Voltaire, Buffon, and Blindness in France
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23437938 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Paterson (0000-0003-2701-4827, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Publication date | 2016-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Seeing with the Hands (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474405317.003.0005 |
| OpenAlex | W4239807235 |
| ISBN | 9781474405317 |
| Language | EN |
After Voltaire introduced an enthusiastic French readership to Molyneux’s question and Cheselden’s case study, there followed intense interest in blindness in La Mettrie, Condillac, Diderot in his Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who See (1749), and Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière (1749). To illustrate his ideas Buffon considers a hypothetical neonate who must correlate hands with eyes in order to see, the hand is “constantly measuring” so that distance and perspective can be learnt, implying that the blind still have spatial concepts.
Art · Audience measurement · Blindness · Economics · Genealogy · Order (exchange) · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Visual arts · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Optometry
| Highly cited | No |
|---|