sensationalism

[Eng.sensational; -ism.] 1. Ord. Lang.: Sensational writing or language. "The most painful of all social questions before sensationalism ever thought of taking it up."- London Daily Telegraph. 2. Philos.: The doctrine that knowledge is the outcome of sensation, that Psychology is a branch of the wider science of Biology, and Mind but one aspect of Life. This teaching flourished, chiefly in France, in the eighteenth century, whence Sensational is in is sometimes called Eighteenth-century Philosophy. Its precursor was Hobbes [HOBBISM], whom Condillac (1715-80) followed and amplified, attributing a sensuous origin to faculties as well as to ideas. Hartley (1705-57) and Erasmus Darwin 3. Feelings, agreeable or otherwise, arising from causes that are not corporeal or material; purely spiritual or psychical affections; as, a sensation of awe a sensation of novelty, . 4. A state of excited feeling or interest. "One of the papers which created a sensation at the late meeting of the Church Congre ." -London Daily Telegraph. 5. That which produces sensation or a state of excited feeling or interest. 6. Just as much as can be perceived by the senses; a very small quantity; as, a sensation of brandy. ( Slang .) II. Technically : 1. Metaph.: The word Sensation, like Perception [See extract under PERCEPTION, II.], is employed in different senses: (1) Montalconsciousne of the proce es of phys. iological sensation. [2.] "Our Senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the Mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them and thus we come by those ideas we have, of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities, which when I say the senses convey into the Mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the Mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our Senses, and derived by them to the Understanding, I call Sensation."-Locke: Human Understanding , bk. ii., ch. i. (2) Subjective experience, as of pleasure or pain, arising from objective experience, e . g., from the sight of a beautiful landscape. "There is all the difference in the world between the permanence or independence of tangible extension and that of the mere feeling of contact, the sensation of taste, of pleasure or pain. In the latter cases we know that the actual sensation censes to be the moment it pa es out of consciousne ." -Veitch : Hamilton , p. 190. (3) For the use of the word in Positive Philosophy, see extract. [SENSATIONAL-CENTERS.] "By Sensation, therefore, must be understood that form of sensibility which belongs to the organs of Sense-including, of course, those important, but generally neglected sensibilities which arise from the viscera and from muscular actions."-G. H. Lewes: Hist. Philos . (ed. 1880), ii. 357. 2. Physiol.: The peculiar property of the nervous system in a state of activity, by which impre ions are conveyed to the brain or sensorium. When an impre ion is made on any portion of the bodily surface by contact, heat, electricity, or any other agent, the mind is rendered conscious of this by sensation. In this proce there are three stages reception of the impre ion at the end of the sensory nerve, the conduction of it along the nerve trunk to the sensorium, and the change it excites in the sensorium itself, through which is produced sensation. The word is frequently used adjectivally, in the sense of causing great interest or feeling; sensational; as, sensation dramas.