|
|
In
1866, Gregor Mendel, in "Versuche über Pflantenhybriden,"
interpreted heredity in terms of a pairing of dominant and/or recessive
unit characters; that is, ones that could in practice be treated
as indivisible and independent particles. "What chiefly fascinated
Mendel...was the nature of heredity which the vigour of grafts showed
to be stronger than environment, that is, the stock on which they
had been grafted. He...began to produce hybrids, not to improve
the yields, but to follow the behavior of characters from generation
to generation" (Jacob 1970:202-203). [added
02/01/03] |
|
|
In
1866, Edmund Vulpian noted that curare interrupts the communication
between the nerve and the muscle fibers. |
|
|
In
1866, Haeckel, in Generelle Morphologie der Organismen,
challenged the plant/animal division of the living world, recognizing
that single-celled forms, the protists, did not fit into either
category, and must have arisen separately from plants and animals.
At the same time, he published his 'biogenetic law' wherein
ontogeny is erroneously said to recapitulate phylogeny. However,
in attempting to rationalize it, he invoked the mechanism of changes
in developmental timing, coining the word 'heterochrony.'
He also coined 'ecology,' 'ontogeny,' and 'phylogeny.'
The recapitulation theory of development was widely held at the
time, and earlier by Goethe, Johann Gottfried von Herder,
and biologists associated with naturphilosophie. Haeckel's
version of Darwinism persisted, e.g., in the ideas of the socialist
Karl Kautsky, August Weismann, Freud, Carl Gustave
Jung, and the Hitlerite Monist League (Gould 1977:115-116).
Haeckel also published misleading illustrations in support of his
theory. |
|
|
In
1866, Max Schultze discovered two sorts of 'receptors'
in the retina. |
|
|
In
1866, Alfred Nobel patented kiselguhr, or dynamite,
in Sweden. [added
02/01/03] |
|
|
In
1866, Huggins made the first spectroscopic observations of
a nova. |
|
|
In
1866, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli postulated that meteors
are debris from comets. |
| |
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|
In
1867, Theodor Meynert showed that the laminated form of the
cortex was due to the distribution in parallel layers of different
categories of neurons (Meynert 1867-1868) . |
|
|
In
1867, Helmholtz, in Handbuch de Physiologischen Optik,
Volume III, said that "disparate images from corresponding
retinal points enter the sensorium distinct and intact, and that
their union into a single image is an unconscious act of judgement
dependent on prior experience" (Turner 1976:248). |
|
|
In
1867, Fleeming Jenkin, in a review of Origin of Species,
pointed out that variation would be eliminated with an inheritance
which was a blend of the parents. Blending inheritance is
analogous to mixed paints. This criticism caused Darwin,
in subsequent editions, to resurrect Lamarck's theory
of acquired characters, which was not finally put aside until the
rediscovery of Mendel and unit characters in 1900. |
|
|
In
1867, Darwin, working on his theory of sexual selection and
failing to understand why caterpillars are often brightly adorned,
wrote Wallace, who explained his theory of warning coloration,
which today is proven. |
|
|
In
1867, Aleksander Onufriyevich Kovalevsky extended the germ
layer concept to invertibrates. |
|
|
In
1867, Wilhelm Griesinger published the second edition of
his psychiatric textbook in which he said that mental diseases are
brain diseases and that the onset of psychosis was experienced as
an intrusion of a 'thou' on the 'I,' or ego. |
|
|
In
1867, Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, maintained the value,
or exchange relation, of commodities is characterized by its alienation
from its use-value, and thus its value as the product of human labor,
which the capitalist treats as a variable and against which he accounts
his surplus. |
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In
1868, Josef Breuer and Ewald Hering, by occluding
the trachea at the end of inhaling or exhaling, demonstrated that
the lungs 'self-regulate' breathing, i.e., they contain
receptors that detect the degree to which they are stretched. These
receptors transmit signals to the brain via the vagus nerve which
initiates the opposite signal back to the lungs. This was one of
the first 'feedback' mechanisms demonstrated in mammals.
