“Homo Musicus: The Early Modern Musical Conception of the Human Being”

Edward Barnet (Stanford University)

How did the homo musicus, or the use of musical models to understand human physiology, shape 17th and 18th century physicians’ and natural philosophers’ understanding of vital function?

In this paper, I will argue that music filled a central epistemic role in early modern physiology by providing explanations for phenomena of life, which remained necessarily beyond the reach of the physician’s observations or the anatomist’s scalpel. Music had long been associated with physiological inquiry through the Pythagorean and Platonic traditions of musica humana, which described the human body as a microcosm of the macrocosmic harmonies of divine creation. By the end of the 17th century, however, the rise of mechanistic natural philosophy, coupled with the rise of the fibre as the basic element of living tissue, promoted an entirely new way of imagining the human body through music. Indeed, homo musicus was essentially a sounding instrument, composed of a network of vibrating fibres and nerves.

Vibration first appeared as a possible mechanism of vital function in the 17th century and rapidly grew in prominence during the first half of the following century. In fact, in 18th century physiology, the physical characteristics of vibration became synonymous with the criteria of good health. In this paper, I will focus in particular on the tradition of homo musicus as it developed in 17th and 18th century France, where research into sensibility frequently relied on the underlying model of resonance – as Diderot’s musical speculation in Le Rêve de d’Alembert demonstrates.

“The Acoustical Paradox: How Music was Unmoored and Set Adrift from Science in the Seventeenth Century”

Adam Fix (University of Minnesota)

From antiquity up to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, music was ever-present in mathematical and philosophical thought. Known variously as “speculative music” or “harmonics”, the science of music in the premodern world encompassed far more than the audible art form recognized today, and revolved around a simple question: why do musical sounds please human ears? However, as physico-mathematical theories of sensation supplanted traditional notions of natural and human harmony, an intractable paradox began to haunt philosophers attempting to bridge the epistemological chasm between physical and sensory phenomena. The mechanical philosophy reimagined the ear as a drum that received pulsations of sound, but proved ill-equipped to explain how this ear generated pleasures and passion in the soul. Thus the core problem of speculative music—explaining audible pleasure in rational terms—became unanswerable. Descartes, Mersenne, and Huygens, three prominent mechanists, explored the consequences of the acoustical paradox, with each realizing that their sciences could not explain the full range of experiences invoked by music. This incompatibility between music and science led to the birth of a new science of sound—known as “acoustics”—and the relegation of music to the domain of fine arts, where it has remained ever since. This talk is about the powers and limitations of the new sciences, and about what the natural philosophers of the scientific revolution chose to consider proper, scientific knowledge.

“From “Special Intelligence” to “Fundamental” Investigation: Controversy, Acoustics and a National Laboratory (1920s Britain)”

Fiona Smyth (Trinity College Dublin)

In 1923, at the request of the Government of India, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in Britain, authorised the instigation of a specialist research stream. Its purpose was to investigate problems in architectural acoustics specifically related to the new Assembly Chamber then under construction at Imperial Delhi. Ancillary to the set research agenda in building science, the research was considered to be a singular excursion, ‘a matter of practical emergency’. Architectural acoustics had not featured on the government research agenda before, and it was envisaged that experimental work would be concluded within a matter of months.

However, events surrounding the design and construction of the Chamber were to prove catalytic for subsequent scientific research in architectural acoustics in Britain. The building itself was regarded as a scientific experiment (from drawing board to construction), and, rather unusually, scientists as well as architects were involved in its design. In the process, architectural acoustics was re-categorised from ‘special intelligence’ to ‘fundamental’ investigation, becoming embedded into a national programme of government-funded research.

This paper examines the acoustic design of the Chamber at Delhi, and the manner in which a series of controversies surrounding its design and construction stimulated a national programme of building science research.