Did Susanne Langer invent virtual reality?

I have long thought that Susanne Langer originated the term "virtual reality."  She did not, however there is reason to believe that she inspired the term since "virtual" this and virtual that appear throughout her Feeling and Form (1953).  Here is an account of the origin of the term from Science Focus:  The online home of BBC Focus Magazine  (author unknown)  "The History of Virtual Reality"    here

"In 1982, Thomas G Zimmerman would file a patent for such an optical flex sensor, and would go on to work with Dr Jaron Lanier – the man who coined the term ‘virtual reality’ – to add ultrasonic and magnetic hand position tracking technology to a glove. This led to what would become the Nintendo Power Glove sold alongside a small number – two – of NES games in 1987. "Virtual reality originally meant an extended version of virtual worlds," says Lanier, who these days is to be found working for Microsoft Research as well as writing books and music. “Ivan [Sutherland] had talked about the virtual world that you would see through a headset like that. He didn’t make up that term; it actually comes from an art historian called Susanne Langer, who was using it as a way to think about modernist painting. To me, what virtual reality originally meant was moving beyond the headset experience to include some other elements, which would include your own body being present, so to have an avatar where you could pick up things, and also where there could be multiple people, where it could be social.”

Langer, of course, was not an art historian but a philosopher of art.  Feeling and Form, which I will discuss in my next post, was a major work of mid-20th century aesthetics.   Also, Langer used "virtual" not just in relation to modernist painting but in relation to several arts including sculpture, architecture, and dance.

Interested in learning more?  See my book:  Thomas Leddy The Extraordinary in the Ordinary:  The Aesthetics of Everyday Life.  Broadview Press, 2012.  Available at Amazon in paperback, and an electronic version at google where you can also find most of the first 32 pages including the table of contents.  You can also buy it from Broadview.