|
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In
1868, Ångström, in an atlas of the solar spectrum,
measured the wavelengths of over a thousand spectral lines in units
which came to be called an 'angstrom' in his honor. |
|
|
In
1868, Boltzmann, in "Studien über das Gleichgewicht
der lebendingen Kraft zwischen bewegten materiellen Punkten"
on thermal equilibrium, extended Maxwell's theory of
the distribution of energy among colliding molecules in equilibrium
in a conservative force field. By assuming a fixed amount
of energy divided among a finite number of molecules, i.e., all
combinations of energies are equally probable, the problem could
treated by combinatorial analysis. "The result was a
new exponential formula, now known as the 'Boltzman factor'
and basic to all modern calculations in statistical mechanics"
(Brush 1976:261). |
|
|
In
1868, Maxwell, in "On Governors," published a mathematical
analysis of governors, the first significant paper on feedback mechanisms. |
| |
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In
1869, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeléev and, independently,
Julius Lother Meyer formulated the 'Periodic law.'
Meyer showed that Newlands' 'Law of octaves'
only holds for the first two periods. He also evolved the
atomic volume curve which represented graphically the relation between
the atomic weights and the volumes of the elements, expressed by
dividing atomic weights by specific gravities. Mendeléev
placed the chemical elements in seven rows in an order where those
elements having similar chemical properties were aligned vertically.
He also left gaps in his table where he predicted elements would
be found, which, in due course, they were, removing any doubt as
to the validity of the periodic table. |
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In
1869, Eduard von Hartmann published Philosophie des Unbewussten,
in which the 'unbewussten',' or 'unconscious,'
included both Georg Frederick Hegel's 'idée' and
the 'will' of Schopenhauer and others. Modern
discussions of the unconscious are generally dated from this time. |
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In
1869, George M. Beard distinguished 'neurasthenia,'
a nervous disease of men, from hysteria, a women's disease,
as, in an earlier time, men's 'hypochondriasis' had
been distinguished from women's ' vapeurs.' Subforms
of neurasthenia came to be called phobias. |
|
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In
1869, Karoly Maria Benkert invented 'homosexuality'
as a behavioral category. |
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In
1869, Francis Galton, in Hereditary Genius, suggested
a genetic basis for intelligence. He established that the
science of heredity could be concerned with deviations measured
in statistical units. His discovery of the standard deviation
gave him the mathematical machinery to handle variability and to
treat population as a unit of explanation. |
|
|
In
1869, Ludwig Valentin Lorenz, as a result of his optical
research and his wave equation, developed an equation relating the
density of a body and its index of refraction and verified it in
the case of water. In 1878, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz,
independently, developed the same constant, now known as the Lorentz-Lorenz
formula. |
|
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In
1869, Elwin Bruno Christoffel, in "Ueber die Transformation
der homogen Differentalausdrücke zweiten Grades," introduced
an operation which transformed one quadratic differential form into
another, i.e., two types of curvature components. This was
a basic question arising from Riemann's geometry and
was later called 'covariant differentiation' by C. Gregorio
Ricci-Curbastro (Ehlers 1981:527-542). |
|
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In
1869, Georg Cantor published his proof of the apparent paradox
which stated says that an infinite class has the unique property
that the whole is no greater than some of its parts.
