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 Starobinskis 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 Balzacs
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 Montesquieus 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."