Herbert Hensel

Herbert Hensel
Born	(1920-09-02)September 2, 1920 Prague
Died	January 19, 1983(1983-01-19) (aged 62) Marburg

Herbert Hensel (* September 2, 1920 in Prague; † January 19, 1983 in Marburg) was a German physiologist who worked in Heidelberg and from 1955 in Marburg.

Life

He was the son of music educator and song composer Walther Hensel (real name Julius Janiczek) and concert singer Frau Olga Janiczek (née Pokorny). The family later adopted the name Hensel.

Hensel attended the Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart from 1927 to 1939 and graduated from there. From 1939 to 1945 he did military service in the Wehrmacht and was taken prisoner of war. For a time, however, he was able to study medicine at the universities of Erlangen, Tübingen, Strasbourg and at the University of Heidelberg. On March 18, 1945, he passed the medical state examination. From 1946 to 1948 he worked as a scientific assistant at the Physiological Institute of the University of Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate in medicine on February 15, 1947. In 1949 and 1950 he was a lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College in Stockholm. In Heidelberg he habilitated on June 23, 1949 and received the venia legendi in physiology.

Hensel was full professor of physiology at the Philipps University of Marburg, and in 1965/66 also its rector. Prior to that, he served as dean of the medical faculty in 1964/1965. Together with Gunther Hildebrandt, he established the special research area "Adaptation and Rehabilitation" in Marburg. He was chairman of the German branch of the International Society of Biometeorology and since 1974 also vice president of the International Society of Biometeorology. He was a member of the Leopoldina since 1971. He was involved in the conception of the University of Witten/Herdecke and in its predecessor organization "Free European Academy of Sciences".

He was active in the field of physiology of temperature regulation and cardiovascular research. A major part of his work was devoted to sensory physiology, especially the study of the sense of heat, on which his international reputation was based. He received various honors and awards, including the Adolf Fick Prize in 1954, the Feldberg Prize in 1961, and the Camillo Golgi medal in 1974.

For him, sensory physiology was a gateway into the wider field of the phenomena of sensory perception, which he regarded as an independent area of natural science and as capable of forming new foundations for epistemological thinking.

Whoever deals with the perception of man is led into an area which lies before and between all positive sciences. Sensory science as an autonomous science is a no man's land between the established disciplines. Precisely because of this, it is called to participate in a reconsideration of the foundations of the sciences and to pave new ways of knowledge.

— Herbert Hensel, Die Sinneswahrnehmung des Menschen

References to the foundations of a phenomenological science of sense perception, were found among others in Husserl, Rudolf Steiner, Viktor von Weizsäcker or Goethe as a natural scientist.

The importance of anthroposophy for the empirical sciences lies above all in the fact that it gives suggestions and raises new questions which can then be taken up by empirical research and worked on independently. This does not mean any restriction of the intellectual freedom of the researcher, since he must find the answers to the questions by his own work. In contrast to this is the method, widespread among anthroposophical scientists, of setting certain statements of anthroposophy a priori as absolute truth and then supporting them by gathering known facts from the scientific literature. Apart from the fact that nothing new comes out of this, this method misses the question of truth and harms both anthroposophy and empirical science.

— Herbert Hensel, Zum Verhältnis von Anthroposophie und Hochschule

He suffered from a kidney condition that became increasingly severe in the early 1980s, making him a dialysis patient.

Works

• Christophersen, Jes; Larcher, Walter; Precht, Herbert (1973). Temperature and Life. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-65708-5. ISBN 978-3-642-65710-8.