Andreas Mayer, The Science of Walking: Investigations into Locomotion in the Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In recent years, historians of science have made fruitful use of an analytical perspective focused on the definition of natural phenomena as ‘objects’ of science. Andreas Mayer turns this process of objectification on its head. Tracing the history of ‘a science that does not exist’, he examines ‘theories and practices of observation and experimentation’ (p.2) in anthropology, physiology, orthopedic surgery, neurology and psychiatry, as well as literature and the fine arts. Mayer concludes that the science of walking did not lead to a clearly defined research field with special laboratories, instruments and methods nor to the identification of a normalised form of walking. Rather, he points to ‘multifarious varieties of knowledge about the human gait’ that should be understood ‘as an interplay between mechanical, semiotic, and poetic registers’ (p.142). Mayer begins his account in the later eighteenth century, exploring Rousseau’s ‘anthropology of the solitary walker’ (p.10) and a travel literature that extolled the benefits of walking while decrying mechanical modes of transport and contraptions aimed at forming a proper gait. In this context, he takes up what becomes a persistent theme of the study, the role of the military in initiating ‘experiment-based investigation into the mechanics of gait’ (p.31). He also explores the beginnings of a ‘semiotic’ approach to styles of walking as seen in the physiognomy of J. C. Lavater and the work on mimicry of J. J. Engel, who asserted that ‘each specific mindset … has its own distinctive gait’ (p.36).