Reason And Resonance: A History Of Modern Aurality
by Veit Erlmann /
2010 / English / PDF
61.3 MB Download
How the ear came to play a central role in modern culture and
rationality.
How the ear came to play a central role in modern culture and
rationality.
Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense -- as
somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense,
sight.
Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense -- as
somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense,
sight.Reason and Resonance
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.
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.
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
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 Sömmerring, who
believed the ventricular fluid to be the interface between the
soul and the auditory nerve; the renowned physiologist Johannes
Müller, who invented the concept of "sense energies"; and
Müller's most important student, Hermann von Helmholtz, author of
the magisterial
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 Sömmerring, who
believed the ventricular fluid to be the interface between the
soul and the auditory nerve; the renowned physiologist Johannes
Müller, who invented the concept of "sense energies"; and
Müller's most important student, Hermann von Helmholtz, author of
the magisterialSensations of Tone
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 Békésy; political
activist and philosopher Günther Anders; and Martin Heidegger.