Science and craftsmanship: The art of experiment and instrument making

In his two-volume monograph Untersuchungen uber thierische Elektricitat, the Berlin physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond described the relation between nervous electricity and muscle mechanics by way of a long series of experiments. This work is a key text in the history of the experimental life sciences. But it not only contains new findings about the functioning of muscles and its nerves. Du Bois-Reymond practiced an art of experimentation in which aesthetics of mechanical craftsmanship allied itself with the science of physiology. Experimentation, as du Bois-Reymond understood it, was simultaneously an epistemic and an aesthetic practice. The goal of his science was thus producing both knowledge and aesthetic success.