Vampirisme, corps mastiquants et la force de l'imagination: Analyse des premiers traités sur les vampires (1659-1755)

site web: http://www.paris-sorbonne.fr/IMG/pdf/6-_Veirmeir.pdfNombreux sont ceux qui croient que les vampires ont été inventés par Bram Stoker ou qu'ils sont un produit de l'imagination de John Polidori. Or les sources historiques montrent que les vampires sont mentionnés dès le début de l'ère moderne, et qu'ils furent au centre de débats très vifs, aussi bien en médecine, qu'en philosophie et en théologie. Dans cette contribution, je montre que la mort des victimes du vampirisme était interprétée comme la conséquence très concrète des pouvoirs de l'imagination. Certains médecins, philosophes et théologiens attribuaient les effets du vampirisme à l'imagination surexcitée des victimes supposées. D'autres considéraient que la cause résidait dans l'action maléfique d'avatars corporels ou semi-corporels. La présente étude de cas met au jour l'importance de l'imagination dans les discours sur le vampirisme de la première modernité. J'établis de surcroît que dans le courant des dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles, la perception du vampirisme est évolué d'une " maladie de l'imagination " vers une " maladie imaginaire "

CIRCULATING KNOWLEDGE OR SUPERSTITION?: THE DUTCH DEBATE ON DIVINATION

This article describes the Dutch reception of an international controversy about the divining rod. gives us a beautiful picture of the ways in which natural philosophy was practiced and disseminated in the Low Countries at the turn of the seventeenth century. It offers us an idea of the scientific demonstrations going on in Dutch bourgeois domestic settings, the personal contacts by which scientific claims were transferred, as well as the ways in which controversies were initiated and perpetuated. This sometimes intense and venomous controversy between advocates and opponents of the divining rod developed in journal publications, books and pamphlets, enrolling the local doctors, literati and savants, but also drawing in intellectuals of international stature. On a theoretical level, I will take the notion of 'circulation of knowledge' seriously. Asking whether 'knowledge' - both skills and theoretical knowledge - is something that can be circulated has led me to distinguish three crucial levels in the circulation of knowledge

From Psychosomatic and Maternal Fancy to Demonic and Cosmic Imagination. : Wonders, Imagination and Spirit of Nature in Henry More.

See also the related article: Vermeir, K. (2012) ‘Castelli in aria: immaginazione e Spirito della Natura in Henry More’ in LoSguardo, 10 (3), 99-122.The recent secondary literature has discussed theories of the maternal imagination in relation to animal generation and heredity, ignoring the broader context of theories of the powerful imagination. In this article, I will show how van stories about the maternal imagination were used to explore the action of souls after death, the power of demons and the shape of paradise. For Henry More (1614-1687), these stories provided empirical proof for the activity of the Spirit of Nature, and they were instrumental in his defense of Christianity against atheists and enthusiasts. More would attribute special powers, even a cosmic reach, to the imagination. These extended powers were made plausible or were rejected by comparing or contrasting them to the effects of the maternal imagination

Philosophical Enquiries into the Science of Sensibility

This chapter places Burke's Philosophical Enquiry in its broader context of a culture of sensibility. The three sections of this introductory essay broadly correspond to the three sections of this book. The first part, 'Science and sensibility', provides a background to the writing of Burke's Philosophical Enquiry and how it fits into the medical and scientific study of sensibility. The writing of this text in its particular eighteenth-century culture reflects both a reaction to overly mechanistic world-views, on the one hand, and secondly, the necessity of verifying all theories in experience. Burke's contribution to the scientific core of the culture of sensibility consisted in an emphasis on nerves and feelings as well as physiological causes that could be recognised in the common person's experience. The second part, 'Sensibility, morals and manners', considers the moral implications of this physiological and psychological experience. On the one hand, by examining literary examples of Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson, it is shown that the experience of reading was considered an emotional and character-building enterprise. The result of reading novels could be called 'sentimental education'. Earlier eighteenth-century writers such as the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson attempted to bring together beauty and the good by defending a theory of 'moral sensibility', which would later be elaborated by Hume and Smith. Burke differs from this perspective by defending a distinction between virtue and beauty. On the other hand, Burke's physiological theory is closely tied to his view of morality. It is the sublime, through its tensions and labours, that more likely leads to virtue, in contrast to the indolence and relaxation of beauty. In the third part, 'Sensibility and aesthetics', it is further shown how the notion of taste and the arts developed in the eighteenth century. Behind this development were the ability to arouse emotions by means of words as well as rhetorical gestures and devices. Does everyone universally react in the same way to the same stimuli? The answer to this question is both scientific and aesthetic, requiring experimental methods to prove the probability of how art, music but also food, for instance, affect the human beings' sensible nature. The introductory essay ends with an analysis of the context in which the discussion about universality versus diversity arises vis à vis the 'standard of taste', in particular in the work of Burke and Hume

Varieties of wonder: John Wilkins' Mathematical Magic and the perpetuity of invention

Akin to the mathematical recreations, John Wilkins' Mathematicall Magick (1648) elaborates the pleasant, useful and wondrous part of practical mathematics, dealing in particular with its material culture of machines and instruments. We contextualize the Mathematicall Magick by studying its institutional setting and its place within changing conceptions of art, nature, religion and mathematics. We devote special attention to the way Wilkins inscribes mechanical innovations within a discourse of wonder. Instead of treating ‘wonder’ as a monolithic category, we present a typology, showing that wonders were not only recreative, but were meant to inspire Wilkins' readers to new mathematical inventions

Rheological characterization of gel-in-oil-in-gel type structured emulsions

AbstractWe report the fabrication of multiple emulsions where both the enclosed and the external water phases are structured using a combination of two non-gelling biopolymers. Emulsions (with gelled inner water droplets and gelled water continuous phase) were created using a simple ‘one-step’ process where the oil phase (triglyceride oil and polyglycerol polyricinoleate) and the water phase (containing a combination of locust bean gum and carrageenan) were emulsified at an elevated temperature (70 °C) followed by cooling to room temperature. The temperature triggered gelling of the synergistic biopolymer combination led to the formation of structured emulsions on cooling. Flowable to self-standing emulsion gels could be prepared by changing the total concentration of polymers (and the ratios of the individual polymers) as confirmed from low amplitude oscillatory shear rheology and creep recovery measurements. The cryo-scanning electron microscopy images of freeze-fractured emulsion samples revealed the presence of gelled inner water droplets. Further, when subjected to heating and cooling cycles, emulsions displayed reversible rheological changes which could be tuned by simply changing the total polymer concentration and the proportions of individual polymers. Such biopolymer-based structured emulsions with interesting microstructure and rheological properties could find potential applications in bio-related fields like food structuring

Histoire intellectuelle des techniques (XVIIIe-XXe siècle)

Liliane Perez, directrice d’étudesSophie Archambault de Beaune, professeur à l’Université Jean-Moulin/Lyon-IIIKoen Vermeir, chargé de recherche au CNRS Analogie et techniques. Approches pluridisciplinaires Compte rendu non communiqu