Cecilia Muratori (Università di Pavia) will talk about "The Pea and the Wave: Philosophical Physiognomics in Early Modernity".
Abstract:
‘When a pea is shot in the Mediterranean, a sharper eye than ours (but still infinitely duller than the eye of the One who sees everything) could feel the effect of this on the coasts of China’: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg thus mocks the claims of the physiognomists to be able to detect direct, subtle connections between the soul and the body. To claim to be able to connect bodily signs to corresponding features of the soul would be like stating that we can see the water rise in China by throwing a pea in a river in Germany (or in Belgium). Yet, throughout early modernity, physiognomics was a fundamental epistemological tool, rooted in psychology, for providing a theoretical and practical map of the interaction between body and soul. In my paper, I want to cast light on the philosophical foundations of physiognomics as it was understood in early modernity. My paper tries to demonstrate that physiognomics was not (only) an unlikely superstition, but a mainstream path for analysing philosophically how body and soul can influence each other.