Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling

514 Pages·1967·20.441 MB·English

by  Susanne K. Langer

$10.00
“Feeling stands . .. in the midst of that
vast biological field which lies between
the lowliest organic activities and the rise
of mind. It is not an adjunct to natural
events, but a turning-point in them. . . .
It is with the dawn of feeling that the
domain of biology yields the less exten­
sive, but still inestimably great domain
of psychology.
That is why I make feeling the starting-
point of a philosophy of mind. The study
of feeling . . . leads one down into bio­
logical structure and process until its esti­
mation becomes (for the time) impossible,
and upward to the purely human sphere
known as ‘culture! It is still what we feel,
and everything that can be felt, that is
important. The same concept that raises
problems of science takes one just as
surely into humanistic ones. . .
It is generally recognized that Susanne
Langer has been one of the most seminal
and refreshing influences on the develop­
ment of ideas during the mid-twentieth
century. While her major interest has
always been philosophy, her ability to ex­
tract philosophical material from a variety
of disciplines—and in turn to enliven
them with the fruits of her insight—has
underscored the often forgotten fact that
breadth and imagination are as valuable
to scholarship as they are to the arts. It
is no coincidence that her own creativity
should have been reflected in her con­
tinuing concern with the nature of created
forms.
Beginning with Philosophy in a New
Key, a book that opened a new vista to
American thought, and continuing with
Feeling and Form, Professor Langer has
developed the thesis that finds its cul­
mination in Mind: An Essay on Human
Feeling, which traces the roots of science
and art to a common ground in the special
nature of human feeling. The present
continued on back flap
Mind: An Essay on
Human Feeling
MIND: AN ESSAY ON
HUMAN FEELING
VOLUME I
SUSANNE K. LANGER
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS
BALTIMORE
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 66-25745
Copyright © 1967 by The Johns Hopkins Press
Baltimore, Maryland 21218
Printed in the United States of America
To them in whom 1 hope to live
even to the great World Peace
—
my children and their children

Acknowledgments
Volume 1
Y FIRST and well-nigh inexpressible thanks go to the Trustees
of the Edgar J. Kaufmann Charitable Trust for the support
which made the very undertaking of this book possible. For a decade
and more they have repeatedly renewed their generous grant, without
demanding concrete evidence or so much as a formal account of my
progress, although I had to spend nearly half of the time in preparation
before the writing could begin. Such faith is rarely shown to a scholar,
especially one whose work is not expected to save thousands of human
beings or to kill millions. It is as much for their confidence in my aim
and the tribute they have thereby paid to Philosophy as for their gen­
erosity that I wish I could adequately thank the members of the Board
of Trustees.
Old friends, new friends and colleagues (in one case, a colleague’s
friend’s colleague) have contributed to the making of this volume. Most
of all I am indebted to Mr. Bruno R. Neumann, for several years my
research assistant, without whose aid it would certainly not have gone to
press when it did. More important than any practical help, however, was
the intellectual spur of discussions with him, the give and take of ideas
between a political economist and a much less socially or historically
oriented thinker; so that his taking a government post in the far-off
Virgin Islands has left me with a loss that cannot be made up.
Three persons, besides Mr. Neumann, have read the entire manuscript
and given me the benefit of their reactions. Mr. Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr.,
has read it chapter by chapter, sometimes even more than one version
of a whole chapter, with the closest attention, as his constructive and
often astute criticisms proved. Dr. Anna W. Perkins, my friend since
our college days, has done likewise, and in many conversations raised
challenging questions. Mr. Thomas Hughes Ingle not only brought the
authoritative artistic views of a painter to the general support and fre­
quent improvement of Part II, but read the other parts with equal inter­
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
est and extraordinary critical competence. I thank all these readers
heartily for the time and pains they have devoted to my book.
Dr. Karl Ernst Schaefer of the United States Research Laboratory at
New London, Connecticut, has read several parts of the volume, especially
the biological chapters. To him I owe the chart of diurnal rhythms,
specially constructed in his laboratory for my purposes, as well as the
material he personally provided for its interpretation. I thank him for
this great kindness, and for all that I have learned from him. For, in
entering upon fields far from my own—biology, physiology, genetics and
evolution theory—I have sought a great deal of help from my friends,
and for this I am grateful to him and to two of my colleagues, Professors
Dorothy Richardson and Bernice Wheeler. They have generously given
me valuable information that saved me many hours of searching for
facts and current theories. Professor Wheeler has allowed me to audit
two of her courses at Connecticut College, and both she and Professor
Richardson have often alerted me to new material in the literature of
their field.
My special thanks go to Dr. Frederick Snyder, of the Adult Psychiatry
Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health at Bethesda, Mary­
land, for providing the chart of sleep rhythms, and to my colleague
Professor Otello Desiderato, and his friend Dr. Julius Segal of the Na­
tional Institute of Mental Health, for their kind offices in that connec­
tion. Several other illustrations, too, were especially made for me,
wherefor I wish to thank their originators: Mr. Louis Darling, for his
photograph of a house centipede, Miss Alice Dunbar, for her sketches of
Greek medallions in the Archeological Museum at Athens, Mr. Henry F.
Dunbar, for his photograph of beetle carvings in dead wood, and Pro­
fessor Walter R. Henson, of the Yale School of Forestry, who went to
considerable trouble to make some identification of the carver. I am also
indebted to Mr. Philip A. Biscuti at Connecticut College for his help
with the photographic work involved in several of the reproductions, to
the Yale Medical Library staff for their constant courtesy and helpful­
ness, and to the staff of the Connecticut College Library, especially to
Miss Helen K. Aitner, for locating and often borrowing research material.
Finally, I wish to express my warm gratitude to Mrs. James R.
Dunbar, who assumed the arduous task of reading the proofs; and to the
staff of The Johns Hopkins Press for their unfailing cooperation and
affability in the course of launching this first volume on whatever is to be
its career.
[viii]
Contents
Acknowledgments, Volume I viz
List of Illustrations xiii
Introduction XV
PART ONE:
PROBLEMS AND PRINCIPLES
chapter 1: FEELING 3
Feeling characteristic of animals as against plants; feeling as anything
felt; fallacy of assuming physical and nonphysical entities; “mind-brain
problem” engendered by dual standard of reality'; reality as datum and
as matter; epiphenomenalism and vitalism scientifically useless; doctrine
of “logical languages” fallacious; behaviorism an evasion of real prob­
lems; psychical phases of physiological events; organism a center of
activities; impact and autogenic action; all mental phenomena modes of
feeling; crises in natural history
chapter 2: IDOLS OF THE LABORATORY 33
Lack of development in “behavioral sciences”; false notions of scientific
status; idol of technical language—jargon; idol of scientific method—
prescriptive methodology; idol of controlled experiment—trivial research;
idol of objectivity—rejection of direct evidence; idol of mathematical
form—specious algorithms; self-criticism in current psychology; basic
weaknesses philosophical
chapter 3: PRESCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 55
Prescientific but intimate knowledge the beginning of every science; no
such knowledge of feeling among practical psychologists; obstacles to
simple introspection; models from physical science misleading; need of
images before models; guiding image and working concepts; artists as
prescientific experts on forms of feeling; adequate image makes all
auxiliary models safe
[ix]