Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“The Postilion’s Horn Sounds”: A Complementarity Approach to the Phenomenology of Sound-Consciousness?

  • Published:
Husserl Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time, Edmund Husserl has frequent recourse to sound and melody as illustrations of the processes that give rise to immanent temporal objects. In Husserl’s analysis, there is a philosophically pregnant tension between the geometrical diagrams representing multiple dimensions of immanent time and his intuition that time-points might be no more than fictions leading to absurdities. In this paper, I will address this tension in order to motivate a complementarity approach to temporal objects such as sound and melody that might illuminate the phenomenology of sound-consciousness.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. In the Bernauer Manuskripte Husserl concludes a discussion of retention and protention based on one version of the diagram of immanent time by asserting that “Wir müssen zeigen, dass die Figur wirklich alles zur Zeitkonstitution Notwendige und nichts anders enthält, dass alles, was ich ihr ablesen <kann>, und was als bezeichnet definitorisch aufgenommen worden ist, auch vorhanden ist, und <wir> müssen zeigen, wie es in dieser Verwicklung möglich ist” (Hua XXXIII, p. 24, emphasis mine).

  2. For a discussion of the significance of the diagram of immanent time, see Larrabee (1989); for a discussion in the context of melody perception, see Miller (1984, p. 117 ff.). With the exemplary exception of Larrabee, Husserl scholars who have commented on time-consciousness have tended to take the structure of the diagrams of immanent time for granted, that is, they have rarely focused on the philosophical import of the assumptions on which the decision to represent the multiple dimensions of immanent time with straight lines rests. For example Merlan (1947), Sokolowski (1964), Morrison (1978), Miller (1984), McInerney (1988), and Kortooms (2002).

  3. On Husserl’s concept of temporal phases, see Sokolowski (1964, p. 538 ff.).

  4. Earlier examples can be found in Archimedes’ work On spirals, possibly in the manuscripts on which early printed editions were based. Cf. Archimedes (1558, pp. 4 verso–5 recto), and Galilei (1974 [1638]).

  5. Aristotle (1550, p. 73 verso).

  6. On Husserl’s appropriation of, and elaboration on, Carl Stumpf’s notion of Verschlmelzung, see Rollinger (1999, p. 83 ff.) and Ierna (2009).

  7. Heisenberg (1927). Hilgevoord and Uffink (2012) state: “Let us now move to another question about Heisenberg's relations: do they express a principle of quantum theory? Probably the first influential author to call these relations a ‘principle’ was Eddington, who, in his Gifford Lectures of 1928 referred to them as the ‘Principle of Indeterminacy’. In the English literature the name uncertainty principle became most common.” Eddington (1929, p. 220) formulates the principle as follows: “a particle may have position or it may have velocity but it cannot in any exact sense have both”. The phrasing “principle of…” employed by Eddington stabilized quickly. In 1929, for example, Heisenberg’s principle and Eddington’s book were extensively quoted by John Dewey, who drew support from what he referred to as “Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy” for his brand of pragmatism (cf. Dewey 1984 [1929], pp. 161–163).

  8. As a philosopher engaging the phenomenological tradition, I value the philosophical ideas of the past, insofar as they urge us to respond constructively to their claims. In the next section I will come back to this methodological point and expand on the reasons why I think that Husserlian phenomenology discourages an exclusively presentist approach to philosophy. By “presentist” I mean such as to privilege the present as the time of philosophical maturity.

  9. Cf. Hilgevoord and Uffink (2012) for a review article on the history and diverse interpretations of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this reference. Katsumori (2011, p. 54 ff.) should be consulted for a review of the career enjoyed by complementarity in light of the history of contemporary philosophy.

  10. Cf. also Jacobsen (2007, p. 3, n. 1), who suggests that “[p]robably the first reference in the literature to the Copenhagen Interpretation or rather to the ‘Kopenhagener Geist der Quantentheorie […] which has directed the entire development of modern atomic physics,’ is in Werner Heisenberg’s Chicago lectures of 1929 […]. Calling it an interpretation, and thereby indicating that there might be other interpretations, seems to occur for the first time in Heisenberg [in 1955] […] However, Heisenberg might have taken it from Soviet critics of Bohr’s views in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as D. I. Blokhintsev and A. D. Alexandrov”.

