The Sense of Touch

This book offers the first comprehensive study of medieval and modern debates on the nature of touch – its objects, limits, and operations – from the mid thirteenth century to the early twentieth century. Spanning the period from the rise of Aristotelian university curricula to the flourishing of experimental psychology, it demonstrates how touch recurrently emerged as a central concern in philosophical and scientific inquiry.

In recent years, scholarly interest in the history of sense perception, perceptual theories, and the physiology of the sensory organs has grown significantly. This volume advances these fields by bringing to the fore a foundational question that has engaged philosophers, teachers, practitioners, and physicians for centuries, yet has not received sustained and focused analysis at the intersection of the history of philosophy and the sciences: what is touch?

The nine chapters of this collection, authored by leading specialists, illuminate the core debates surrounding touch and emphasize their broader intellectual significance. With a chronological scope spanning more than six centuries, the book will appeal to a wide community of scholars in philosophy and the sciences, as well as to advanced students and researchers, responding to the growing interest in the study of sense perception in general and touch in particular.