The Donders Machine: Matter, Signs, and Time in a Physiological Experiment, ca. 1865

Abstract

The Donders Machine:Matter, Signs, and Time in a Physiological Experiment, ca. 1865 Henning Schmidgen (bio) The history of experimentation in physiological and psychological laboratories is a history of machines—of spatially circumscribed and temporally limited installations that connect a vast number of heterogeneous components: partial objects derived from the experimenter and the experimental subject (eyes, hands, voices, etc.), more or less isolated organs (hearts, lungs, muscles, nerves, etc.), energy sources, styli, sooted paper, tables, notes, and publications. Starting in the 1850s, the territories of physiological and (later on) psychological laboratories were increasingly populated by such installations that transitorily "machinized" mechanical and organic components and combined material with semiotic aspects. In Berlin and Paris, physiologists hooked animals up to kymographs and quicksilver manometers in order to turn bodily functions into indexical curves. In Königsberg, nerve and muscle preparations were integrated into electromagnetic circuits, not just to produce demonstrative contractions, but also to measure the propagation speed of excitations in the still-living nerve. In the 1870s, Leipzig physiologists presented artificial circulation models to academic audiences and the general public: installations made of rubber hoses, glass tubes, and funnels, in which beating frog hearts functioned as "natural motors" pumping salt water in circles—until the organic components would irrevocably refuse to do service (for a further example, see Fig. 1). All these machines developed continually and as within a "phylum" (while single parts, such as the brass cylinder and [End Page 211] the stylus of the kymograph, moved closer to one another); at the same time, they were ready to undergo mutations, breaking with each other and replacing one another (e.g., water motors being replaced by electric motors). Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Experimental set-up by Jolyet and Regnard for the quantitative investigation of the gas exchange in respiration. The model organism is forced to breath through a respiration mask (G) which is connected, by means of a three-way cock, to bottle C. Operating the cock allows the animal's respiratory tract to connect to the air kept in the bottle. The consumption of oxygen through respiration is balanced by vessel O which stands under constant pressure. (From Catalogue des instruments de précision servant en physiologie et en médecine construits par Charles Verdin [Chateauroux: Verdin, 1882], p. 44.) The role of machines in experimental physiology has often been studied by historians of the biological and biomedical sciences.1 As is well known, the advent of the kymograph, one of the central instruments of laboratory physiology, was connected to the emergence and development of the steam engine. More recent studies have argued that electrophysiological procedures for precision time measurements [End Page 212] relied on and further developed features of telegraph technology. In addition, it has been shown that the actual functioning of physiological instruments in the laboratory required advanced technological infrastructures, involving central motive forces placed in the basement (steam engines, gas motors, etc.) as well as urban networks providing electricity and water. While these studies have contributed in important ways to our understanding of experimental physiology as embedded in a specific material culture, more general aspects of the relation between experiments and machines have been addressed in studies concerning the history of the physical sciences. Authors such as M. Norton Wise, Andrew Pickering, and Peter Galison have investigated machines as "mediators" connecting scientific projects to societal concerns and vice versa. They have directed our attention to the "field of machines" that constitute the "material performativity" of science. And they have taught us to look at the "experimental apparatuses" of specific disciplines as machines. (In his "technological reading" of Einstein's famous 1905 article, Galison even suggests conceiving of scientific theories as machines— "Theory-Machines," as he puts it.)2 Yet these studies seldom spell out to what extent their respective notions of machines differ from commonsense ideas of technological objects. Explicit definitions of what a machine is or can do are rare.3 References concerning the history of the machine concept and/or philosophical notions of the technological objects are often lacking. As a result, we sometimes seem to be thrown back on the modern, twofold vision of the machine: on...