Modernity and the plasticity of perception

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 59, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 11-17

  Carroll, Noël ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 36249015831     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0021-8529.00002     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (11)

1. Marx W. Wartofsky, "Art History and Perception," in Perceiving Artworks, ed. John Fisher (Temple University Press, 1980).
2. Wartofsky does briefly allude to the theory/observation debate in the philosophy of science, suggesting that pictures supply something like the framework for vision that theories are said to provide for scientific observations. However, his comments are too fleeting to warrant sustained criticism. Were this position developed more fully, it might certainly call for the type of criticisms Danto raises. Jerry Fodor, for example, raises objections parallel to Danto's against the thesis of the theory-ladenness of observation in the philosophy of science. See: Wartofsky, "Art History and Perception," p. 24;
3. and Jerry Fodor, "Observation Reconsidered," Philosophy of Science 51 (1984);
4. Jerry Fodor, "A Reply to Churchland's 'Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality,'" Philosophy of Science 55 (1988).
5. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 69.
6. One thing that makes it very difficult to evaluate claims about changes in perception in modernity is that commentators do not always seem to agree about the nature of those changes. Indeed, at times they seem to have diametrically opposed phenomena in mind. For example, the influential theorist Wolfgang Schivelbusch claims that modernity as a result of the experience of nineteenth-century train riding gave rise to a panoramic form of perception. But such a form of perception would be distanced. Therefore, Schivelbusch's hypothesis seems incompatible with Benjamin's claims about the deterioration of the aura. Who is right? Don't we need to settle this question or to discount both Benjamin and Schivelbush's conjectures in order to address concretely the issue of whether perception changed? Mustn't we know what we are looking for? Unfortunately, some commentators appear to accept both Benjamin's and Schivelbush's claims without realizing the tension between them. This makes arguing about the change of perception thesis pretty slippery. See Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey (University of California Press, 1986).
7. Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," p. 223.
8. Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (MIT Press, 1992), p. 20.
9. Jonathan Crary, "Dr. Mabuse and Mr. Edison," Art and Film since 1945: Hall of Mirrors, ed. Russell Ferguson (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996), p. 265.
10. For further argumentation, from an evolutionary point of view, against the notion that media change perception, see Noël Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), chap. 2.
11. For a trenchant, detailed discussion of the modernity hypothesis with respect to early cinema, see David Bordwell, On the History of Film Style (Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 141-146.