The proof involves acknowledgement that the class of integers is
infinite and countable and, then, establishing a one-to-one correspondence
between the class of integers and its subset, the class of even
numbers. This was the beginning of set theory. The first transfinite
number was created to describe the cardinality of countable infinite
classes. |
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|
In
1869, Charles Joseph Minard, in a graph showing Napoleon's
march to Moscow and back, set a new standard for such representations
plotting multivariate data: The size of the army, its location on
a two-dimensional surface, its direction, and the temperature on
various dates during the retreat. |
|
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In
1869, John Hyatt produced 'celluloid,' the first
synthetic plastic to be put into wide use. |
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In
1870, Gustave Fritsch and Edward Hitzig demonstrated
an inseparable link between electricity and cerebral function, but
did not show where the electricity was produced. |
|
|
In
1870, Camillo Golgi established that neurons in the brain
sent information to the motor nerves and received it from the sensory
nerves. He developed a silver impregnation method that allowed
microscopic visualization of the anatomy of the whole neuron. |
|
|
In
1870, Friedrich Goltz suggested that the semicircular canals
of the inner ear are the sense organs that detect the position of
the head relative to to the gravitational field. [added
02/01/03] |
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|
[The
demonstrations of the 1870s and 1880s that the internal processes
of cell division were fundamentally the same in plants and animals
magnified the cell as a universal unit of structure.] |
|
|
In
1870, William Kingdon Clifford, introducing the details of
non-Euclidean geometry to the English, raised the question of "variation
in the curvature of space," describing it as "analogous
to little hills on the surface [of the Earth] which is on average
flat," that "the ordinary laws of geometry are not valid
in them[, and] that this property of being curved or distorted is
continually being passed on from one portion of space to another
after the manner of a wave" (Clifford 1876:21-22). |
| |
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In
1871, St. George Mivart, in On the Genesis of Species,
claimed that, contrary to Darwin, species arise suddenly
with large-scale changes already intact: Inheritance by blending,
as Darwin proposed, meant that variation would have to be sustained
by an extremely high mutation rate. |
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In
1871, Darwin, in The Descent of Man, and Selection in
Relation to Sex, suggested that there was no sharp discontinuity
between the evolution of humans and animals, that "the difference
was one of degree and not of kind" (Darwin 1871:127), and that,
therefore, not only was the behavior of animals guided in part by
primitive reasoning processes, but human behavior must also be guided
in part by instincts, e.g., the "instinctive tendency to speak"
(ibid.:101). |
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In
1871, Johann Friedrich Miescher isolated a substance from
the nuclei of white blood cells which is soluble in alkalis but
not in acids. This substance came to be called 'nucleic acid.'
(Miescher 1871). |
|
|
In
1871, Maxwell, in Theory of Heat, proposed the idea
that an intelligent being, named by W. Thomson 'Maxwell's
Demon,' could by simple inspection of molecules (i.e., without
doing work) violate the second law. "The demon points
to...the problem of reconciling the irreversible increase in entropy
of the universe demanded by thermodynamics with the dynamical laws
governing the motion of molecules, which reversible with respect
to time" (Everitt 1976:227). Maxwell also introduced
the terms 'vector' and 'scalar potential.' |
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In
1871, Crookes, in the course of trying to weigh thallium,
created a vacuum "on the order of one millionth of an atmosphere
[which] made possible the discovery of X-rays and the electron"
(Brock 1976:475). |
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|
In
1871, Strutt, also known as Baron Rayleigh, propounded a
general law relating the intensity of light scattered from small
particles to its wavelength when the dimensions of the particles
are much less than the wavelength. He expressed this scattering
as a function of the inverse fourth power of the wavelength of the
incident light. |
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|
In
1872, John Thomas Gulick pointed out the inevitability of
divergence among isolated groups even without environmental difference. |
|
|
In
1872, Ludwig and Edward Pfünger showed that oxidation
occurs in tissues, not in the blood. |
|
|
In
1872, Boltzmann, in "Weitere Studien über das Wärmegleichgewicht
unter Gasmolekülen," argued that the second law of thermodynamics,
and the spontaneous increase in entropy which it predicts, can only
be understood in terms of large populations of particles, not individual
trajectories, the primitive object of classical physics. Influenced
by Darwin, he replaced the study of individuals "with
the study of populations, and showed that slight variations taking
place over a long period of time can generate evolution at a collective
level" (Prigogine 1996:20; Boltzmann 1905:193-197). Assuming
that all microscopic states of a system have the same probability,
he established that entropy was statistical; however, by the same
token he could not establish that long-term deviation from equilibrium
was not impossible, even though very improbable. He
proposed an equation which gives a mathematical description of a
state and how it is changing; i.e., if the Maxwellian E-function
(Boltzmann's H-function) is identical to entropy, then
the definition of entropy can be extended to nonequilibrium states. |
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In
1872, Christian Felix Klein outlined his synthesis of geometric
group transformations, in which he showed that there were three
types of geometry: the Bolyai-Lobachevsky type where
straight lines have two infinitely distant points, the Riemann
type where the points are imaginary, and Euclid's
type. The so-called 'Klein bottle,' with no inside,
came out of these studies. The best known of his transformations
is the so-called 'Klein four-group,' which was exploited
by the Structuralists after the second world war. |
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In
1872, Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind, in Stetigkeit und
die Irrationalzahlen, maintained that the essence of the continuity
of a line consists in the possibility of dividing that by a single
point, i.e., an irrational number, e.g., a fraction. This
division is known as a Schnitt, or 'Dedekind Cut.'
