Abstract
The sound figures were an oscillating metal plate that produced two-dimensional shapes in the sand when musical notes were played through it. Ernst Chladni, the German acoustician who discovered the phenomenon in 1789, exhibited it at public demonstrations around Europe. But despite the support of Napoleon himself, the sound figures could not be explained mathematically. So in these sound figures, F. W. J. Schelling found confirmation of dynamic physics and posited a Signatura rerum. August Schlegel built this claim into his lectures on art history and aesthetics, and Clemens Brentano celebrated the experiment in his poetry. Thus did philosophy and literature express the full significance of an insoluble problem in mechanical physics, illuminating the reciprocity of science and culture at the turn of the eighteenth century.
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