ABSTRACT
There is a history to scientific recognition of a distinct sense of the position and movement of the limbs and of the body as a whole, first under the heading of the muscular sense and later kinaesthesia. The chapter provides a concise sketch of this history, especially referring to studies of the touch sense and its contribution to knowledge, through experience of action-resistance separating ‘the self’ and ‘the world’. The chapter describes kinaesthesia becoming a subject of inquiry in nineteenth-century science and a current topic of research.
