Homo musicus
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- My dissertation examines the ways in which early modern physicians and natural philosophers employed musical metaphors and models in order to conceptualize human vital function and cognition. Almost every early modern investigation of the body, whether medical, physiological, or psychological, had to confront in some way the central tension between the faculties of the soul and the activities of the body. In music, musical instruments, and musical ideas, philosophers from across western Europe found conceptual tools with which they attempted to bridge this gap, by connecting the physical and even mechanical processes of the body with the more abstract phenomena of thought, cognition, health, and pleasure. Musical instruments were material and mechanical, and thus could describe the basic physical attributes of human bodies. But they were also affective, emotional, rational - in both their symbolism and their operation. By the middle of the 18th century, what I have dubbed homo musicus, or the musical human being, had become one of the most wide-spread metaphors of the human body, and indeed human experience. My dissertation thus tells an alternative history of mechanism, one which did not reject, but rather embraced, the soul and its faculties. Homo musicus was both an elaboration and a complication of cartesian dualism: it was a mechanism with soul.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Barnet, Edward Halley Mitchell |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Riskin, Jessica |
| Thesis advisor | Riskin, Jessica |
| Thesis advisor | Baker, Keith Michael |
| Thesis advisor | Findlen, Paula |
| Thesis advisor | Hadlock, Heather |
| Degree committee member | Baker, Keith Michael |
| Degree committee member | Findlen, Paula |
| Degree committee member | Hadlock, Heather |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Edward Halley Barnet. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/vc924nh9683 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Edward Halley Mitchell Barnet
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