Eighteenth-Century Vitalism: Bodies, Culture, Politics

本研究休假的目的是完成一本书长度的研究生理理论的新发展，发生在十八世纪中叶的苏格兰，其对当代文学，文化和政治的影响。由苏格兰医学教授罗伯特·惠特、威廉·卡伦和其他爱丁堡大学医学院的人提出的“生机生理学”，取代了“身体是机器”的既定说法，即由理性和有意识的思想控制，取而代之的是另一种模型，将身体描述为一个自我控制、自我指导的实体，强调身体的神经、“同情”力量，而不是思想的控制功能。这本书认为，这种关于身体功能及其与心灵关系的新描述具有深远的影响：对于那个时代对人类主体的理解，人类的潜意识和无意识行为和冲动现在可以开始被考虑或想象；因为它改变了传统上对上帝意志直接控制自然世界的理解，而开始形成一种唯物主义的、独立的、自我决定的自然；因为它隐含的“不受管制”的自我调节的政治隐喻，这将告知当代政治经济学的公式，并在本世纪末被激进的思想家利用；也因为它更广泛地取代了17世纪自然哲学的机械模型，对生命的难以捉摸的运作产生了新的迷恋。我的书《十八世纪活力主义：身体、文化、政治》探讨了新活力主义生理学（以及它所暗示的一切）在两个关键的、相互关联的背景下的影响、存在和影响：在许多不同但相互关联的研究分支中，哲学和科学探索的显著发展，构成了苏格兰启蒙运动，以及18世纪90年代激进的政治和文化。这本书的前半部分主要关注苏格兰启蒙运动，并探讨了新兴话语的方式，包括政治经济学和当代感性和同情的概念，这些话语是通过多种不同的方式被活力生理学所告知和重新设计的。书的后半部分探讨了苏格兰“活力主义”生理学是如何在18世纪90年代伦敦激进的政治、哲学和文化背景下被接受的。它认为，生理学似乎暗示了唯物主义的存在，自我决定的自然，不再受神的直接控制，为政治思想家提供了一个启发性的和解放的模型，他们热衷于重新思考臣民和政府之间的关系。它探讨了动画和自由的概念是如何被各种各样的当代作家——哲学家、政治理论家、诗人和小说家——所接受的，并追溯了一种“动画”语言的出现，通过这种语言，他们对政治和社会本质的信仰和希望得到了阐述。总的来说，它为18世纪科学与文化之间的关系提供了一个重要的新描述，在当代科学、政治、哲学和政治经济学中打开了文学文本的重要的新的跨学科背景，并使本世纪末的激进政治和写作与本世纪初的科学和哲学工作之间建立了新的联系。

The objective of this research leave is to complete a book-length study of a new development in physiological theory which took place in Scotland in the mid-eighteenth-century, and its influence on contemporary literature, culture and politics. The 'vitalist physiology' formulated by the Scottish medical professors, Robert Whytt, William Cullen, and others associated with the medical school at Edinburgh University, displaced an established account of the body-as-machine, governed by the rational and conscious control of the mind, with an alternative model, which depicted the body as a self-controlling, self-directing entity, and which emphasised the body's nervous, 'sympathetic' powers rather than the mind's governing function. The book argues that this new account of the functioning of the body and its relationship with the mind had far-reaching implications: for the era's understanding of the human subject, whose subconscious and unconscious acts and impulses could now begin to be contemplated or imagined; for the way it reworked a traditional understanding of God's will directly controlling the natural world, and instead began to formulate an account of a materialist, independent, and self-determining nature; for its implicitly political metaphors of 'ungoverned' self-regulation, which would inform the contemporary formulation of political economy, and be exploited by radical thinkers at the end of the century; and for its more general replacement of the mechanical models of seventeenth-century natural philosophy with a new fascination with the elusive operation of animated life. My book, _Eighteenth-Century Vitalism: Bodies, Culture, Politics_ explores the influence, presence, and effects of the new vitalist physiology (and all that it implied) in two key, interlinked contexts: the remarkable burgeoning of philosophical and scientific inquiry, in many different but interlinked branches of study, which constituted the Scottish Enlightenment, and the radical politics and culture of the 1790s. The first half of the book focuses on the Scottish Enlightenment and explores the ways emergent discourses, including political economy and contemporary notions of sensibility and sympathy, were informed by, and reworked, vitalist physiology in a number of different ways. The second half of the book explores the way a Scottish 'vitalist' physiology was received within the context of the radical politics, philosophy and culture of London in the 1790s. It argues that a physiology which appeared to imply the existence of a materialist, self-determining nature, no longer under direct divine control, offered a suggestive and liberating model for political thinkers keen to rethink the relationship between subjects and governments. It explores ways in which notions of animation and liberty were taken up by contemporary writers of all kinds - philosophers, political theorists, poets and novelists - and traces the emergence of a language of 'animation' by which their beliefs and hopes about the nature of politics and of society were expounded. Overall, it offers an important new account of the relationship between science and culture in the eighteenth-century, opening literary texts up to significant new interdisciplinary contexts in contemporary science, politics, philosophy and political economy, and enabling new connections to be made between the radical politics and writing of the end of the century and scientific and philosophical work earlier in the century.