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Action and Reaction: The Life and Adventure of a Couple

by Jean Starobinski, Translated by Sophie Hawkes with Jeff Fort
Zone Books, New York, NY, 2003
468 pp. Trade $34.00, ISBN: 1-890951-20-X

Reviewed by Margaret Dolinsky
Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts
Indiana University
Bloomington Indiana 47405 USA


dolinsky@indiana.edu

Jean Starobinski’s Action and Reaction: The Life and Adventure of a Couple is a book that pays homage to the pair "action and reaction" by examining the dynamics of their semantic relationship: exploring their etymology and, as the title suggests, their "life and adventures" within linguistics, physics, chemistry, literature and politics.

The title of the book is derived from Honoré de Balzac’s Louis Lambert, where the protagonist addresses the action and reaction between thought and speech:

"Often have I made the most delightful voyage, floating on a word down the abyss of the past, like an insect embarked on a blade of grass tossing on the ripples of a stream. Starting from Greece, I would get to Rome, and traverse the whole extent of modern ages. What a fine book might be written of the life and adventures of a word!... But is it not so with every root-word? They all are stamped with a living power that comes from the soul, and which they restore to the soul through the mysterious and wonderful action and reaction between thought and speech." (p. 227)

The intensity of the exploration into the title words parallels a discovery into the foundation of western knowledge and scientific thought development. Starobinski describes his thesis in the preface to the American edition: "I wanted to note the moment at which scientific language (with its calculations) and ordinary language (with its literary productions) began to diverge." He painstakingly traces the integration and disintegration between metaphorical language and scientific language, which includes one hundred pages of supplementary notes. The book is a comprehensive foundation of philological study at the provenance of ‘action’ and ‘reaction’ through science, poetry and politics.

Each chapter outlines the framework in which the words are introduced and integrated into the disciplines. He begins with their early roots, changes in forms and the cognates from various languages. Interestingly, in classical Latin and philosophical Greek, the original antonym of ‘action’ was ‘passion,’ suggesting such concepts as physical/mental and motion/emotion. ‘Reaction’ as a word was instituted later, partly through Aristotelian physics which states "opposition between qualities enable the elements to act upon each other." For example, semen represents action and menstrual fluid reaction because "fertilization was understood as transmitting motion." Chapter one includes discussions of scholarly texts written in Latin, and the work of Galileo, Newton and Kant, classical mechanics, math and physics. Chapter two introduces how extrapolations of ‘reaction’ were developed and the intuitions that were associated with it. The chapter encompasses the study of Diderot, Hans Christian Oersted, who discovered electromagnetism and such chemists as Wilhelm Otswald whose ambition was to unite philosophy and chemistry.

Medicine ("to live is to react") is the concern of the third chapter that studies life by way of Bichat, Bernard and Bonnet. Then there is a fascinating look at pathologies, traumas, psychogenesis, Freud, Jaspers and the introduction and abandonment of the term ‘abreaction.’

As a reaction to scientific thought, nineteenth century poets’ (Poe, Claudel, and Valéry) attempt to reappropriate the terms ‘action and reaction’ and reestablish passion and philosophy in the action of life. This chapter is poignant as a history of literature and art that challenges the omnipotence of scientific thought over passion, emotion and basic experience. Artists, such as the Impressionists or Paul Klee, cannot settle for objects at their face value. Rather, they stress the importance of the creative search because it reminds us that nature is always changing.

Then the words ‘action and reaction’ shift from science into society not only through art but through political discourse as well: "The developments of scientific knowledge were considered indications of a much more general perfectibility that was not limited to science alone" which led to including ‘reaction’ as the antonym of ‘revolution’ and ‘progress’ (p. 318).

The final chapter outlines how "In Montesquieu’s language, the play of action and reaction is therefore no longer descriptive or purely explanatory, but a goal to pursue, a value to assert. The concept of action and reaction intervenes to define good constitutions and the duties legislators must respect…" (p. 305)

Starobinski is a professor in the history of ideas and French literature at the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Letters in the University of Geneva. As his life is situated among various disciplines so too is his examination of the words "action and reaction."

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Updated 1st October 2003


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