physical Naturphilosophie; but there were certain tendencies in Schelling’s thought that had been developed in an absurdly unphilosophical manner, with little knowledge of or concern for the empirical content of the sciences, by some of Schelling’s most ardent followers, particularly Windischmann, Gorres, and Steffens. In 1806 the differences in their outlooks led to a split between Hegel and Schelling. Principally, Hegel objected to the presence of mystical and irrational elements in Schelling’s system, the so-called philoso- phy of identity. Moreover Schelling’s attempt to deduce the material world completely from the self-activity of the Ego in terms of purely formal princi- ples such as polarity, potential, and analogy, was objectionable in Hegel’s view. Naturphilosophie could not possibly deduce the genesis of natural forms; its sole task consisted in bringing to the fore the logical structure of the system of nature and for that Naturphilosophie had to begin with the material provided by the sciences: “not only must philosophy be in accord with experience, the origin and development of scientific philosophy neces- sarily presupposes and is conditioned by empirical
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Scholarship@Western Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 9-23-2015 12:00 AM Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought Ben Woodard The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Tilottama Rajan The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Joan Steigerwald The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Ben Woodard 2015 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the History of Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Woodard, Ben, "Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought" (2015). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 3314. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3314 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought (Thesis Format: Monograph) by Benjamin Graham Woodard A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in Theory and Criticism The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Ben Woodard 2015 Abstract: This dissertation examines F.W.J. von Schelling's Philosophy of Nature (or Naturphilosophie) as a form of early, and transcendentally expansive, naturalism that is, simultaneously, a naturalized transcendentalism.
    [Show full text]
  • Walter Dominic Wetzels Professor Emeritus
    Walter Dominic Wetzels Professor emeritus Ph.D., German Literature, Princeton University Career Highlights Research Focus: Eighteenth-century literature; German literature and science; the literature which popularized science, with particular emphasis on the eighteenth century Education 1965-1968 PhD, German Literature, Princeton University 1964-1965 German Literature, University of Cologne 1949-1954 University of Cologne; Staatsexamen in mathematics and physics Employment 1996- Professor emeritus, Dept. of Germanic Languages, U of Texas at Austin 1984-1996 Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin 1973-1984 Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin 1968-1973 Assistant Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin Awards Spring 1989 University of Texas Faculty Research Assignment Fall 1988 University of Texas Presidential Leave Publications: Books (Edited with Leonard Schulze) Literature and History. Lanham, New York, London: University Press of America, 1983 Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Physik im WIrkungsfeld der deutschen Romantik. Quellen und Forschungen, N.F., 59. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973. (Edited with and introduction) Myth and Reason. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973 Publications: Articles "Physics for the Ladies: Early Literary Voices and Strategies For and Against the Popularization of Copernicus and Newton." In: Themes and Structures: Studies in German Literature from Goethe to the Present. Ed. Alexander Stephan. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997: 21-38 "Newton for the Ladies: Algarotti's Popularization of Newton's Optics." Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 304. Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1992: 1152-55 "Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Romantic Physics in Germany." Romanticism and the Sciences, ed. A Cunningham and N. Jardino. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
    [Show full text]
  • Bringing Nature to Light: Schellingâ•Žs Naturphilosophie in the Early
    Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications Philosophy, Department of 1-1-2013 Bringing Nature to Light: Schelling’s Naturphilosophie in the Early System of Identity Michael Vater Marquette University, [email protected] Published version. Analecta Hermeneutica, Vol. 5 (2013). Permalink. © 2013 International Institute for Hermeneutics. Used with permission. ISSN 1918-7351 Volume 5 (2013) Bringing Nature to Light: Schelling’s Naturphilosophie in the Early System of Identity Michael Vater Light is already a completely ideal activity that deconstructs and reconstructs objects just as the light of idealism always does— and so Naturphilosophie provides a physical explanation of idealism, which proves that at the boundaries of nature there must break forth the intelligence we see break forth in the guise of humanity [Person des Menschen]. Schelling, General Deduction of Dynamic Process, § 631 In November of 1800 the issue of the reality of nature and its meaning for a transcendental philosophy interrupts, or rather heats up, the exchange of letters between Fichte in Berlin and Schelling in Jena. Fichte has faint praise for the latter‟s System of Transcendental Idealism and marks as problematic the way it sets nature alongside of consciousness as the subject of a genetic deduction. For transcendental philosophy, he insists, nature can only be something found, finished, perfect because lawful, but whose lawfulness is not its own, but that of the intelligence which beholds and explains.2 Schelling responds with a long recital of his philosophical development and poses several alternative ways that philosophy of nature might coincide with Wissenschaftslehre, the most radical of which suggests that philosophy of consciousness must be based on natural philosophy, not the reverse.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction: Towards a Reconsideration of Neo-Kantianism Nicolas De Warren and Andrea Staiti
