Hermann von Helmholtz

1821–1894 · German physicist and physiologist

Topics: learning, creativity, science, physics

• The quantity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of Nature is unchangeable, and can neither be increased nor diminished.

  — Hermann von Helmholtz

• The sensations of our nerves of sense are mere symbols indicating certain external objects, and it is usually only after considerable practice that we acquire the power of drawing correct conclusions from our sensations respecting the corresponding objects.

  — Hermann von Helmholtz

• Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications. But intellectual satisfaction we obtain only from a connection of the whole, just from its conformity with law.

  — Hermann von Helmholtz

• There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole — a kosmos, an image of the logical thought of our own mind.

  — Hermann von Helmholtz

• The formation of scales and of the web of harmony is a product of artistic invention, and is in no way given by the natural structure or by the natural behaviour of our hearing, as used to be generally maintained hitherto.

  — Hermann von Helmholtz