In his Essai philosophique sur la classification des sciences (2 vols, 1834-1843), physicist André-Marie Ampère introduced a number of new sciences, including "La Techneshéthique," which would study procedures for "recalling ideas, sentiments, passions, etc., and giving birth to new ones in the spectator of an art object, the hearer either of a piece of music or a speech, or, finally, in the reader." This notion of the application of explicitly technical reflections to the arts might seem to be sacrilege for romanticism, whose refusal of rules and conventions, emphasis on creative inspiration, and hostility towards mechanism are critical commonplaces. Yet Ampère's announced science points toward a neglected side aspect of romanticism, particularly visible in France before 1848, in which the arts appear as concrete, rationally masterable means of producing effects-- emotional, intellectual, or even physical-- on their audiences. In addition to examples from romantic literature, visual arts and music, this paper will suggest close connections between this view of the arts and contemporary theories of scientific observation, focusing in particular on a set of "minor" readings of one of Ampère's interlocutors, the philosopher Maine de Biran.