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-03257-6 - New Approaches to Neo-Kantianism Edited by Nicolas De Warren and Andrea Staiti Excerpt More information Introduction: towards a reconsideration of Neo-Kantianism Nicolas de Warren and Andrea Staiti In the summer of 1914, T. S. Eliot arrived in Marburg from Harvard University to attend a summer course in philosophy before taking up residency at Merton College, Oxford, for a year of study with Harold Joachim, F. H. Bradley’s successor. At the University of Marburg, Eliot met Paul Natorp, who assisted him in finding affordable accommodation and lectured in his course on philosophy. The outbreak of the First World War would cut short Eliot’s stay in Marburg, but not before he had the chance to sketch a portrait of the venerable Neo-Kantian Professor. Natorp strikes a professorial pose, one arm tucked behind his back, the other slung across his waist. With elven ears and bald cranium, the philosopher appears endearing in his otherworldliness. Natorp’s face is hidden behind oval glasses, so large that they seem to constitute a hindrance rather than an aid to seeing reality. Eliot’s sketch can be seen as a visual epitome for how Neo-Kantianism appeared to a younger generation of intellectuals and philosophers who would come of age in the aftermath of a Europe laid waste through the cataclysm of the Great War. Eliot’s amusing sketch is an apt illustration for what Hans-Georg Gadamer, who wrote his PhD dissertation on Plato under Natorp in 1922, characterized as the Neo-Kantian “calm and 1 confident aloofness” engrossed in “complacent system-building.” With slightly more bite, Hannah Arendt charged Neo-Kantianism with drown- ing philosophy “in a sea of boredom,” thereby offering a softer version of the same hostility that spirited Martin Heidegger’s confrontation with 2 Ernst Cassirer at Davos in 1929.
    [Show full text]
  • Volta, the German Controversy on Physics and Naturphilosophie and His Relations with Johann Wilhelm Ritter
    Andreas Kleinert Volta, the German Controversy on Physics and Naturphilosophie and his Relations with Johann Wilhelm Ritter A characteristic of German science around 1800 is the violent debate about concepts and methods between the supporters and opponents of a certain philosophy of nature that is generally designed by the German term of Naturphilosophie.1 In the early nineteenth century, physicists who were arguing in the spirit of Naturphilosophie were defined as a community of people that could be sharply distinguished from the “normal” or traditional physicists. This was especially the standpoint of observers from outside Germany.2 But also German physicists spoke of “so-called philosophers of nature who declared that dualism is the principle of order everywhere in physics and chemistry”.3 The philosopher Friedrich Wilhem Schelling, who had given the term of “spekulative Physik”4 to the kind of science by which he wanted to overcome traditional experimental physics and chemistry, is often considered as the ideological forerunner of this group of scientists. Another way of dividing German physicists into different camps was the distinction between “Atomisten” and “Dynamisten”, atomists believing in the existence of matter, including imponderable matter, and dynamists believing only in 1 For more details, see the article of von Engelhardt in this volume. With regard to physics, see CANEVA (1997). 2 See OERSTED (1813). On p. XIV, the translator apologises for translating such an eccentric essay into French and mentions that Naturphilosophie was widely considered as having a detrimental influence on empirical sciences. (“Depuis peu on a fait aux Allemands le reproche très-grave de vouloir porter dans les sciences les spéculations, et pour ainsi dire les rêves d’une imagination exaltée.
    [Show full text]
  • Neo-Kantian Foundations of Geometry in the German
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Historia Mathematics 10 (1983) 184-201 NEO-KANTIANFOUNDATIONS OFGEOMETRY IN THE GERMANROMANTIC PERIOD BY FREDERICK GREGORY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, GAINESVILLE, FL 32611 SUMMARIES While mathematics received relatively little atten- tion in the idealistic systems of most of the German Romantics, it served as the foundation in the thought of the Neo-Kantian philosopher/mathematician Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843). It fell to Fries to work out in detail the implications of Kant's declaration that all mathematical knowledge was synthetic a priori. In the process Fries called for a new science of the philosophy of mathematics, which he worked out in greatest detail in his Mathematische Naturphilosophie of 1822. In this work he analyzed the foundations of geometry with an eye to clearing up the historical controversy over Euclid's theory of parallels. CO&l- trary to what might be expected, Fries' Kantian per- spective provoked rather than inhibited a reexamination of Euclid's axioms. Fries' attempt to make explicit through axioms what was being implicitLy assumed by Euclid while at the same time wishing to eliminate unnecessary axioms belies the claim that there was no concern to improve Euclid prior to the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. Fries' work therefore serves as an important historical example of the difficulties facing those who wanted to provide geometry with a logically secure foundation in the era prior to the published work of Gauss, Bolyai, and others. Die Mathematik erhielt wenig Aufmerksamkeit in den philosophisch-idealistischen Systemen der meisten deutschen Romantiker.
