A “lost time” between science and literature: the “temps perdu” from Hermann von Helmholtz to Marcel Proust

Abstract

This article explores the recently suggested possibility that the phrase “temps perdu”, present in the title of the masterpiece of Marcel Proust, may have a scientific origin. Exactly the same expression was indeed used in 1851, about fifty years before Proust, by Hermann von Helmholtz, to indicate the latency of the physiological responses in his nerve‐muscle experiments, and in particular to designate the time of nervous conduction that he had first succeeded in measuring in 1850. A possible link between Helmholtz and Proust might be Etienne‐Jules Marey, the French scientist particularly known for his physiological studies on heart and circulation and for his development of modern methods of graphic and photographic records of physiological events. But the story might have an antecedent, connected to strange errors in astronomical observations, which might, in turn, be related to sensory perception, and particularly to visuo‐auditory coordination.

• History of science
• nerve physiology
• Etienne‐Jules Marey
• personal equation