Re: history of hearing science reference

Dear Valeriy,

"Origins in Acoustics" by Frederick V. Hunt (ASA, 1992) covers the history of acoustics from the ancient Greeks till the end of the 18th century. He sadly passed away before he had the chance to complete it, until Robert T. Beyer continued from the exact same point in "Sounds of Our Times" (Springer, 1999) and reached until 1995. Much of the early acoustics described in the first volume is more about hearing and music than anything else, as the various people involved had used their ears as their only available measurement tools. In the latter book, Beyer separated the 20th century development to sub-disciplines, where it could be easier to single out the highlights related only to psychoacoustics, the physiology of the ear, etc.

Hope that helps.

Best,

Adam Weisser.

From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [mailto:AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Haworth
Sent: Wednesday, 31 August 2016 9:33 PM
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [AUDITORY] history of hearing science reference

Dear Valeriy,

Some good 'internalist' accounts of hearing science history and developments, akin to the Neuhoff, can be found in the below references.

Davis, Audrey B., and Uta C. Merzbach. Early Auditory Studies: Activities in the Psychology
Laboratories of American Universities. Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1975.

Davis, Hallowell. “Psychological and Physiological Acoustics: 1920-1942.” Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America 61, no. 2 (1977): 264-66.

Plomp, Reinier. The Intelligent Ear: On the Nature of Sound Perception. Mahwah,
N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.

And to the above references to Sterne, Mills and Hui I would add David Trippet and Alex Rehding's work. Cultural and critical histories of hearing science are on the rise at the moment...

Best wishes,

Christopher

Christopher Haworth, Ph.D.

Early Career Cheney Fellow in Culture
Leeds Humanities Research Institute

University of Leeds

On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 6:09 AM, Roland Wittje <roland.wittje@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear Valeriy,

You might want to look at Alexandra Hui's "The Psychophysical Ear Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910", published by MIT Press in 2012:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/alexandra-hui

or the writings of Mara Mills:

http://maramills.org/bio/

You might also want to look at the Sound Studies Reader, edited by Jonathan Sterne and published by Routledge in 2012:

https://www.routledge.com/The-Sound-Studies-Reader/Sterne/p/book/9780415771313

Best, Roland

On 31 August 2016 at 04:09, Valeriy Shafiro <firosha@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear list members,

I am looking for suggestions for your favorite book, article or chapter that provides a comprehensive treatment of the history of hearing science that I could use in a graduate level course. Most hearing science textbooks that I have seen go straight to the description of acoustic and perceptual phenomena and underlying physiology with an occasional historical anecdote. I have seen some interesting and useful history overviews in works introducing new paradigms and theoretical perspectives such as John Neuhoff's Ecological Psychoacoustics or Arlinger's et al. The emergence of cognitive hearing science. However, beyond that I have not seen much on the history of hearing science that would introduce major developments, questions, ideas. Maybe this is because hearing science is still young and is not a tightly defined discipline with its history scattered across other fields, but I am curious if something has already been written.

cheers,

Valeriy

--

Roland Wittje
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Chennai 600 036
India
Phone: +91-7358517637
+91-442257-6540
e-mail: roland.wittje@xxxxxxxxx