Physiological Acoustics

This book deals with the ear as an acoustic instrument: as a piece of physical apparatus functioning for the reception of sounds from the outside, for conveying them inward to the auditory sense cells, and finally for producing a mechanical stimulation of these cells. Originally published in 1954. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Brimming with more than more than 1700 references, this reader-friendly and extensively revised Fourth Edition will prove invaluable to instructors and students alike-providing a unified approach to the anatomical, physiological, and perceptual aspects of audition with updated chapters on the latest developments in the field.

Brimming with more than more than 1700 references, this reader-friendly and extensively revised Fourth Edition will prove invaluable to instructors and students alike-providing a unified approach to the anatomical, physiological, and perceptual aspects of audition with updated chapters on the latest developments in the field.

This book explores the interactions between science and music in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century. It examines and evaluates the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Max Planck, Shohé Tanaka, and Adriaan Fokker, leading physicists and physiologists who were committed to understanding crucial aesthetic components of the art of music, including the standardization of pitch and the implementation of various types of intonations. With a mixture of physics, physiology, and aesthetics, author Erwin Hiebert addresses throughout the book how just intonation came to intersect with the history of keyboard instruments and exert an influence on the development of Western music. He begins with the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, a leading nineteenth-century physicist and physiologist who not only made important contributions in vision, optics, electrodynamics and thermodynamics, but also helped advanced the field of music theory as well. The author traces the Helmholtzian trends of thought that become inherently more complex by reaching beyond the sciences to perform a bridge with aesthetics and the diverse ways in which the human mind interprets or is taught, in different cultures, to interpret and understand music. Next, the author explores the works of other key physicists and physiologists who were influenced by Helmholtz and added to his legacy. He examines Japanese music theory student Shohé Tanaka, who sought to design a harmonium that was not based on equal temperament but rather on just intonation. Dutch physicist Adriaan Daniel Fokker, who arranged for organs to be built based on 31-tones per octave, orchestrated concerts for these new instruments and even attempted to compose microtonal music, or music whose tonality is based on intervals smaller than the typical twelve semitones of Western music.

This fully updated and revised sixth edition of Hearing: An Introduction to Psychological and Physiological Acoustics provides a comprehensive introduction for graduate students and professionals in audiology and other fields dealing with audition (including hearing/speech science, psychology, otolaryngology, neuroscience, linguistics, and speech-language pathology). The sixth edition reflects the current status of this rapidly-evolving multidisciplinary field of hearing science.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.