The Sense of Movement: An Intellectual History

A new book by Roger Smith may be of interest to AHP readers: The Sense of Movement: An Intellectual History. The book is available as both an e-book and print book. Details below:

The sense of movement, the feeling of one’s body or limbs in motion, has a rich history over the last three centuries. Differentiated from general touch, linked to intuition of agency, tied to the feel for reality, associated with the notion of force in natural philosophy, close to the sense of life, it has sometimes been called ‘the sixth sense’. Inquirers have re-described it as kinaesthesia, proprioception and haptic sense. Talk of sensed movement abounds in contemporary arts and performance, in the life of sport and walking, and in the sciences of cognition and motor control. This book is the first to place this talk in its full historical setting. It combines original history with philosophical elucidation of the concepts and arguments at work when people say sensing movement matters. The book is wide in range, synthesizing discussions otherwise separated by discipline boundaries between physiology, psychology, philosophy, cultural history and history of science. The writing combines the voice of a scholar with the voice of a participant in movement.

About Jacy Young

Jacy Young is a professor at Quest University Canada. A critical feminist psychologist and historian of psychology, she is committed to critical pedagogy and public engagement with feminist psychology and the history of the discipline.