De la percepción del tiempo a la predicción del futuro, el progreso como fin

Sólo gracias a nuestra percepción intrínseca del tiempo hemos desarrollado la capacidad de extender nuestro pensamiento hacia el mañana. Este artículo es un breve viaje que parte de la filosofía Kantiana del tiempo con una breve parada en la neurobiología de la percepción del tiempo de Hermann Helmholtz y llega, por último, a la predicción del futuro aplicada a los tiempos modernos. Haber desarrollado a lo largo del tiempo la capacidad de anticipar los pensamientos y las acciones no es sólo un mecanismo evolutivo para ayudar al hombre como individuo, sino que, hoy en día, es cada vez más importante extenderlo en beneficio de todo el planeta. La anticipación de estrategias útiles se convierte en la base de los planes organizativos de las grandes empresas y corporaciones, que utilizan una peculiar táctica de predicción conocida como "Scenario Planning" para comprometerse en grandes objetivos que van desde la recuperación medioambiental y energética hasta la ayuda sanitaria y social en países en desarrollo como África. Sin embargo, los grandes planes sociales y medioambientales implican no sólo a las grandes empresas, sino sobre todo a las ciudades individuales, desarrollando lo que se conoce como "Smart Cities". La idea global de futuro y progreso, en conclusión, entra en sinergia con una antigua corriente filosófica y literaria del siglo XIX, el Positivismo. La fe del hombre en las fuerzas del progreso tecnológico y científico de entonces no parecerá tan lejana de la de hoy, que pone en manos de la tecnología, la ciencia y el hombre la esperanza de un mundo cada vez más sostenible e inteligente.

The Knowledge Problem in Mature Science

In the course of the nineteenth century, physical scientists became increasingly self-conscious of the need for a theory of how scientific knowledge was produced. Though many theories were proposed, none won a consensus. As explicitly stated by William Whewell, the core problem was the same for everyone: how to ground claims of knowledge of experience in a way that also justified claiming that the object of these claims was a reality independent of experience that caused experience. Everyone was acutely aware of the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent and of the logical gulf between induction and deduction. John Herschel, Whewell, John Stuart Mill, August Comte, Hermann Helmholtz, Pierre Duhem, and Ernst Mach were some who proposed theories of science. Of these, Mach alone decisively rejected reality as the objective of science. Meanwhile, the nonscientist J. B. Stallo argued for the fundamental role played by metaphysical concepts in modern science.

Bernhard Riemann, the Ear, and an Atom of Consciousness

Why did Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866), arguably the most original mathematician of his generation, spend the last year of life investigating the mechanism of hearing? Fighting tuberculosis and the hostility of eminent scientists such as Hermann Helmholtz, he appeared to forsake mathematics to prosecute a case close to his heart. Only sketchy pages from his last paper remain, but here we assemble some significant clues and triangulate from them to build a broad picture of what he might have been driving at. Our interpretation is that Riemann was a committed idealist and from this philosophical standpoint saw that the scientific enterprise was lame without the “poetry of hypothesis”. He believed that human thought was fundamentally the dynamics of “mind-masses” and that the human mind interpenetrated, and became part of, the microscopic physical domain of the cochlea. Therefore, a full description of hearing must necessarily include the perceptual dimensions of what he saw as a single manifold. The manifold contains all the psychophysical aspects of hearing, including the logarithmic transformations that arise from Fechner’s law, faithfully preserving all the subtle perceptual qualities of sound. For Riemann, hearing was a unitary physical and mental event, and parallels with modern ideas about consciousness and quantum biology are made. A unifying quantum mechanical model for an atom of consciousness—drawing on Riemann’s mind-masses and the similar “psychons” proposed by Eccles—is put forward.

The contribution of A. Gref to clinical ophthalmology (to the 190th anniversary of the birth)

The first scientific and practices works in ophthalmology of Professor Albreht Grephe are possibilities. Notes, that in 1850 Hermann Helmholtz introduced the ophthalmoscope into clinical practice, this tool allowed Albrecht Gref to make a number of discoveries and scientific proposals concerning the pathology of the fundus. He described the embolism of the retinal artery, differentiated central recurrent syphilitic retinitis from diffuse, described optic neuritis and much more. Seven years of his scientific work, A. Gref has devoted to the study of the functioning of the eye muscles, strabismus and its correction by surgery, the study of amblyopia. Later, he described in detail the symptoms of ocular muscle paralysis and the clinical manifestations of diphtheria and benign renal conjunctivitis, outlined the ways of drug treatment of these diseases. Gref considered eye pressure the main cause of glaucoma. In his opinion, reducing pressure, it was possible to save the patient from glaucoma. During the treatment of the patient with complete infection of the pupil, A. Grefe made iridectomy (excision of the iris part) and noticed that the eye after the operation became softer. This prompted the doctor to think about the possibility of using such an operation for glaucoma. It is important to note that at the first International Ophthalmological Congress in Brussels in 1857 Gref made a report «On the nature and treatment of glaucoma by iridectomy». This operation brought him world fame and saved many glaucoma patients from blindness. Iridectomy is used in ophthalmic practice and at the present time. In 1859 Grefe proposed a method for peripheral linear extraction of cataracts. He made a peripheral linear cut, thanks to which the divergence of the edges of the wound of the patch cut was eliminated. For such a cut Grefe invented a special long and narrow scalpel, behind which the name Grefevsky was preserved. As time has shown, the basic theoretical and practical provisions and discoveries of Grefe still form the foundation of our knowledge in ophthalmology.