Course on Perception

The first English translation of Gilbert Simondon's wide-ranging course on the philosophical and scientific histories of perceptionTranslated into English for the first time, Gilbert Simondon's A Course on Perception: 1964–1965 engages in a wide-ranging inquiry into the structure, operation, and activity of perception. Investigating its history throughout the centuries, Simondon shows how perception continually shapes and is reshaped by various strands of philosophical and scientific thought.Prior to the advent of the natural sciences, perception functioned as the foundation of philosophical reflection and the sole instrument for acquiring knowledge and truth. Tracing his subject from these roots in antiquity, Simondon's course draws on the work of other prominent philosophers such as Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, and Bergson to follow the evolving trajectory of perception in the wake of classical Cartesian rationalism. As the realms of biology, physiology, and positivism in the natural sciences emerged with the Modern epoch, perception became a necessary theoretical starting point for philosophical investigations of an organism's relation to its particular milieu.Emerging from a course delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris between 1964 and 1965, Simondon utilizes a transdisciplinary approach to better understand the sensitivities that various life forms use to orient themselves in the world, offering a nuanced examination of perception in all its philosophical complexity.Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.