Summary of the major innovations of Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896).

This Open Access book combines philosophical and historical analysis of various forms of alternatives to mechanism and mechanistic explanation, focusing on the 19th century to the present. It addresses vitalism, organicism and responses to materialism and its relevance to current biological science. In doing so, it promotes dialogue and discussion about the historical and philosophical importance of vitalism and other non-mechanistic conceptions of life. It points towards the integration of genomic science into the broader history of biology. It (...) details a broad engagement with a variety of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century vitalisms and conceptions of life. In addition, it discusses important threads in the history of concepts in the United States and Europe, including charting new reception histories in eastern and south-eastern Europe. While vitalism, organicism and similar epistemologies are often the concern of specialists in the history and philosophy of biology and of historians of ideas, the range of the contributions as well as the geographical and temporal scope of the volume allows for it to appeal to the historian of science and the historian of biology generally. (shrink)

TOC -/- 0. Introduction (SN/CW) -/- I. Revisiting vitalist themes in 19th-century science -/- 1. Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute) – Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and the Place of Irritability 2. in the History of Life and Death 3. Joan Steigerwald (York) – Rethinking Organic Vitality in Germany at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century 4. Juan Rigoli (Geneva) –The “Novel of Medicine” 5. Sean Dyde (Cambridge) – Life and the Mind in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Somaticism in the Wake of Phrenology. -/- (...) II. Twentieth century debates on vitalism in science and philosophy -/- 6. Brian Garrett (McMaster) – Vitalism versus Emergent Materialism 7. Christophe Malaterre (Paris) – Life as an Emergent Phenomenon: from an Alternative to Vitalism to an Alternative to Reductionism 8. Sebastian Normandin (Montreal) – Wilhelm Reich: Vitalism and Its Discontents 9. Chiara Elettra Ferrario (Wellington) and Luigi Corsi (Pisa) – Kurt Goldstein: Vitalism and the Organismic Approach 10. Giuseppe Bianco (Paris/Warwick) – The Origins of Canguilhem’s “Vitalism”. Against the Anthropology of Irritation -/- III. Vitalism and contemporary biological developments -/- 11. William Bechtel (UCSD) — Dynamic Mechanistic Explanation: Addressing the Vitalists’ Objections to Mechanistic Science 12. John Dupré and Maureen O’Malley (Exeter) – Varieties of living things: Life at the intersection of lineage and metabolism 13. J. Scott Turner (Syracuse) – Homeostasis and the forgotten vitalist roots of adaptation -/- . (shrink)

The book's purpose is to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between physics and philosophy in the historical context of the 19th century. Through an elaborate examination of the influence of mechanistic philosophy, the evolution of ontology, and the emergence of energy, the author aims to explain the phenomenological laws of thermodynamics in the framework of the mechanical approach. Additionally, the book delves into the introduction of field theory and the beginning decline of the mechanical approach. (...) In essence, this book is a journey that takes you through the most significant milestones of the 19th century in the realm of physics. It illuminates a theoretical framework, i.e., critical rationalism, that facilitates examining the interaction between physics and metaphysics. With the unraveling of history and the preparation of philosophical thought, the book prepares the reader for the eventual abandonment of the 'ether' and paves the way for the birth of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Despite the scientific revolutions of the twentieth century, mechanistic explanations show a striking methodological continuity from early modern science to current scientific practice. They are rooted in the traditional method of analysis and synthesis, which was the background of Galileo’s resolutive-compositive method and Newton’s method of deduction from the phenomena. In early modern science as well as in current scientific practice, analysis aims at tracking back from the phenomena to the principles, i.e., from wholes to parts, and from effects to (...) causes. Vice versa, synthesis aims at explaining the phenomena from the parts and their interactions. Today, mechanistic explanations are atomistic in a generalized sense. They have in common to explain higher-level phenomena in terms of lower-level components and their causal actions or activities. In quantum physics, the lower-level components are subatomic particles, and the causes are their quantum interactions. After the quantum revolution, the approach continues to work in terms of the sum rules which hold for conserved properties of the parts and the whole. My paper focuses on the successes and limitations of this approach, with a side glance at the recent generalization of mechanistic explanations in cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

The magical number three has provided the template for this comparative study of Freudian psycho-analysis and Husserlian phenomenology. "Three" should be considered the number of dialectics; the method in the study to let three distinct thematisations succeed each other should find its legitimation in dialectics. The relationship between psycho-analysis and phenomenology as that between two dialectic theories might well call for a dialectic interpretation. It should be difficult from a straightforward and unambiguous interpretation to give full credit to the rich (...) and equivocal meaning of psycho-analysis and phenomenology. I hope to have shown in the presentation above, that it is possible by accentuating different sides of the two scientific disciplines to reach different conclusions regarding their relationship. For a full account of this relationship these different conclusions should be placed together and viewed in their internal coherence as a dialectical unity. Thus none of the three sections of the text should be considered apart from the others. In the first section of the paper, the first thematisation, I tried to spell out the discrepancies between Freud and Husserl as clearly as possible. The point of departure here was the Freudian notion of the "psychical apparatus," and Husserl's doctrine of "intentional consciousness." The models built around these central notions can be shown to have a paradigmatic meaning for the development of Freud's and Husserl's psychological projects. Conceiving the subject as psychical apparatus, Freud thought it possible to make psychology a natural science. The subject could be treated like a mechanical apparatus, that is a machine admitting the general laws of motion. - In contrast, Husserl thought psychology should depart from natural science in its scientific selfunderstanding, and join the humanities instead. Psychology's departure from natural science, Husserl found legitimized in the subject's essential character of intentional consciousness. According to Husserl, man as a conscious being could not be reduced to a thing in the natural world. On the contrary, the aprioric basis for the world should be found in intentional consciousness, which constitutes the "world" as a meaningful coherence related to the subject. Freud's and Husserl's conceptions of psychology were traced to historical roots in respectively positivism, naturalism and mechanical materialism on the one hand, and rationalism, humanism and idealism on the other. In this first interpretation the relationship between psycho-analysis and phenomenology seemed to be antithetical, the two theoretical projects representing opposite poles with regard to cartesian dualism. Although in some ways caricaturing the theories in this one-sided interpretation, I tried to show, that such interpretation is possible with bases in the texts of Freud and Husserl. The decided one-sidedness of the first thematisation should, however, be balanced by the competing interpretation in the second section of the paper. In the second thematisation, I tried to show, that both psycho-analysis and phenomenology in their concrete psychological projects went beyond their points of departure. Although Freud as a scientist of the 19th century naturally found his theoretical language in the successful natural sciences, from which his scientific career started, he decisively broke with this frame of reference in his descriptions of the pathological problems from his clinical praxis. In contrast to the abstract metapsychology of the psychical apparatus, Freud in his clinical psychology departed from mechanism in his attempts to interpret the meaning of the patient's neurotic symptom. The clinical attitude of Freud might resemble phenomenologists' openness towards the meaning of the phenomena, and the case-histories of Freud often read like clinical analyses stemming from existential- phenomenological psychiatrists. - Correspondingly, although Husserl started from the tradition of German philosophy of consciousness, also he can be seen to go beyond the premises of his wellsprings. Starting with a notion of intentionality as consciousness's active positing meaningful objects, Husserl later was led to consider a deeper level of intentionality, a "functioning intentionality," that would situate the subject in a "world" prior to any thematic perceptual act. With the notion of functional intentionality and its further development in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the "body-subject," phenomenology seems to have come close to the Freudian doctrine of the unconscious. From this second interpretation it seemed to follow, that a meeting between psycho-analysis and phenomenology should be possible, by cutting off the mechanistic parts from psychoanalysis and the idealistic parts from phenomenology. The hindrance for such meeting should apparently be found in the divergent theoretical prejudices stemming from the ideological climates in which the theories were hatched. None of these two apparently contradictory interpretations, that of the first and second thematisation, should, however, rule out the other. To the question which interpretation is the right one, we should answer "both... and," or perhaps better "Neither... nor." Freud and Husserl in fact held contradictory views in their explicit scientific self-understanding. On the other hand, much of the controversy was caused by theoretical prejudices not essential to the central enterprise of psycho-analysis and phenomenology. And yet, the theoretical work of Freud and Husserl should be considered in its entirety, not omitting parts that do not fit the interpretative context. Freud's mechanistic theories must be read in connection with his clinical/phenomenological psychology, Husserl's doctrine of transcendental consciousness together with his concrete analyses of the world and the body. Freud sticked to his mechanistic metaphors throughout his life, not just because mechanic materialism was his scientific point of departure, but also because he found the models of the psychical apparatus useful to picture the subject-matter of psycho-analysis, the unconscious as it is discovered by the analytic method. Correspondingly, Husserl found in transcendental idealism a metaphysical horizon apparently suited for his main theoretical project, to un-cover by phenomenological reflexion man in his free and conscious being. In this way Freud's materialism and Husserl's idealism might find their limited justification, not in the absolutistic sense set forth in the first section, but in relation to their weighting different aspects of the subject/object dialectic of man. This point of view I tried to explicate in the third section of this paper. In the subject/object dialectic Freud seems to underline man's existence as object, his being ruled by the mechanic, the irrational, the infantile, the unconscious. In contrast, Husserl underlines man's existence as subject, his free and conscious openness towards the world and the future. This difference I characterized with the notions of Ricoeur as respectively an "archeology" and a "teleology" of the subject. And yet the difference between Freud and Husserl is that of a weighting different sides of the subject/object dialectic, not of an exclusive thematisation of man as either subject or object. Freudian archaeology is supplemented by an implicit teleology, Husserlian teleology by an implicit archeology. On the background of such interpretation the relationship between psycho-analysis and phenomenology should be seen neither as the polarity of the first thematisation, nor as the synthesis of the second. Psycho-analysis and phenomenology both contradict and imply each other in a relationship that should be termed dialectical. With this third interpretation the paper ended. At last I noted that the problems raised by the controversy on the subject/object dialectic of man should not easily be solved. Instead, the question "what is man" should have to be answered continuously in a concrete historical reflextion or dialogue. Yet I think it safe to conclude, that any psychological consideration has to take into consideration, both man's archeological and his teleological features, thus not allowing the one perspective completely to rule out the other. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the theological-academic ontological doctrine of the three types of being formulated within the framework of the Russian theological-academic philosophy of the 19th century. The study of this problem in the context of the general analysis of the phenomenon of theological-academic philosophy allows expanding our understanding of the genesis of Russian philosophy and its religious-philosophical component. The main aim of the article is the historical-philosophical analysis (on the material of philosophical courses of (...) Russian theological academies and original works of professors of academies) of the doctrine about three types of being, which was developed within the framework of the theological-academic philosophy in Russia in the 19th century. The set goal is achieved by means of textual and religious analysis methods, as well as historical-functional, historical-genetic, and comparative research methods. The authors conclude that the specificity of theological-academic philosophizing was determined by confessional affiliation and consisted in its theistic form: the transversal theme of all theological-academic interpretations was the problem of being. Thus, theological-academic ontology took the form of the doctrine of God as an absolute being and the world as its derivative. The theological-academic doctrine of the three types of being and the synthesizing function of the absolute in relation to theological and material being cannot be characterized as quite logical and consistent. The notion of God as an absolute being is conditioned by the aspiration of theological-academic philosophers not to go beyond traditional orthodoxy and is one of the main specific features of theological-academic philosophical interpretations of religious consciousness. At the same time, the historical and philosophical analysis of the works of professors from Russian theological academies allows tracing how the powerful ideological and theoretical potential accumulated in Russian theological academies after their reforms in the 19th century contributed to the development of professional philosophy in Russia, the development of a philosophical categorical apparatus and the systematic formation of Russian philosophical thought. The development of this theme responds to the urgent research tasks of the history of philosophy. Further, this topic is very interesting not only for historians of philosophy but also for historians of religion, historians of orthodoxy, and culturologists. (shrink)