  11. In a recent paper entitled “Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle”, we find the following statement concerning current debates on the uncertainty principle and its relationship to complementarity. “[S]till now, 80 years after its inception, there is no general consensus over the scope and validity of this [i.e., Heisenberg’s] principle. […] The negative characterization of the uncertainty principle as a limitation of quantum preparations and measurements has led to the widespread view that this principle is nothing but a formal expression of the principle of complementarity” (Busch et al. 2007, p. 155). Elsewhere one of the authors of the statement just quoted has come to the conclusion that “today there is a widespread sense that complementarity and uncertainty are best regarded as consequences of quantum mechanics which highlight characteristic features of that theory but need not be held up as independent principles” (Busch and Shilladay 2006, p. 5).

  12. See, for example, Mehra (1987) and Katsumori (2011).

  13. Landsman (2007, pp. 424–446, esp. p. 433 ff.). For instance, Landsman pointed out that “interesting recent attempts to make Bohr’s philosophy of quantum mechanics precise accommodate the a priori status of classical observables into some version of the modal interpretation […]. It should give one some confidence in the possibility of world peace that the two most hostile interpretations of quantum mechanics, viz. Copenhagen and Bohm […] have now found a common home in the modal interpretation in the sense of the authors just cited” (Landsman 2007, p. 437, n. 63).

  14. “In der zweiten Hälfte des vorigen Jahrhunderts war aus den großen Erfolgen der kinetischen Gastheorie und der mechanischen Theorie der Wärme ein Ideal der exacten Naturbeschreibung hervorgewachsen, das als Krönung jahrhundertelangen Forschens und Erfüllung jahrtausendealter Hoffnung einen Höhepunkt bildet und das klassische heißt” (Schrödinger 1935, p. 807).

  15. I see a response to this call for scrutiny in the first philosophically robust attempt to question Bohr’s complementarity framework, one which set the tone for many a subsequent debate, i.e., David Bohm’s work on “hidden variables” (Bohm 1952a, b). Bohm read Bohr’s complementarity principle as asserting that “at the atomic level we must renounce our hitherto successful practice of conceiving of an individual system as a unified and precisely definable whole, all of whose aspects are, in a manner of speaking, simultaneously and unambiguously accessible to our conceptual gaze” (Bohm 1952a, pp. 167–168). Hidden variables were postulated by Bohm in order to reinstate the right of the physicist’s “conceptual gaze” to conceive classically of any individual system such as an electron in an interference experiment. Eventually Bohm reformulated the theory as an “ontological” interpretation (Bohm and Hiley 1993).

  16. Bohr (1928). On the genesis of Bohr’s complementarity ideas in connection with Heisenberg’s 1927 paper, the fundamental study is Stolzenburg (1977). It is notable that, on Stolzenburg’s detailed reconstruction, one forms the impression that Bohr’s early ideas on complementarity were not motivated by the immediate search for a straightforward interpretation of Heisenberg’s formalism. Rather they appear to have gathered momentum while Bohr strove to uncover a holistic worldview.

  17. Heisenberg (1927, pp. 197–198). Bohr opened his 1928 paper pointing out that he hoped his remarks might “help to harmonise the different views, apparently so divergent, concerning this subject [i.e., in his words, “the discussion of the physical interpretation of the quantum theoretical methods developed during recent years”]” (Bohr 1928, p. 580). In the German version of the same paper, instead of “harmonise” Bohr chose the word “Versöhnung [reconciliation]” (Bohr 1928a, p. 245).

  18. From the Hugh Everett III Manuscripts Archive preserved at the University of California. Retrievable at: http://ucispace.lib.uci.edu/handle/10575/1160. Alexander W. Stern was “an American physicist and engineer who spent many years during the 1950s and 1960s in residence at Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen.” Hugh Everett III was an “American physicist who first proposed what has come to be known as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics” (ibid.).

  19. Manuscript, Alexander Stern letter to John A. Wheeler, 20-May-1956, Hugh Everett III Correspondence, University of California, Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Retrievable at: http://ucispace.lib.uci.edu/handle/10575/1160.

  20. Katsumori (2011, p. 18). The words reported by Katsumori in quotation marks are Bohr’s.

  21. Honner (1982, p. 20). Honner talks perceptively of Bohr’s transcendental philosophy. I would go further and suggest that there are deeper intersections between Bohr’s transcendental outlook and Husserlian phenomenology that still await historical-philosophical scrutiny, but which I cannot pursue here.

  22. For an introductory treatment which is also quite sensitive to the historical development of the theory, see Folland (2002).

