ABSTRACT
Hermann von Helmholtz considered his work in epistemology as updating Kant's views in light of new developments in experimental physiology. Helmholtz considered himself to be more consistently Kantian than Kant had been himself. In seeking to understand perceptual and cognitive abilities via the construction of a scientific theory, W. V. O. Quine and Donald Davidson perforce located themselves in another, and Kantian, tradition. This stemmed from the great nineteenth century scientist and mathematician Hermann von Helmholtz and had previously influenced both Frege and Wittgenstein. Helmholtz saw the relation of movement to perception in a further and deeper way. Scientific observation indicated that the nervous system actively controls the collection of sensory data via bodily movements and changes that it initiates. Hence, as he stressed, all "sensations of the external senses" were "preceded by some sort of innervation" so that they were all "spatially determined."