By putting the points into a one-to-one correspondence with the
rational numbers, a continuum can consist of rational numbers and
the fundamental theorems on limits can be proved rigorously.
Dedekind regarded arithmetic as a "natural consequence of the
simplest arithmetic act, that of counting" (Dedekind 1872:4).
The redefinition of number and limit as ordinal concepts make "calculus...not
a branch of the science of quantity, but of the logic of relations"
(Boyer 1949:294). |
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In
1872, Claude Monet painted "Impression: Sunrise," which has
been used to mark the beginning of Modern Art because it lent its
name to 'Impressionism.' This is a style concerned
with portraying variations in light and color brought on by hour
and season as deduced both from observation and optical principles.
On the other hand, his contemporary, Paul Cézanne simplified
forms to their basic geometric equivalents and was honored as their
master by early abstract painters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.
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In
1873, Anton Schneider described chromosomes during the process
of mitosis during cell division. |
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In
1873, Moritz Wagner emphasized the effects of different environments
on isolated groups of animals. |
|
|
In
1873 and 1874, Ernst Mach, Breuer, and Alexander Crum
Brown, each independently and each based on Goltz's
1870 suggestion, published the insight that the flow of endolymph
in the canals of the inner ear during motion stimulates the receptors
in the ampullae at the end of the canals. Crum Brown also pointed
out that the two canals received their stimuli from motions in opposite
directions. [added
02/01/03] |
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|
In
1873, Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism,
tried to finish off the notion of action-at-a-distance and wrote
a summary of his equations in terms of symmetry and vector structure.
This relational Lagrangian method enabled him to forego any mention
of mechanical aether, supposed by many physicists of the time to
be the fundamental electromagnetic substance. Maxwell perceived
that these equations had wave solutions and that electromagnetic
waves of all frequencies were generated by accelerating electric
charges and travelled at the same speed. Moreover, based on
his electromagnetic theory, he established that light exerts a radiation
pressure. This conclusion had many implications (Everitt 1976:212).
He also proposed that these waves could be generated in the laboratory
by creating an quickly oscillating current. |
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In
1873, Josiah Willard Gibbs, in "Graphical Methods in
the Thermodynamics of Fluids," gave the fundamental equation
for entropy, dU = TdS - PdV, where U is the internal
energy, T is the absolute temperature, S is entropy,
P is the pressure on the system, and V is its volume. |
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In
1873, Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau, in Statique expérimentale
et théorique des Liquides soumis aux seules Forces moléculaires,
showed experimentally that liquid surfaces always assume a curvature,
i.e., the smallest possible area, when there is no appreciable external
force, like gravity, exerted (Adam 1930:1). |
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In
1874, W. Betz extrapolated to the telencephalon the posterior-anterior
sensorimotor dichotomy that prevails along the nerve axis, from
the spinal cord to the brain. |
|
|
In
1874, S. Bodkin published his observation that, in patients
with leukemia, transcutaneous electrical stimulation of the enlarged
spleen led to reduction in size and an increase in leukocyte count.