    [Show full text]
  • 210 the Genesis of Neo-Kantianism
    SYNTHESIS PHILOSOPHICA Book Reviews / Buchbesprechungen 61 (1/2016) pp. (207–220) 210 doi: 10.21464/sp31116 of his book is that the movement’s origins are to be found already in the 1790s, in the Frederick Charles Beiser works of Jakob Friedrich Fries, Johann Frie- drich Herbart, and Friedrich Eduard Beneke. They constitute “the lost tradition” which pre- The Genesis of served the “empiricist-psychological” side of Neo-Kantianism Kant’s thought, his dualisms, and things-in- themselves against the excessive speculative idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel who Oxford University Press, tried to rehabilitate the dogmatic rationalist Oxford 2014 metaphysics of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff after Kant’s critical project. Frederick Charles Beiser, professor of phi- The first chapter of the first part (pp. 23–88) losophy at Syracuse University (USA) whose is concerned with the philosophy of Fries field of expertise is the modern German phi- who tried to base philosophy on empirical losophy, is one of the most erudite historians psychology, and epistemology on psychol- of philosophy today. His first book The Fate ogy which could recognize the synthetic a of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant priori but not prove it. His book Reinhold, to Fichte (1987) didn’t only present a fresh Fichte und Schelling (1803) saw the history account of German philosophy at the end of of philosophy after Kant as the “struggle of th the 18 century, but it also introduced a new rationalism to free itself from the limits of method of historical research. His more re- the critique”. In his political philosophy Fries cent works, starting with The German His- was an anti-Semite, but gave the leading role toricist Tradition (2011) until the most recent to public opinion which could correct even Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philoso- the ruler, although he encountered problems phy, 1860–1900 (2016), have focused on the in trying to reconcile his liberal views with th main currents of the 19 century German the social injustice that liberalism created.
    [Show full text]
  • Schelling's Naturphilosophie. in So Doing He Became One of the Most
    Book Reviews to one on 'Feedback theory and its application to biological systems' by K. E. Machin (1924- ), which appeared in 1964. The texts that were in English originally are reprinted in facsimile and are taken from journals or books; nine are translated from French (8) or German (1). They are grouped into, 'The power of the body to destroy heat', 'Le milieu interieur', 'Homeostasis', and 'Closing the feedback loop'. Each of these sections is introduced by the editor, the total material amounting to only ten pages, and much of it being devoted to biographical notes. The selection is good and will provide the student with a ready source of landmark papers, a similar collection never having been made before. However, the paucity of explanatory and introductory material limits the usefulness of the book. If the way through it is led by an instructor this will not be needed, providing the teacher is aware of the history of homeostasis. On his own the student will have difficulties, but in view of the price he is unlikely in any case to possess his own copy. There is no reference to the extensive secondary literature on the history of this vital biological principle, or on the individuals whose work is represented here. These, and suggestions for further reading, may have stimulated the reader to peer further into the history of physiology. Perhaps the editor's deficiencies in the history of medicine are re- sponsible. They are certainly responsible for John Hunter being classed as an English- man (p. 4), for the inadequacy of the biographical sketches, and for naivety con- cerning the long-s (p.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century and German Aesthetics
    10 Goethe’s Exploratory Idealism Mattias Pirholt “One has to always experiment with ideas.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg “Everything that exists is an analogue to all existing things.” Johann Wolfgang Goethe Johann Wolfgang Goethe made his famous Italian journey in the late 1780s, approaching his forties, and it was nothing short of life-c hanging. Soon after his arrival in Rome on November 1, 1786, he writes to his mother that he would return “as a new man”1; in the retroactive account of the journey in Italienische Reise, he famously describes his entrance into Rome “as my second natal day, a true rebirth.”2 Latter- day crit- ics essentially confirm Goethe’s reflections, describing the journey and its outcome as “Goethe’s aesthetic catharsis” (Dieter Borchmeyer), “the artist’s self-d iscovery” (Theo Buck), and a “Renaissance of Goethe’s po- etic genius” (Jane Brown).3 Following a decade of frustrating unproduc- tivity, the Italian sojourn unleashed previously unseen creative powers which would deeply affect Goethe’s life and work over the decades to come. Borchmeyer argues that Goethe’s “new existence in Weimar bore an essentially different signature than his pre- Italian one.”4 With this, Borchmeyer refers to a particular brand of neoclassicism known as Wei- mar classicism, Weimarer Klassik, which is less an epochal term, seeing as it covers only a little more than a decade, than a reference to what Gerhard Schulz and Sabine Doering matter-o f- factly call “an episode in the creative history of a group of German writers around 1800.”5 Equally important as the aesthetic reorientation, however, was Goethe’s new- found interest in science, which was also a direct conse- quence of his encounter with the Italian nature.
