The Metaphoric Circuit: Organic and Technological Communication in the Nineteenth Century

In a public lecture in 1851, Emil DuBois-Reymond proposed that

the wonder of our time, electrical telegraphy, was long ago modeled in the animal machine. But the similarity between the two apparatus, the nervous system and the electric telegraph, has a much deeper foundation. It is more than similarity; it is a kinship between the two, an agreement not merely of the effects, but also perhaps of the causes. ¹

In 1851 the telegraph and the nervous system appeared to be doing the same things and for the same reasons. Their common purpose was the transmission of information, and they both conveyed this information as alterations in electrical signals. By calling the nervous system a "model" for the telegraph, DuBois-Reymond suggested that organic communications systems offered solutions to problems encountered by technological ones.

In the same decade, however, Claude Bernard remained skeptical about the epistemological value of metaphor. From the classical notion of nervous fluid to the more recent ones of animal spirits and animal electricity, he pointed out, people's "knowledge" of the nervous system had consisted largely of a series of comparisons, "the expression of a way of seeing meant to explain the facts." ² Priding himself on his empiricism, Bernard mistrusted analogy as a means of constructing knowledge. Does one know more or less about something, if one asserts that it is like something else? What exactly is the relationship between metaphor and knowledge?

Many scientific investigators have shared Bernard's concern that claims of likeness will change their perceptions of physiological systems, but for the same reason some scholars of language are more optimistic about the epistemological possibilities of metaphor. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson assert that the role of metaphor in scientific thinking provides one of the best illustrations of how metaphors reflect and influence what we see and do. "Formal scientific theories are attempts to consistently extend a set of ontological and structural metaphors," they argue. ³ This "extension," though, is just what worried Bernard. Metaphors provoke and give birth to new images. By establishing and reinforcing connections, they encourage us to see in new ways. While Bernard is correct that assertions of likeness alter the way we see, Lakoff and Johnson are equally correct in claiming that "much of cultural change arises from the introduction of new metaphorical concepts and the loss of old ones." ⁴ Alterations in the way we see can be extremely productive.

One of the most intriguing cases through which to study the epistemological role of metaphor is that of comparisons between physiological and technological communications systems. Throughout the nineteenth century scientists' electrophysiological understanding of the nervous system closely paralleled technological knowledge that allowed for the construction of telegraph networks. Timothy Lenoir has demonstrated that Hermann Helmholtz and Emil DuBois-Reymond, the nineteenth-century scientists who made some of the greatest contributions to neurophysiology, worked closely with communications engineers like Werner Siemens. By developing models that reflected the apparatus they had adapted from physics and media technology, Helmholtz, and DuBois-Reymond changed people's understanding of the way nerves transmitted impulses. I agree with Lenoir that these comparisons between organic and technological systems were not mere devices for popularization but became incorporated into the scientists' own vision and understanding of the nervous system. ⁵ When one reads the proposals of nineteenth-century engineers, one begins to suspect that communication in the body and in society can only be understood in terms of each other. But can one claim that comparisons of communication mediated by bodies and machines actually contributed to knowledge of the nervous system and of early telecommunications networks?

From the late eighteenth century onward, scientists studying organic and technological communications systems continually inspired one another. As Friedrich Kittler argues in Discourse Networks, nineteenth-century media for writing and communication—the telegraph, typewriter, and telephone—affected not just the way people wrote and...