  23. Hence it seems that the notion of an uncertainty stemming from classical mathematical theories was formulated before Heisenberg’s quantum uncertainty paper of 1927 (Heisenberg 1927). The evidence comes from Wiener’s autobiographical recollections, according to Folland.

  24. Landé (1930, p. 18). It is an empirical prediction that, to my knowledge, has never been tested.

  25. Oppenheim and Magnasco (2013), paper summary.

  26. Oppenheim and Magnasco (2013), not yet paginated, cf. 2nd page.

  27. Aristoxenus’s science “is rigorously phenomenalistic, concerned with the analysis and synthesis of what is heard as melodic, simply in its character as an object of perception” (Barker 1989, p. 124). This should be contrasted with the reductionist tendency championed by the ancient Pythagorean school to explain sound phenomena in terms of number, rational ratios, and the laws of acoustics.

  28. Kortooms (2002, pp. 108–109).

  29. In reference to Bernau-manuscript Text 10, Kortooms argued that “Husserl speaks of a consciousness of objects that can be animated” (2002, p. 142). This would be in harmony with my suggestion that temporal qualities are awakened by a process of animation. The Husserlian passage referred to by Kortooms (Hua XXXIII, p. 190), in which Husserl distinguishes between grasping and non-grasping types of perception, qualifies the latter “als ein von keinem erfassenden Aufmerksamkeitsstrahl ‘beseeltes’ Gegenstandsbewusstsein”. The text seems to imply, then, that a grasping perception is awakened by a process of temporal animation.

  30. David Bohm has given an impressionistic characterization of Bohr’s conundrum that is illuminating. In a 1989 interview, Bohm made it clear that he appreciated Bohr’s emphasis on wholeness but then became dissatisfied with one aspect of it. Bohm claimed that Bohr’s interpretation “emphasizes this wholeness of the observing instrument and what is observed…that they are one whole and one phenomenon… the one thing I feel I didn’t quite agree with was that he said that this whole… there was no way of making a concept of this whole… and that meant that you could not make it intelligible…” (Video Interview with Physicist David Bohm (Part 3/5), retrievable at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPcVSaW0eHo&list=PL903698A0AC1B4E82, transcription of quoted passage beginning at time 2 m:20 s).

References

  • Archimedes. (1558). Archimedis opera nonnulla a Federico Commandino Urbinate nuper in Latinum conversa. Venice: Apud Paulum Manutium.

  • Aristotle. (1550). Aristotelis Stagiritae De physico auditu libri octo, cum Averrois Cordubensis variis in eosdem commentariis. Venice: Apud Iuntas.

  • Barker, A. (1989). Greek musical writings. Volume II. Harmonic and acoustic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bohm, D. (1952a). A suggested interpretation of the quantum theory in terms of “hidden” variables. I. Physical Review 85: 166–179.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bohm, D. (1952b). A suggested interpretation of the quantum theory in terms of “hidden” variables. II. Physical Review 85: 180–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bohm, D., & Hiley, B. J. (1993). The undivided universe: An ontological interpretation of quantum theory. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bohr, N. (1928a). The quantum postulate and the recent development of atomic theory. Nature 121: 580–590.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bohr, N. (1928b). Das Quantenpostulat und die neuere Entwicklung der Atomistik. Die Naturwissenschaften 15: 245–257.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bub, J. (1997). Interpreting the quantum world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Busch, P., Heinonen, T., & Lahti, P. (2007). Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Physics Reports 452: 155–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Busch, P., & Shilladay, Ch. (2006). Complementarity and uncertainty in Mach–Zehnder interferometry and beyond. Physics Reports 435: 1–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butterfield, J. and Earman, J., Eds. (2007). Handbook of the philosophy of science. Vol. 2. Philosophy of physics, Part A. Amsterdam, Boston, etc.: Elsevier.

  • Dewey, J. (1984). The quest for certainty. The later works, 1925–1953. Vol. 4: 1929. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

  • Eddington, A. S. (1929). The nature of the physical world. New York and Cambridge: McMillan Company and Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Folland, G. B. (1997). The uncertainty principle: A mathematical survey. The Journal of Fourier Analysis and Applications 3: 207–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Folland, G. B. (2002). Fourier analysis and its applications. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabor, D. (1946). Theory of communication. Journal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers 93, III: 429–457.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galilei, G. (1974). Two new sciences. S. Drake (Ed.). Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

  • Hartmann, W. M. (1998). Signals, sounds, and sensation. New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heisenberg, W. (1927). Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik. Zeitschrift für Physik 43: 172–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hilgevoord, J. and Uffink, J. (2012). The uncertainty principle. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/qt-uncertainty/.

