ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

On perception, mathematical violence, and the afterlife of sciences: Did the 17th century European ‘Science of Music’ really come to an end?

• In Event: How Sciences End 1

English Abstract

Historians of early modern science and music have been trying to explain, at least since the 1980’s, the alleged disappearance of what was termed in Europe the ‘science of music’, towards the end of the 17th Century. While most natural-philosophers and mathematicians of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe held their own fully developed mathematical theory of music, corresponded heavily about it, and debated on the philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic consequences of their theories, this stopped being the case by the beginning of 18th century. One narrative explaining this sharp shift has emphasized the emergence of the new ‘science of sound’, or acoustics, thereby arguing that the scientific practices, communities, discourses, and instruments did not really disappear all of sudden, but rather gradually took on a new form, along a new set of objectives, ideals, and artistic-cultural and ethical aspirations. In my talk I will argue that while this explanation has many merits, it is lacking in a few respects. Whereas it rightly exposes the underlying continuity disguised by the existing story of abrupt disappearance, it does not do justice to the historical actors’ own explicit representations and narratives of a major disciplinary reorganisation taking place. I will try to show that the epistemic distinctions formed between the old ‘science of music’ and the modern ‘science of sound’ – mainly the new division of labour regarding aesthetic value and the romantic exclusion of scientific discourse from the artistic-cultural sphere – still play out a significant role in our own understandings of the politics of musical knowledge.

Author

• Yoav Beirach, Max Planck Institute for History of Science