HELMHOLTZ, HERMANN.

Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik. Bearbeitet. Mit 213 in den text eingedruckten Holzschnitten und 11 Tafeln.

Leipzig, Leopold Voss, 1867.

Lex8vo. Contemporary hcloth. Some cracks along hinges neathly repaired. A stamp on titlepage and last page. XIV,874,(1) pp., 213 textillustr. in woodcut and 11 folded plates. Plate 1 with a faint dampstain, otherwise clean and fine. The copy also having the series-title: "Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Physik...Hrsg. von Gustav Karsten. IX. Band. Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik."

First edition of a main work by the "Patriarch of German Science". It is "Considered the most importent book on the physiology and physics on vision." (Horblit, 100 Books famous in Science). It incorporates Helmholtz's studies on physiological Optics, starting in the year 1851, the year in which he published his invention of the ophthalmoscope. - "When Helholtz abandoned physiology for physics in 1871, the former science, he complained, had already grown too complex for any individual to embrace in its entirety. At his death in 1894, that complexity had become true of virtually all fields, Helmholtz was the last scholar whose work, in the tradition of Leibniz, embraced all the sciences, as well as philosophy and the fine arts." (R. Steven Turner in DSB). -"One of the greatest book on physiological optics" (Garrison & M., 1513). Helmholtz' contributions to science covers a wide range. "His work in physiological optics, which he embodies in a great, is of fundamental value" (Magie: A Source Book in Mathematics). In the authors introduction to the work,dated 1866, he states that it originally appeared in three parts, the first in 1856, the second in 1860 and the third in 1816, and incorporates his researches in his investigations on colours, the physiology of vision and the dioptrics of the eye. The first part contains besides the papers on physiological optics, that were published the years before, an admirable review of all previous work comprised under this heading, the book contains a store of new and most importent results, which provided a firm mathematical basis for the whole structure of physiological optics....In the first part he is principally concerned with the problem of of the refraction of the light-rays, or the dioptrics of the eye. Part II deals with the theory of visual sensation and treats in the first place of the various forms of stimulation of the optic nerve, and then of its excitation by light in particular, after which Helmholtz gives a connected development of the theories previously published by himself and others on simple and compound colours. Part III deals with the connections between the sensations and the external objects, that is with the the representations of objects by the perceptions caused by them, in other words, what kind of truth are we to describe to our ideas and perceptions ? (Based on Leo Koenigsberger: Hermann von Helmholtz).- Horblit No 49b - Garrison & M. No 1513. -

Order-nr.: 40620