|
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In
1874, Franz Brentano, in Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte,
maintained that mental processes should be treated as intentional
acts rather than passive processes. Among the auditors of
classes which he taught were Edmund Husserl, Thomas Masaryk, Franz
Kafka, Rudolf Steiner, and Freud. |
|
|
In
1874, Marie Alfred Cornu described a graphical curve, known
as the 'Cornu spiral,' for calculating light intensities
in Fresnel diffraction. |
|
|
In
1874, Strutt, in "The Kinetic Theory of the Dissipation
of Energy," pointed out the 'reversibility paradox'
occasioned by Boltzmann's H -function, i.e.,
the "apparent contradiction between...the reversibility of
individual collisions and the irreversibility predicted by the theorem
itself for a system of many molecules" (Brush 1976:263). |
|
|
In
1874, Boltzmann, in "Zur Theorie der elastischen Nachwirkung,"
introduced 'memory effects' into the relation between
stresses and strains of an elastic continuum, i.e., "the circumstance
in which a strain that occurred previously reduces the force required
to produce a strain of the same kind" (Boltzmann, quoted in
Cercignani 1998:161). This laid the foundations for 'hereditary
mechanics,' a term introduced by E. Picard in 1907. |
|
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In
1874, William Stanley Jevons, in Principles of Science,
demonstrated a symbolic and logical method, intended to supplant
Boole and John Venn, that involved permutations of
ABC corresponding to the eight compartments of Venn's
three-circle diagram. Jevons also designed labor-saving logic
machines for exploiting his method, among them an 'abacus'
similar to a primitive IBM punchcard machine. |
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In
1875, Richard Caton demonstrated that the brain's electricity
originated in the cerebral cortex. |
|
|
In
1875, Eduard Seuss coined the term 'biosphere'
for where life can exist, i.e., on the Earth's surface and
adjacent atmosphere. |
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|
In
1875, Galton demonstrated "the usefulness of twin studies
for elucidating the relative influence of nature (heredity) and
nurture (environment) upon behavioral traits" (King and Stansfield
1997:382). |
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In
1875, Crookes developed a 'light-mill,' or radiometer.
This is a sealed and evacuated (as far as possible) glass chamber
containing a paddle wheel with vanes blackened on one side and silvered
on the other. This spins rapidly when it is impinged upon
by radiant heat; i.e., "a rise in pressure occurred on the
hotter side of the vanes, which consequently moved away from the
incident radiation" (Brock 1976:480n10). |
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In
1875, George Henry Lewes, in the second volume of Problems
of Life and Mind, used 'emergent' to describe a 'resultant'
which "arises out of...combined agencies, but in a form which
does not display the agents in action.... The emergent is
unlike its components in so far as...it cannot be reduced either
to their sum or their difference" (Lewes 1875:368-369).
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In
the 1870s, Mach stated the principle that the inertia of
a piece of matter is attributable to the interaction between that
piece of matter and the rest of the Universe, i.e., "a body
in an empty universe has no inertia" (Hiebert 1978:599). This
idea has roots in the writings of Leibniz and was widely
accepted among so-called Energists, e.g., Mayer, who held
the energy was a substance, i.e., matter, and that atoms were only
a convenience (Cercignani 1998:203). [revised
02/01/03] |
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Beginning
in 1876 with anthrax, Robert Koch devised the method of employing
aniline dyes to stain microorganisms. By this means he was able
to isolate pure cultures of bacteria and showed the bacterial origin
of many infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, cholera, bubonic
plague, and sleeping sickness. This confirmed the germ theory of
disease. [revised
02/01/03] |
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|
In
1876, Wallace published his special contribution to the study
of evolution, The Geography of Animal Distribution. |
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In
1876, Carl Wernicke published a paper in which he described
a new type of aphasia, involving an impairment of comprehension
rather than execution, and located at a different locus from the
aphasia described by Broca. According to Wernicke,
interconnections between functional sites make more complex intellectual
functions possible. |
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In
1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. |
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In
1876, Nikolas August Otto designed the first four-stroke
piston engine. |
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In
1877, Ernst Abbé published the first in a series of contributions
to the theory of microscopic optics. |
|
|
In
1877, Maxwell, in "On Boltzmann's Theorem on the
Average Distribution of Energy in a System of Material Points,"
proved that "the densities of the constituent components in
a rotating mixture of gases would be the same as if each gas were
present by itself. Hence gaseous mixtures could be separated
by means of a centrifuge" (Everitt 1976:224). |
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In
1877, Schiaparelli reported detailed observations of Martian
'canali,' or channels. |
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In
1878, F. Heinke published a study on herring, which climaxed
the focus on animal studies. |
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|
In
1878, Emil Hermann Fischer figured out the chemical formula
for phenylhydrazine, a compound he had discovered. This led to his
research on sugars, of which he synthesized glucose and about thirty
others, purines, of which he synthesized about one hundred thirty,
and to the development of synthetic drugs like novacaine. [added
02/01/03] |
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In
1878, Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory devoted
to physiological psychology. He intuited that dreaming is
