October 14, 2018
Excerpt on Aesthesis and the epistemology of 18th century anatomical research. From Elegant Anatomy, Marieke M. A. Hendriksen
…the answer to many of the why-questions evoked by the materiality of the eighteenth-century Leiden anatomical preparations—most importantly, why do they look so distinctly different than modern anatomical preparations?—lies in aesthesis. Aesthesis is a term that occurs in eighteenth-century texts and dictionaries, albeit rather sparingly. It is not usually found in general and art dictionaries before the nineteenth century, but two examples appear in medical and philosophical dictionaries. In Barrow’s 1749 Dictionarium Medicum Universale: Or, a New Medicinal Dictionary, ‘aesthesis’ is explained as “to be sensible of, sensation, or the faculty or power of sensation.” The same definition is given in James’s 1740s medical dictionary. These appearances indicate that aesthesis was deemed specifically relevant in a medical context in the eighteenth century. Therefore aesthesis is used as an analytic category here, in search for a concept that can define a particular epistemic culture. It is very useful as it is a contemporary, eighteenth-century term denoting a reliance on the senses.
Source: Elegant Anatomy, The Eighteenth-Century Leiden Anatomical Collections. Marieke M. A. Hendriksen (2015)
Source URL: https://brill.com/view/title/24846
ID: the-concept-of-aesthesis
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