  • Honner, J. (1982). The transcendental philosophy of Niels Bohr. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 13: 1–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howard, D. (2002). Who invented the “Copenhagen Interpretation”? A study in mythology. Philosophy of Science 71: 669–682.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hua I. Husserl, E. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. S. Strasser (Ed.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963; Cartesian meditations. D. Cairns (Trans.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950.

  • Hua X. Husserl, E. Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917). R. Boehm (Ed.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966; On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893–1917). Collected Works Vol. IV. J. Brough (Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.

  • Hua XVII. Husserl, E. Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. P. Janssen (Ed.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.

  • Hua XXXIII. Husserl, E. Die Bernauer Manusckripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917–1918). R. Bernet and D. Lohmar (Eds.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.

  • Husserl, E. (2001). Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis. Lectures on transcendental logic. A. J. Steinbock (Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

  • Ierna, C. (2009). Husserl et Stumpf sur la Gestalt et la fusion. Philosophiques 36: 489–510.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacobsen, A. S. (2007). Léon Rosenfeld’s Marxist defense of complementarity. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 37, Supplement: 3–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Katsumori, M. (2011). Niels Bohr’s complementarity. Its structure, history, and intersections with hermeneutics and deconstruction. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York: Springer Science + Business Media.

  • Kock, W. E. (1935). On the principle of uncertainty in sound. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 7: 56–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kortooms, T. (2002). Phenomenology of time. Edmund Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness. Dordrecht/Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landé, A. (1930). Vorlesungen über Wellenmechanik. Leipzig: Academische Verlagsgesellschaft M. B. H.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landsman, N. P. (2007). Between classical and quantum. In Butterfield and Earman (2007), pp. 417–553.

  • Larrabee, M. J. (1989). Time and spatial models: Temporality in Husserl. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49: 373–392.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McInerney, P. K. (1988). What is still valuable in Husserl’s analyses of inner time-consciousness? The Journal of Philosophy 85: 605–616.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehra, J. (1987). Niels Bohr’s discussions with Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger: The origins of the principles of uncertainty and complementarity. Foundations of Physics 17: 461–506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meinong, A. (1894). Beiträge zur Theorie der psychischen Analyse. Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 7: 340–385, 417–455.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merlan, Ph. (1947). Time consciousness in Husserl and Heidegger. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8: 23–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, I. (1984). Husserl, perception and temporal awareness. Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press.

  • Morrison, R. P. (1978). Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger on time and the unity of consciousness. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 39: 182–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oppenheim, J. B. and Magnasco, M. O. (2013). Human time-frequency acuity beats the Fourier uncertainty principle. Physical Review Letters 110: (no pages). URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.044301 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.044301.

  • Rollinger, R. D. (1999). Husserl’s position in the school of Brentano. Dordrecht/Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schrödinger, E. (1935). Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik. Die Naturwissenschaften 23: 807–812, 823–828, 844–849.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schubert Kalsi, M.-L. (1978). Alexius Meinong. On objects of higher order and Husserl’s phenomenology. The Hague/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, F. J. (1979). The experiencing of musical sound. Prelude to a phenomenology of music. New York, London, Paris: Gordon and Breach.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sokolowski, R. (1964). Immanent constitution in Husserl’s Lectures on Time. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 24: 530–551.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stern, A. W. (1931). The uncertainty principle. Physics Review 37: 1186–1187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stewart, G. W. (1931). Problems suggested by an uncertainty principle in acoustics. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2: 325–329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stolzenburg, K. (1977). Die Entwicklung des Bohrschen Komplementaritätgedankens in den Jahren 1924 bis 1929. Dr. phil. Dissertation. Suttgart: Universität Suttgart.

  • Yung, B. (Ed.). (1997). Celestial airs of antiquity. Music of the seven-string zither of China. Madison: A-R Editions.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Paolo Palmieri

Authors
  1. Paolo Palmieri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paolo Palmieri.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Palmieri, P. “The Postilion’s Horn Sounds”: A Complementarity Approach to the Phenomenology of Sound-Consciousness?. Husserl Stud 30, 129–151 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-013-9144-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-013-9144-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation