Johannes Peter Muller quotes

Johannes Peter Müller was a German scientist renowned for his pioneering work in physiology and anatomy. His research laid the foundation for modern biology and expanded understanding of the human body’s functions. He influenced generations of scientists through both his discoveries and his mentorship. Here are 10 of his quotes:

The cooperation of the two retina in one field of vision, whatever is its cause, must rather be the source of all the ideas to which single or double vision may give rise.

Johannes Peter Muller

The essential attribute of a new sense is, not the perception of external objects or influences which ordinarily do not act upon the senses, but that external causes should excite in it a new and peculiar kind of sensation different from all the sensations of our five senses.

Johannes Peter Muller

We shall probably never attain the power of measuring the velocity of nervous action; for we have not the opportunity of comparing its propagation through immense space, as we have in the case of light.

Johannes Peter Muller

To speak, therefore, of an electric current in the nerves, is to use quite as symbolic an expression as if we compared the action of the nervous principle with light or magnetism.

Johannes Peter Muller

Physiology is the science which treats of the properties of organic bodies, animal and vegetable, of the phenomena they present, and of the laws which govern their actions. Inorganic substances are the objects of other sciences, - physics and chemistry.

Johannes Peter Muller

He who feels compelled to consider the consequences of these facts cannot but realize that the specific sensibility of nerves for certain impressions is not enough, since all nerves are sensitive to the same cause but react to the same cause in different ways.

Johannes Peter Muller

Sensation is not the conduction of a quality or state of external bodies to consciousness, but the conduction of a quality or state of our nerves to consciousness, excited by an external cause.

Johannes Peter Muller

It is exceedingly improbable that the identical action of the corresponding parts of the two retina is the result of a certain habituation, or of the influence of the mind.

Johannes Peter Muller

The sense organs experience the external light, sound, etc. with difficulty; the different sense organs only have a so-called specific receptivity for particular stimuli.

Johannes Peter Muller