Though Balmer and Rayleigh did not comment on the disappearance of music as part of
the foundations of their work, other scientists indicated awareness and even intentionality
about the process that Husserl summarized by saying that “ sedimentation is always
somehow forgetfulness. ”^1 In part, this reflected a widespread decision of scientists to reach
past the “ all-too-human, ” including music and sensation in general. Thus, in 1909 Max
Planck argued that
the characteristic feature of the actual development of the system of theoretical physics is an ever
extending emancipation from the anthropomorphic elements, which has for its object the most
complete separation possible of the system of physics and the individual personality of the physicist.
One may call this the objectiveness of the system of physics. ... Certainly, I might add, each great
physical idea means a further advance toward the emancipation from anthropomorphic ideas. This
was true in the passage from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican cosmical system, just as it is true at
the present time for the apparently impending passage from the so-called classical mechanics of
mass points to the general dynamics originating in the principle of relativity.^2
Planck had nothing against the sensible grounds of physics — and, as we shall see, he was
deeply concerned with music — but he felt that physics should aspire to a degree of gen-
erality that rises far above the sense data that originally evoked it or even the experimental
data that can serve to test it. Given his call to remove anthropomorphic elements from
physics, one might have inferred that he would have praised the greater generality of
mathematical physics, which referred to music less and less.^3
Planck ’ s own case, however, shows the curious ways in which music could still figure
in the intellectual life of someone so deeply committed to transcending the anthropomor-
phic and merely personal. An exemplary Kulturtr ä ger , highly cultivated and especially
devoted to music, Planck was a pianist of considerable skill. As a student, he composed
songs and even an entire operetta that was performed in the musical evenings that were
fixtures of professorial life in those days; he conducted choruses and orchestras, played
the organ at church services, and studied harmony and counterpoint.^4 He wondered whether
he should pursue a career in music rather than physics. In 1877, he spent a student year
in Berlin, where he studied with Helmholtz, reading thermodynamics and eventually
17 Planck ’ s Cosmic Harmonium