the product of the simultaneous enhancement and impairment of different
parts of the brain. |
|
|
In
1878, J. W. Gibbs, in the abstract of "On the Equilibrium
of Heterogenous Substances," asserted that "when the entropy
of a system has reached a maximum, the system will be in a state
of equilibrium" (Gibbs 1878:354). In the paper itself,
published in two parts, in 1876 and 1878, he proceeded to generalize
thermodynamic equilibrium theory, removing one restriction after
another, and deriving, for example, the chemical phase rule: "In
a heterogenous system composed of several homogenous phases, the
fundamental equilibrium condition leads to the requirement that
temperature, pressure, and the chemical potential of each independent
chemical component must have the same values throughout the system"
(Klein 1976:390). Other experimental facts, "such as
the theories of catalysis, of solid solutions, and of the actions
of semi-permeable diaphragms and osmotic pressure, [he] showed...are
in fact simple, direct and necessary consequences of the fundamental
laws of thermodynamics" (Bumstead 1903:xviii). He also
defined what has came to be known as 'Gibb's function,'
or 'free energy,' a measure of a system's ability
to do work; i.e., that portion of the total energy "which can
be freely converted to other forms of energy.... In any spontaneous
reaction occurring at a constant temperature and volume the free
energy must decrease. Hence the free energy, not the total
energy change measured by the evolution of heat, determines the
direction of any reaction" (Turner 1976:244). |
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In
1878, Maxwell, in "On Stresses in Rarefied Gases Arising
From Inequalities of Temperature," explaining the action of
a radiometer, noted that "when a viscous fluid moves past a
solid body, it generates tangential stresses by sliding [i.e., 'slip'
effects] over the surface with a finite velocity" (Everitt
1976:224). Indepenently, Osbourne Reynolds came to
a similar conclusion about the same time. |
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In
1879, Walther Flemming named 'chromatin' and 'mitosis,'
made the first accurate counts of chromosome numbers,and discerned
the longitudinal splitting of chromosomes. |
|
|
In
1879, Crookes, in "On the Illumination of Lines of Molecular
Pressure, and the Trajectory of Molecules," attempted to determine
the paths of the 'lines of molecular pressure,' or cathode
rays, in an evacuated glass tube through which two electrodes are
passed. When high voltage is applied, electrons are emitted
from the radiometer vanes, which act as a cathode, and, under reduced
pressure, the vane turns and the electrons are accelerated toward
the anode. Many of these electrons, or cathode rays, miss
the anode and, striking the tube wall, exhibit fluorescence. |
|
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In
1879, Jules-Henri Poincaré showed how automorphic functions
can be used to express coordinates of any point in an algebraic
curve as uniform functions of a single parameter. |
|
|
In
1879, Stefan, in "åber die Beziehung zwischen der
Wärmestrahlung," conjectured that that the radiant energy
emitted by an enclosure equivalent to a black body is proportional
to the fourth power of the body's temperature. |
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In
1879, Planck, in Vorlesungen über Thermodynamik,
opposed the idea that the validity of the second law depends upon
the existence of an observer or his lack of information. The
implication is that irreversibility is natural. |
|
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In
1879, Albert Abraham Michelson determined the speed of light
to be 186,350 miles per second + or - 30 miles per second. |
|
|
In
1879, Edwin Herbert Hall discovered a component of an electric
field which when crossed with a magnetic field becomes perpendicular
to the electric field. Known as 'Hall current,' or
the 'Hall effect,' it was not explained until the advent
of quantum theory. |
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|
In
1879, Gottlob Frege, in Begriffsschrift, proffered
the first system of propositional calculus, also known as the calculus
of sentential conjunctions. |
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In
1880, Sydney Ringer studied the use of body temperature in
diagnosis and inorganic ions in heart contractions, making possible
the analysis of heart metabolism. |
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In
1881, Wallace proposed to date the beginning of the Cambrian
period about 28 million years ago. |
|
|
In
1881, Lucian Galard and John D. Gibbs obtained patents
for systems of alternating electrical current. |
|
|
In
1881, Venn, in Symbolic Logic, represented logical
propositions diagrammatically. |
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In
1882, Eduard Strasburger coined the terms 'cytoplasm'
and 'nucleoplasm.' |
|
|
In
1882, Dmitri Iosefovich Ivanovsky demonstrated that tobacco
mosaic disease is caused by "a self-replicating agent (or virus)
that will pass through bacterial filters and can neither be seen
with light microscope nor grown upon bacteriological media"
(King and Stansfield 1997:382). |
|
|
In
1882, Helmholtz, independently of Gibbs, distinguished
between 'bound' and 'free energy' in chemical
reactions, the formula for which, free energy equals internal energy
minus the temperature of the system times its entropy, is known
as the Gibbs-Helmholtz equation. |
|
|
In
1882, Michelson described an 'interferometer,' an
interference meter, which had a half-silvered mirror in order to
split incident beams of light into two parts at right angles to
each other. |
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In
1883, Ilia Il'ich, also known as Élie, Metchnikoff identified
the phagocyte as a purveyor of cellular defense, thereby raising
questions of organismic identity, i.e., how do organisms protect
themselves from their environment? He recognized that phagocytes,
cells capable of engulfing particles, such as bacteria, define the
'self' constituents; that is, they devour tadpole tails
as frogs metamorphosize into adults. Viewing the immune system
as "self-referential, not antigen-driven," he saw inflammation as
"self-directed 'immune' surveillance" (Tauber 1990:566).
