Edward Halley Barnet

(Residential Fellow, 2018-19)

Edward Halley Barnet

Travel Fellow

Homo Musicus: The Early Modern Musical Science of the Body

Edward Halley Barnet is a PhD Candidate at Stanford University in the history of science. He received his BA in History and French Language and Literature from the University of Alberta in 2009. His first foray into the history of science occurred in 2011-2013, when he wrote his thesis on the French Royal Academy of Sciences during the French Revolution, as part of his Master’s in History at Sciences Po Paris. After coming to Stanford in 2013, he has become fascinated by early modern cultures of knowing and knowledge production. His dissertation, entitled “Homo Musicus: The Early Modern Musical Science of the Body,” explores the various ways in which music and acoustics influenced early modern natural philosophers’ conceptualization of the body. Music’s dual ability to act as an organizing principle (through harmony) and a powerful stimulus for the senses made it an extremely useful tool with which to think through key questions in 17th and 18th century physiology, from the unity of the body to the nature of sensation.