Helmholtz never clearly separated perceived pitch from the presence of a matching physical partial

Evidence

It is all the more surprising after this eloquent summary that Helmholtz did not assign a synthetic role to the sensation of pitch. Moreover, Helmholtz’s theories of “tokens” or “signs” were part of a sophisticated understanding of epistemology that could have cleared this up, but instead he followed Ohm, apparently failing to recognize pitch as one of his tokens! Helmholtz dismissed pitch as periodicity, sidestepping issues of missing fundamentals and nonperiodic tones. Later, in discussing combination tones, Helmholtz wrongly attributes the perceived pitch to a partial created in the ear by nonlinear interactions as we mentioned earlier. (This may actually happen for very loud tones, however.) Helmholtz apparently thought that hearing a tone or pitch of f meant a partial at f had to be present, but his discussion is ambiguous because he is imprecise about the presence of pure partials in the perceived tone. This absolutely key point was muddled up in On the Sensation of Tone, for, as his translator, John Ellis, said, “Even Prof. Helmholtz himself has not succeeded in using his word Ton consistently for a simple tone only” (that is, a simple partial). This is the one thing he should have made crystal clear, but he repeatedly fails to do so: Does one always hear a sinusoidal partial oscillating at any given perceived pitch? The answer is, clearly, no, but Helmholtz never quite framed the question this way. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2063

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s standing interest in how historical scientific paradigms obscure what later seems obvious; also echoes Helmholtz’s place in chapter discussions of combination tones earlier in this book.