The Harpsichord Brain: Instrumental Models of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century France

Abstract

This essay explores the use of stringed instruments (and in particular the harpsichord) as models of brain and cognitive function in eighteenth-century French medicine and natural philosophy. These comparisons were founded in part on the anatomical investigations of the latter half of the seventeenth century, which had established both the “fibrous” structure of the white and gray matter of the cerebrum and the vibratory movement the brain underwent in the performance of its functions. Musical instruments—and in particular the harpsichord—helped these philosophers speculate about how the brain worked as the material instrument of sensation and thought: they were machines at once mechanical and affective, grounded in the materiality of their wooden boards and metal strings, yet symbolizing the rational—and immaterial—harmonies of music.