This biological line of investigation developed into 'humoral
theory,' after the classic term for body fluids, and was driven
by the need to understand what identified non-host elements. It
may be noted that bloodletting did not go out of fashion until about
this time. |
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In
1883, Edouard van Beneden, studying nuclear division in the
germ cells of a round worm, explained the "longstanding paradox
that the maternal and paternal contributions to the character of
the progeny seem often to be equal, despite the enormous difference
in size between the egg and the sperm" (Alberts et al.
1994:1014). This explanation was made possible by his discovery
that, while gamete nuclei, i.e., the sperm and egg nuclei, each
have two chromosomes, the fertilized egg has four chromosomes. This
implies that chromosomes carry genetic information and that germ
cells, in contrast to somatic cells, must undergo a special sort
of nuclear division in which the chromosome complement is halved.
This process came to be known as 'meiosis,' a word which
means that something appears to be of less size or significance
than it really is. [revised
02/01/03] |
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In
1883, Weismann stated that his 'germ-line theory,'
namely, that the separation of the germ-line from the phenotype
of the body, or soma, is final from the point in the egg's development
when it is determined which cells will become the ovary or the testes--and
potentially immortal. In human beings, for example, this point
occurs at the 59th day of gestation. This doctrine refuted
Lamarck's theory that acquired characters can be inherited.
It also made it possible to understand the genetics of animals (though
not plants), and, hence, evolution without understanding development. |
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In
1883, Max Rubner said that a body's metabolic rate was
proportional to its surface area. |
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In
1883, Oscar Hertwig described 'mesenchyme,' a term
he coined for the protoplasmic network filled with a intercellular
fluid which gives rise to connective and other tissue. |
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In
1883, Wilhelm Roux suggested that the filaments within the
cell's nucleus carry the hereditary factors. |
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In
1883, Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart and A. P. Thomas,
independently, working on the life cycle of sheep liver flukes,
determined the snails were intermediate hosts. |
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In
1883, Galton advocated selective breeding of human beings,
or 'eugenics,' which he coined from a Greek word meaning
"hereditarily endowed with noble qualities" (Galton 1883:24).
Eugenics was discredited through the uses to which it was put, especially
during the 1930s and 1940s. |
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In
1883, George John Romanes published Mental Evolution in
Animals, the first modern text comparing the psychology of humans
and animals in objective terms. |
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In
I883, Jean-Martin Charcot was able to obtain recognition
of the neurological reality of hypnotism from the French Academy
of Sciences. He thought only hysterics were susceptible to
hypnosis, i.e., that hypnosis was itself a pathological condition. |
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In
1883, Pierre Curie discovered piezoelectricity, a form of
electric polarity, in crystals. |
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In
1883, Mach, in Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung,
translated as The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical
Account of Its Development, attempted to eliminate metaphysics
by reducing science to the sum of what appears to the senses, and,
in particular, attacked Newton's assumption that absolute
rotation is observable. "The object of science [is] to replace,
or save experiences, by the reproduction and anticipation
of facts in thought...; [but] we never reproduce the facts in full...,
only that side of them which is important to us, moved directly
or indirectly by practical interest" (Mach 1883:481-482).
