Cartesianism

Abstract: After Wundt’s change of status from being a physiologist of no particular note to professor of philosophy at Germany’s largest university, it was natural that he should make a more careful statement of his metaphysical position than the “Closing Remarks”with which he ended the Principles of Physiological Psychology (pp. 171–177). In the second edition, accordingly, that short chapter was expanded into two chapters, each twice as long as the original. Section 23 (“Metaphysical Hypotheses about the Nature of Mind”) is an expanded treatment of the topics included in paragraphs 3–7 of the earlier statement. Errors that had been committed in stating the views of Descartes and Leibniz were corrected by substituting for their names, at the appropriate places, “the Cartesians” and “followers of Leibniz.” Unguarded references to interaction (Wechselwirkung) of body and mind were not eliminated from this chapter.

Abstract: Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense -- as somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense, sight. Reason and Resonance explodes this myth by reconstructing the process through which the ear came to play a central role in modern culture and rationality. For the past four hundred years, hearing has been understood as involving the sympathetic resonance between the vibrating air and various parts of the inner ear. But the emergence of resonance as the centerpiece of modern aurality also coincides with the triumph of a new type of epistemology in which the absence of resonance is the very condition of thought. Our mind's relationship to the world is said to rest on distance or, as the very synonym for reason suggests, reflection. Reason and Resonance traces the genealogy of this "intimate animosity" between reason and resonance through a series of interrelated case studies involving a varied cast of otologists, philosophers, physiologists, pamphleteers, and music theorists. Among them are the seventeenth-century architect-zoologist Claude Perrault, who refuted Cartesianism in a book on sound and hearing; the Sturm und Drang poet Wilhelm Heinse and his friend the anatomist Samuel Sommerring, who believed the ventricular fluid to be the interface between the soul and the auditory nerve; the renowned physiologist Johannes Muller, who invented the concept of "sense energies"; and Muller's most important student, Hermann von Helmholtz, author of the magisterial Sensations of Tone. Erlman also discusses key twentieth-century thinkers of aurality, including Ernst Mach; the communications engineer and proponent of the first nonresonant wave theory of hearing, Georg von Bekesy; political activist and philosopher Gunther Anders; and Martin Heidegger.

Abstract: Introduction Mechanics and Cosmology 1. Descartes and the natural philosophy of the Coimbra commentaries Dennis Des Chene 2. Descartes' debt to Beeckman: inspiration, cooperation, conflict Klaas Van Berkel 3. The foundational role of hydrostatics and statics in Descartes' natural philosophy Stephen Gaukroger 4. Force, determination and impact Peter MaLaughlin 5. A different Descartes: Descartes' programme for a mathematical physics in his correspondence Daniel Garber 6. Casual powers and occasionalism from Descartes to Malebranche Desmond Clarje 7. Modelling nature: Descartes versus Reigus Theo Verbeek 8. The influence of Cartesian cosmology in England Peter Harrison Method, Optics, and the Role of Experiment 9. NeoAristotle and method: between Zabarella and Descartes Timothy Reiss 10. Figuring things out: figurate problem-solving in the early Descartes Dennis Sepper 11. The theory of the rainbow Jean-Robert Armogathe 12. Descartes' opticien: the construction of the law of refraction and the manufacture of its physical rationales, 1618-1629 John A. Schuster 13. A 'science for honneteshommes': La Recherche de la Verite and the deconstruction of experimental knowledge Alberto Guillermo Ranea 14. Descartes, experiments, and a first generation Cartesian, Jacques Rohault Trevor McLaughlin 15. Cartesian physiology Annie Bitbol-Hesperies 16. The resources of a mechanist physiology and the problem of goal-directed processes Stephen Gaukroger 17. Betes machines Katherine Morris 18. Descartes' cardiology and its reception in English physiology Peter Anstey Imagination and Representation 19. Descartes' theory of imagination and perspectival art Betsy Newell Decyk 20. From sparks of truth to the glow of possibility Peter Schouls 21. Descartes' theory of visual spatial perception Celia Wolf-Devine 22. Symposium on Descartes on perceptual cognition. Introduction John Sutton Descartes and Formal Signs David Behan Descartes' startling doctrine of the reverse sign relation Peter Slezak Bibliography