Brad Evans
Rutgers University
Brad Evans is Associate Professor in the English Department at Rutgers University. He is the author of Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865-1920 (2005); co-editor of Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis, the Kwakwaka’wakw, and the Making of Modern Cinema (2014); and editor of a special edition of Criticism, “After the Cultural Turn” (2007). He co-produced the restoration of In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914; dir. Edward S. Curtis). His essays have appeared in American Quarterly, ESL, American Literary History, and the Henry James Review, and edited volumes.
Organizer: Brad Evans
Co-Chairs: Dorri Beam and Erica Fretwell
Participants: Shari Goldberg, John Modern Joan Richardson, Lindsay Reckson and Hannah Wells
ANYONE INTERESTED IS INVITED TO ACCESS READINGS AND JOIN IN THE CONVERSATION. WE WILL BE READING AN EXCERPT FROM ELEMENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY AND THE LITTLE BOOK OF LIFE AFTER DEATH.
READINGS ARE HERE:
http://bit.ly/2G3xZSP
Gustav Fechner (1801-1887), one of the major influences on American scientific and artistic thinking in the 19th and early 20th centuries, is one of those “essential but largely unknown” European intellectuals who ought to be of more interest today. Fechner is classifiable, in this regard, alongside figures like Hippolyte Taine, Alexander von Humboldt, and Wilhelm Wundt, although he ranks significantly higher than them on the unfamiliarity scale. This roundtable is designed to correct for Fechner’s obscurity by providing an opportunity for some informal reading of and thinking about his work. Panelists will consider a very short selection of his writing, agreed upon in advance, and present 3-minute responses at the C19 conference as the basis for further discussion.
There would appear to be a central contradiction at the heart of our understanding of Fechner, such as that understanding is. On the one hand, he is credited with initiating the field of experimental psychology, and especially for developing psychometric methods for measuring stimulus thresholds, including a formula for calculating the “just noticeable difference,” the smallest level at which sense stimuli are perceived or not. By demonstrating that the workings of the mind can be measured and quantified, and thus that there is a definable link between mental and material worlds, Fechner offered an essential correction to Kant and opened up numerous new lines for the social-scientific study of human thought, experience and interaction. His influence was broad and touched fields ranging from psychology and philosophy to geography, geometry, mathematics, and anthropology.
The contradiction is that while he is known for measuring and mathematically assessing the mind, he is perhaps equally remembered for his metaphysical mysticism. Fechner argued, for example, in favor of the general consciousness of nature—for the idea of the consciousness of the earth and the planets, thereby linking the consciousness of man to God—as well as for the notion that shadows are living things, for the existence of the fourth dimension, and for the continuation of life after death. Thus while Fechner’s psychometric research led a young Boas to write a doctoral dissertation on the color of ice, and to the discovery that his problem wasn’t so much one of perception as of cultural preconception, Fechner’s metaphysics also led a mature William James to write an appreciative introduction to the English translation in 1904 of The Little Book of Life after Death.
How is it that these two, seemingly contradictory lines of research come to cohere in Fechner’s life and work? In what directions can we track the influence his innovative solution to the mind/body, subject/object split? What avenues to the study of American culture are opened up by returning Fechner to his place among the major intellectual influencers of 19th century artistic and social scientific thought?
This roundtable will run in the style of a seminar. Participants will decide in advance on a set of primary materials from Fechner that will form the basis of our discussion. At the event, they will offer exceptionally brief thoughts, no more than 3-minutes each, before we open the floor to discussion.
The readings are brief