Concepts both compete for adherents and adapt to facts and to one
another in order to survive. Mach also did work in the field
of ballistics, where the 'Mach number' borrows his name.
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In
1883, Boltzmann, in "Ableitung des Stefan'schen
Gesetzes," based on the fact that electromagnetic waves exert
pressure on the walls of a radiation-filled enclosure, worked out
theoretically a relation between thermodynamics and Maxwell's
electromagnetic equations, i.e., the fourth power law previously
found experimentally by Stefan. |
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In
1883, Reynolds introduced the 'Reynolds' number,'
a dimensionless quantity associated with the smoothness of the flow
of a fluid, which characterizes laminar and turbulent flow by relating
kinetic to viscous forces. |
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In
1883, Gottlieb Daimler patented the gasoline combustion engine. |
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In
1884, A. Kossel isolated a protein from the nuclei of goose
erythrocytes and called them 'histones.' |
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In
1884, Julius Kollman described the phenomena of 'neoteny'
in his study of the axolotl form of Ambystoma tigrinum. |
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In
1884, J. Hughlings Jackson published his speculation that
the neuropathological dissolution of function tends to roughly reverse
the order of the acquisition of that function. |
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In
1884, Freud published a paper in which he found cocaine,
an alkaloid in coca, effective against fatigue and neurasthenia. |
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In
1884, Jacobus Hendricus van't Hoff explained the principle
of equilibrium in chemical dynamics and osmotic electrical conductivity.
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In
1884, Edwin A. Abbott, in Flatland: A Romance of Many
Dimensions, recounted the adventures of 'A. Square,'
a character who inhabits a two-dimensional world populated by other
geometrical figures--triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, etc.
Toward the end of the story, on the first day of 2000, a spherical
creature from 'Spaceland' carries A. Square off to show
him the three-dimensional nature of the larger world. There
A. Square speculates that Spaceland may itself exist as a subspace
of a larger four-dimensional universe, an "infallible confirmation
of the series [of end-points of a line, a square, a cube, etc.],
2, 4, 8, 16" (Abbott 1884:on line). |
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In
1884, Hilaire de Chardonnet invented the first artificial
textile, which was made from cellulose. It was later named
rayon. |
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By
1885, Hertwig and Strasburger developed the conception
that the nucleus is the basis of heredity. Subsequently, Hertwig
asserted that from the biological point of view sex is merely the
union of two cells. |
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In
1885, Roux, testing Weismann's idea of heredity
and germ plasm, did one of the first experiments in what became
experimental embryology when he showed that embryonic chick cells
could be maintained alive in a saline solution. |
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In
1885, Ernst Hartwig noticed a nova in the Andromeda
nebulae. Before it faded, he noted its peak intensity which
was as great as the rest of the galaxy combined. |
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In
1885, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche completed Also sprach
Zarathustra in which he created the term 'id,' meaning
the resevoir of human instinctual drives. Other psychological
terms employed frequently in his writings include sublimation and
inhibition. |
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In
1886, Hippolyte Bernheim published his argument that hypnotism
was a special case of general human suggestibility; i.e., anyone
could be hypnotized. |
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[In
the course of the nineteenth century, the practice of hypnotism
brought with it greater popular, as well as medical, awareness of
the split between conscious and unconscious behavior, as may be
seen in the stories of E. T. A. Hoffman, E. A. Poe, Honoré
de Balzac, Alexander Dumas, Victor Hugo, R. L. Stevenson, Fyodor
Dostoevsky, and others (Ellenberger 1970:158-170). Greater
experience with hypnotism also brought disillusion with its limitations,
e.g., sensitized patients confirming their doctor's unspoken expectations,
etc.]. |
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In
1886, Pierre Janet, in L'Automatisme Psychologique,
introduced the term 'subconscious' in the context of patients'
fixed ideas. |
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In
1886, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, in Psychopathia Sexualis,
included among his classifications the terms 'sadism' (after
Donatien de Sade) and 'masochism' (after Leopold Sacher-Masoch). |
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