    [Show full text]
  • The Limit of Logicism in Epistemology: a Critique of the Marburg and Freiburg Schools” ______
    Journal of World Philosophies Articles/1 Translation of Tanabe Hajime’s “The Limit of Logicism in Epistemology: A Critique of the Marburg and Freiburg Schools” _____________________________________ TAKESHI MORISATO Université libre de Bruxelles ([email protected]) This article provides the first English translation of Tanabe’s early essay, “The Limit of Logicism in Epistemology: A Critique of the Marburg and Freiburg Schools” (1914). The key notion that the young Tanabe seeks to define in relation to his detailed analyses of contemporary Neo-Kantian epistemology is the notion of “pure experience” presented in Nishida’s philosophy. The general theory of epistemology shared among the thinkers from these two prominent schools of philosophy in early 20th century Germany aimed to eliminate the empirical residues in Kant’s theory of knowledge while opposing naïve empiricism and the uncritical methodology of positive science. Their “logicistic” approach, according to Tanabe, seems to contradict Nishida’s notion of pure experience, for it cannot allow any vestige of empiricism in its systematic framework, which is specifically designed to ground scientific knowledge. Yet given that the Neo-Kantian configuration of epistemology does not create the object of knowledge, it must face sensation or representational content as its limiting instance. Thus, to ground a Neo-Kantian theory of knowledge while taking account of this limit of logicism involves explaining their understanding of the unity of subject and object in human knowing. For this,
    [Show full text]
  • Johann Wilhelm Ritter and Ernest Rutherford Michael W
    Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core Microscopy Pioneers Pioneers in Optics: Johann Wilhelm Ritter and Ernest Rutherford Michael W. Davidson . IP address: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306 [email protected] 170.106.35.234 Johann Wilhelm Ritter beyond the violet. Ritter initially referred to the new type of , on (1776–1810) radiation as chemical rays, but the title of ultraviolet radiation 30 Sep 2021 at 19:10:55 Johann Wilhelm Ritter was a somewhat controversial eventually became the preferred term. scientist best known for his discovery of ultraviolet radiation. Despite his significant scientific achievements and his He was born on December 16, 1776, in Samitz, Germany, an acceptance into the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Ritter area that is now part of Poland. Apprenticed to an apothecary was not well received by his contemporaries. His writing in Leignitz at the age of fourteen, Ritter developed an acute was considered oblique and confusing, and he often delayed interest in chemistry that carried over into other scientific explaining his experiments in detail. Some believed Ritter , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at fields. When he inherited a sum of made claims that he could not support and deemed him an money five years later, he was able unreliable source of information. His interest and studies of to leave his position and decided occult phenomena further damaged his reputation as a serious to enroll at the University of Jena. scientist. Jaded by his lack of credit and plagued by financial There he studied medicine, staying difficulties, Ritter suffered a premature death at the age of on in a teaching position after thirty-three and did not receive proper recognition for his his graduation, until the duke of scientific exploits until more than a century later.
    [Show full text]
  • Electrolysis of Water - Wikipedia 1 of 15
    Electrolysis of water - Wikipedia 1 of 15 Electrolysis of water Electrolysis of water is the decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen gas due to the passage of an electric current. This technique can be used to make hydrogen gas, a main component of hydrogen fuel, and breathable oxygen gas, or can mix the two into oxyhydrogen, which is also usable as fuel, though more volatile and dangerous. It is also called water splitting. It ideally requires a potential difference of 1.23 volts to split water. Simple setup for demonstration of Contents electrolysis of water at home History Principle Equations Thermodynamics Electrolyte selection Electrolyte for water electrolysis Pure water electrolysis Techniques Fundamental demonstration Hofmann voltameter Industrial High-pressure High-temperature An AA battery in a glass of tap water Alkaline water with salt showing hydrogen Polymer electrolyte membrane produced at the negative terminal Nickel/iron Nanogap electrochemical cells Applications Efficiency Industrial output Overpotential Thermodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water Electrolysis of water - Wikipedia 2 of 15 See also References External links History Jan Rudolph Deiman and Adriaan Paets van Troostwijk used, in 1789, an electrostatic machine to make electricity which was discharged on gold electrodes in a Leyden jar with water.[1] In 1800 Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile, and a few weeks later the English scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used it for the electrolysis of water. In 1806
    [Show full text]