The sensitivity of the body was related to the ways in which the senses became a field of study and government, particularly through the ways in which physiology and experimental psychology were trying to understand how the body reacted to certain stimuli. In the eighteenth-century, physiological conceptions of the human were under scientific wars. On the one side, man is seen as a machine, on the other side, man is seen as a sensitive being. Sensitivity began to be studied as a perception of pain, but quickly it was associated with nerve fibers, in the sense “that the nerves carry certain impulses to the soul, which remains the only center able to perceive (‘feel’) sensations” (Moravia, 1978, 54). More than that, it started to be perceived that the organism was composed of different organs that reacted in different ways, “or at least may possess different aspects and implications that should not be ignored in favor of the principle of functional uniformity” (Moravia, 1978, 57). The significance of this perspective was in the fact that a theory of the senses started to be conceptualized as the independent autonomy of each organ whose reactions to certain stimuli mirrored internal operations of the body. Moravia follows the work of Théophile Bordeu, the French physiologist from the School of Montepellier, to show how the living individual started to be the sensible being: “an organic being made up of flesh, nerves, and muscles; possessing dynamics forces and impulses; and characterized by processes that have nothing to do with the working machine” (Moravia, 1978, 58). From this understanding we can perceive how the work of reason starts to be conceived within the educational field through the work of the senses, and how the sensorium intertwines the physical body with the morality of the soul in the construction of ideas.
The senses included not only sight, which in the child was considered pure, yet uncorrupted, but also hearing, smell, taste and touch. What matters here is to understand how these senses, particularly smell and touch, were produced as ‘lower’, closer to the idea of nature, and how this equivalence occurs between ‘primitives’, ‘savages’, and children. The question is how is it possible to think about the senses as opposed to reason, and so, closer to ‘primitive’ stages of development? The government of sight, smell and touch cannot be read outside the devices of government of the populations. This government implied a certain order and codification of each of these senses.
C.M.