publications

Author: Elena Serrano Jerez.

Journal: Nuncius, 39 (2): 338–361
(special issue) Touching Visions: Intersensoriality and Gender in the History of Science (ed. by Hansun Hsiung, Elena Paulino, and Elena Serrano.

Abstract: Exploring music’s influence on the physiological model developed by the Benedictine natural philosopher Benito J. Feijoo (1676–1764), this article aims to contribute to ongoing conversations about the role of intersensory, affectional, and gender experiences in the production of knowledge. One of the most influential writers in the Hispanic world, Feijoo sought to explain how the impressions of the external world captured by the senses could come to provoke “passions” or “movements of the soul,” what today we call “emotions.” The article suggests that Feijoo’s deep knowledge of the nature of sound, his observations and readings about music’s influence on mood and health, and above all, the intense feelings that music aroused in him influenced his view on the physiology of emotions.

Keywords: history of emotions, intersensoriality, gender.

Author: Tasio Rodrigo.

Journal: Dynamis, 44(2): 491-520.

Abstract: The second half of the 19th century begins to shape a new way of understanding and interacting with sound, which drifts from a romantic to a modern zeitgeist. In Europe, the acoustic theories held by Helmholtz and Tyndall were accompanied by a new musical-esthetic thought based on the material determinism of hearing. This work analyzes the way in which this European acoustic science, along with its adjacent significations, was interpreted in the local context of Barcelona, considering the conditions of the Catholic religion. A case study of the 1877 lectures given by Francisco de Paula Rojas at the Ateneu Barcelonès is used to examine the construction of a Catholic acoustic theory in which scientific and religious elements were presented in harmony. This approach allows extraction of the interactions between scientific and religious cosmology and of the relationships between scientific and aesthetic thought.

Keywords: acoustics, 19th century, aesthetics, music, Barcelona, religion.