Visible thought the new psychology of body language g beattie mantesh

It was in the seventeenth century that the first academic works exclusively on the use of gesture started to appear. The earliest work in English was a book by Bulwer (1644/1974) entitled Chirologia-Chironomia. The first part is a descriptive glossary of 64 gestures of the hand and 25 gestures of the fingers. Bulwer not only describes each gesture in considerable detail but also the affective, cognitive or physiological state associated with that gesture. He outlines one or two variants of the gesture and then offers an interpretation of each one. The second part of the book is a prescriptive guide that outlines the proper usage of an additional 81 gestures during well-delivered discourse. He cautions against the improper use of 'manual rhetoricke' (see Morrel-Samuels 1990 for a review of Bulwer).

The next major work on gesture, written in English, is Austin's Chironomia (1806/1966). This book includes a detailed consideration of gestures and their effects on an audience, with examples to practice appropriate delivery. This book had a significant influence on the textbooks written over the next century designed for instruction in the art of elocution in schools.

In addition to such practical interest in gesture there was also a bourgeoning philosophical interest, which recognized the importance of gesture in our understanding of human beings and the human mind, and this is evident in, amongst other works, Bacon's Advancement of Learning (1605/1952). Bacon argues that gestures provide an indication of the state of the mind of the speaker and of the will: 'As the tongue speaketh to the ear, so the gesture speaketh to the eye' (1605/1952:49). In fact Bulwer explicitly acknowledges that is is Bacon's exact words here that inspired him to produce his own great work on gesture. A major reason why Bulwer found gesture of such interest was because he thought of it as a 'natural' language in sharp contrast to the artificiality and arbitrariness of ordinary verbal language. He states that 'gesture is the only speech and general language of the human nature‌ It speaks all languages, and as a universal character of reason, is generally understood and known by all nations' (1644/1974:3).

The idea that gesture should be studied because it is a natural form of human action and expression which may throw light on the origin of language, and ultimately on the content of the human soul, was introduced by Etienne Bonnot De Condillac (1756/2001). His classic text argues against the 17th-century Cartesian view that human reason and knowledge are innate, given by God himself. As Aarslef (2001) states: 'In the Cartesian view, innateness owes no debt to social intercourse. Right reason and knowledge are private achievements, for in the Augustinian sense we do not truly learn anything from anybody. God alone is the teacher. Communication is risky' (2001:xii). Condillac, on the other hand—while still believing that 'Adam and Eve did not owe the exercise of the operations of their soul to experience. As they came from the hands of God, they were able, by special assistance, to reflect and communicate their thoughts to each other. But I am assuming that two children, one of either sex, sometime after the deluge, had gotten lost in the desert before they would have known the use of any sign' (1756/2001:113)—held that communication derives from action and experience and that the mimes found in performance in the time of the Emperor Augustus had brought their art to such perfection that they could perform whole plays by gesture alone, thus unawares creating 'a language which had been the first that mankind spoke'. Human language, after the deluge, came about as an exchange of natural gestures to which vocalizations later became associated and Condillac attempted to describe how this process might have proceeded.