Insofar as the most innovative instruments of the era – the telescope and the microscope – extended the range and acuity of one sense in particular, scientific experience tended to privilege the visual, with its capacity to produce knowledge at a distance, over the other senses. Even when Bacon castigated normal vision for staying on [...]
Category Archives: academia
The Hegemony of the Eye
Also posted in history, ideas, intellectualhistory, philosophy, quotes
Tagged history of science, instruments, John Poinsot, Martin Jay, microscope, perspective, Renaissance, Songs of Experience, telescope, the eye
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Zeno of Citium on Flute-Playing Olives and Harp-Bearing Trees
In his On the Nature of the Gods Cicero alludes to Zeno of Citium‘s discussion of flute-playing olives and harp-bearing trees: “If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you [...]
Also posted in history, philosophers, philosophy, quotes
Tagged Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Zeno of Citium
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Hamann and Benjamin on the Concept of Experience
Next month I’ll be giving a paper at the upcoming The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin conference at Goldsmiths, University of London. Here’s the abstract: In his 1917 essay “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, Benjamin wrote: “The great transformation and correction which must be performed upon the concept of experience, oriented so one-sidedly along [...]
Also posted in benjamin, hamann, history, intellectualhistory, philosophers, philosophy, talks
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