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The mind's magic lantern : David Brewster and the scientific imagination

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Date
2021
Author
Jenkins, Bill
Keywords
David Brewster
Romanticism
Common sense philosophy
Scottish Enlightenment
Natural philosophy
Philosophy of science
B Philosophy (General)
BF Psychology
Q Science
T-NDAS
AC
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Abstract
The imagination has always been thought to operate primarily in conjunction with the sense of vision, imagined objects and scenes being conjured up before the ‘mind’s eye’. In early nineteenth-century Scotland the natural philosopher David Brewster developed a theory of the imagination that explained its operation through a reversal of the normal processes of visual perception. These ideas were rooted in the mental philosophy of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. For Brewster the mind’s eye was also the eye of the body, and images from the memory and imagination were projected onto the retina in the same manner that images were projected onto the screen in a magic lantern show. This theory underpinned his belief that imagination played an essential role in scientific discovery. Brewster believed that this process was as essential to the discoveries of science as it was to the creation of great poetry. The writings of Brewster can tell us a great deal about the connections between science and literature in the early nineteenth century, as well as showing that the philosophy of science in contemporary Britain was far from monolithic.
Citation
Jenkins , B 2021 , ' The mind's magic lantern : David Brewster and the scientific imagination ' , History of European Ideas , vol. 47 , no. 7 , pp. 1094-1108 . https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2021.1883091
Publication
History of European Ideas
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2021.1883091
ISSN
0191-6599
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final version is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2021.1883091.
Description
This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [grant number RPG-2018-017].
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/25848

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