Well, I finished Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Volume I
by Susanne K. Langer. Perhaps the most
useful thing I can say about it is that I do not feel the need to read Volume
II.
I’m not trying to
be unfairly critical. Much of the
writing is downright lyrical:
“The image of
life as motivated activity reflects an aspect of animate nature that has
baffled philosophers ever since physics rose to its supreme place among the
sciences, because inanimate nature—by far the greatest concern of physics—has no
such aspect: the telic phenomenon, the
functional relation of needs and satisfactions, ends and their attainment,
effort and success or failure. There are
no failures among the stars. Rocks have
no interests. The oceans roar for
nothing. But earthworms eat that they may
live, and draw themselves into the earth to escape robins, and seek other worms
to mate and procreate. They need not
know why they eat, contract or mate.
Their acts are telic without being purposive” (p. 220).
Similarly, much
of the material is interesting. Langer
gives a lucid and convincing explanation of why the exclusion of the subjective
from the laboratory hobbles psychological research, among other things, and
leads to various untenable positions, most dualistic in nature. Her perceptions about art go deep and promote
thought.
And yet. It’s a long book. It hasn’t aged well in some areas where the
intervening decades of research have provided more data. There are times when it seems that Langer’s
goal is to include every possible piece of supporting data, even if the first
one or two are truly convincing.
And the
kicker: after 444 pages, she feels she
has just succeeded in setting the stage to discuss the emergence of human mind
out of animal nature. Sigh.
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