Next
Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 24 Feb 2021

Taken: 23 Feb 2021

0 favorites     4 comments    96 visits

See also...

Keywords

Image from the book •
Soul Made Flesh •
Author •
Carl Zimmer •
Page 260 •
Hograth •
William Hograth •
Second-excerpt •
The Invention of Science •
David Wootton •

Authorizations, license

Visible by: Everyone
Attribution + non Commercial
96 visits

Page 260

Page 260
“CREDULITY, SUPERSTITION, AND FANATISICM, BY WILLIAM HOGRATH 1762
THE “BRAIN THERMOMETER” IN THE LOWER RIGHT CORNER IS ALMOST
CERTAINLY ADAPTED FROM CHRISTOPHER WREN’S ILLUSTRATION
IN THOMAS WILLIS’S THE ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN AND NERVES


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credulity,_Superstition,_and_Fanaticism
Comments
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
To drive home his point, Hogarth en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hogarth placed a brain in the lower right-hand corner of the picture almost no one in his audience would have seen the actual human brain, but Hogarth felt no need to identify it with a label. The brain simply sits there in the church, with the frontal poles of its cerebral cortex pointed upward, exposing the Circle of Willis and the nerved sprouting from the brain’s underside. It identified to Wren’s drawing of a century earlier, its position intended to reveal God’s handiwork and to place the human brain in contemplation of heaven above.

But Hogarth’s brain also sprouts a thermometer from its frontal poles -- another icon of the scientific revolution, representing objective measurement over subjective judgment. Its scale does not measure degree of heat, but degrees of madness, running from the melancholy lows of suicide and despair to the manic heights of lust, ecstasy, and convulsions. ~ Page 286
4 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Soul Made Flesh
4 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Between 1653 and 1692 many of the new philosophers were concerned to assert their orthodoxy by demonstrating their belief in angels and demons, even though these arguments fitted uncomfortably with the sedate, polite world which in other respects, they aspired to occupy. After 1692 Newtonianism offered a viable alternative argument for faith, the argument from the balance of probabilities, which was set loose, first against witchcraft and then eventually against miracles. Arguments for belief in magic and witchcraft were largely abandoned. But over time, the middle ground that people like Sprat and Bentley had sought to occupy between superstition and rationalism became increasingly embattled, and the pendulum began to swing the other way. As the gospel miracles came (at least implicitly) under attack, what had recently been regarded as superstition became respectable again. Hogarth represents this new world in ‘Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism’ (1762) which, as well as satirizing contemporary events, looks back to the beginning of the century, when such views had last been voiced: Mary Toft is giving birth to rabbits; a copy of Glanvil is piled with Wesley’s sermons under the thermometer of fanaticism, and on the top of the thermometer stands the drummer of Tedworth. An era of scepticism was giving way to a new species of Enthusiasm. ~ Page 471
3 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
The INVENTION of SCIENCE
3 years ago.

Sign-in to write a comment.