Cited by T. Quick, 'Disciplining Physiological Psychology: Cinematographs as Epistemic Devices, 1897-1922', Science in Context 30 (4), pp. 423-474.
Description:

'Ideally singular spatial points were taken in kymographic studies as indexes of the broader physiological functioning of the body. Thus Claude Bernard identified the heartbeat as the index of bodily emotional expression (Dror 2011, 337). Though later studies sought to combine a range of bodily processes including blood pressure, electrical resistance of the skin, and respiration into a composite physiological picture (Dror 2006, 135), the fact remained that however overlaid, every kymographic recording produced assumed a single, ideally minute point in space from which a reading could be taken.'

 

'The single line traced across the page, a comparatively flat set of undulations interrupted by a dramatic increase in magnitude in their centre, showed what Sherrington claimed to be direct evidence that emotions were not psychological representations of bodily conditions at all. Rather, Sherrington contended that emotions (which he defined as ‘feelings... excited not by a simple unelaborated sensation, but by a group or train of ideas’) played an active role in the production of bodily effects (Sherrington 1900b, 328. Cf. Dror 2006, 129-130).'

 

'In opposing a specifically intuition-derived duration to a spatializing cinematographic mode of intellectual conduct, Bergson and James had invested in a conception of psychology as an intuition-centred practice that was capable of speaking directly to the physiological nature that it was underpinned by. Sherrington’s studies of emotion refused this capacity of psychological study, and portrayed the experimental evidence of graphic inscription as directly contradictory to James’s claims. In so doing, they put in its’ place a conception of two complementary fields that ‘touched’ at particular ‘points’ and shared epistemic commitments, but nevertheless addressed distinct objects. Thus James and Bergson were confronted with a critique based not on one or another specific claim regarding emotion, but an assumption regarding the limits (ideal if not always enforced - see Dror 2006, 135-136) of disciplinary explanation.'