The Religious War of Science. Historical Argumentation in the Academic Speeches of Emil DuBois‐Reymond (1818–1896). Among the protagonists of the “laboratory revolution” (Cunningham/Williams) in 19th‐century physiology were the self‐proclaimed ‘organic physicists’ (“organische Physiker”), who shared a mechanistic conception of life processes. One of their key figures was the physiologist Emil DuBois‐Reymond (1818–1896) who not only excelled in the field of neuroscience but also became known, over the decades of his active career, as an orator at the Berlin Academy of (...) Sciences and Humanities. In his academic speeches, DuBois‐Reymond regularly commemorated heroes of the history of science. On closer inspection, these references went far beyond paying the usual homage to precursors: This paper argues that DuBois‐Reymond made use of episodes from the history of science as a means to legitimate his own reductionist research programme and, at the same time, decry idealistic natural philosophy and vitalistic positions. Drawing upon biblical rhetorics, DuBois‐Reymond systematically construed experimental physiology as the culmination of a teleological development, and, hence, organic physicists as the incarnation of scientific ‘redeemers’. According to him, the success of ‘organic physics’ displayed the peak of an inevitable development. (shrink)

This thesis is a study of the relationship between Schopenhauer and the biology in the early nineteenth century. Schopenhauer improved Kant’s epistemology based on the findings of the brain physiology of the time and extended the area of the apriority and rationality. The brain paradox is based on the interpretation that Schopenhauer insists on both materialism and idealism. But what Schopenhauer received in French physiology is not materialism but vitalism. This view of Schopenhauer is also revealed by his suggesting primordial (...) animal, which is not mechanistically explained, to Lamarck’s physicalism. Schopenhauer’s ethics does not presuppose mechanistic materialism or idealism. Schopenhauer sets the limits of natural science only to criticize the mechanical materialism. One identical being presupposed by his ethics is accepted by natural sciences. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper focuses on the gradual separation between materialism and mechanism in early modern German philosophy. In Germany the distinction between the two concepts, originally introduced by Leibniz, was definitively stated by Wolff who was the first to provide a definition of the new philosophical term Materialismus, and of the related philosophical sect. In the first part I describe the initial identification of mechanism and materialism in German philosophy between the last decades of the seventeenth century and 1720. Mechanism is (...) here mostly conceived within a monistic metaphysics of body, which refers mainly to Hobbes and to some interpretations of Spinoza’s pantheism. This tight connection between a mechanical explanation of nature and the Deus sive natura issue leads to a negative judgement on mechanism and its materialistic implications, both charged with a form of more or less explicit atheism. In the second part I describe the gradual emancipation in Germany of mechanism fro... (shrink)

ABSTRACTBecause of their reliance on mechanistic metaphors and analogies referring to machines, the eighteenth-century materialists La Mettrie and Diderot have sometimes been described as ‘mechanistic materialists’. However, if one pays close attention to the ways in which mechanical analogies and metaphors were used in eighteenth-century French materialism, one sees that the recourse to these metaphors and comparisons in no way implies mechanism in the sense of physicalist reductionism. Instead, early instances of these comparisons appear in arguments pointing out that technological (...) artefacts have functional properties which are not reducible to their physical properties. When La Mettrie compares man to a machine in his L'homme machine, he insists at the same time on the fact that, just like a machine, man is a cultural artefact. According to La Mettrie, man's very existence depends on language and culture, and it is precisely this dependence on culture which distinguishes him from other animals. However... (shrink)

The word 'materialism' is ambiguous: it designates a moral doc trine as well as a philosophy and, indeed, an entire world view. Moral materialism is identical with hedonism, or the doctrine that humans should pursue only their own pleasure. Philosophical ma terialismis the view that the real worId is composed exclusively of material things. The two doctrines are logically independent: hedonism is consistent with immaterialism, and materialism is compatible with high minded morals. We shall be concerned ex c1usively with philosophical (...) materialism. And we shall not confuse it with realism, or the epistemological doctrine that knowIedge, or at any rate scientific knowledge, attempts to represent reality. Philosophical materialism is not a recent fad and it is not a solid block: it is as old as philosophy and it has gone through six quite different stages. The first was ancient materialism, centered around Greek and Indian atomism. The second was the revival of the first during the 17th century. The third was 18th century ma terialism, partly derived from one side of Descartes' ambiguous legacy. The fourth was the mid-19th century "scientific" material ism, which flourished mainly in Germany and England, and was tied to the upsurge of chemistry and biology. The fifth was dialec tical and historical materialism, which accompanied the consolida tion of the socialist ideology. And the sixth or current stage, evolved mainly by Australian and American philosophers, is aca demic and nonpartisan but otherwise very heterogeneous. Ancient materialism was thoroughly mechanistic. (shrink)

This volume emphasizes the diversity and fruitfulness of early modern mechanism as a program, as a concept, as a model. Mechanistic study of the living body but also of the mind and mental processes are examined in careful historical focus, dealing with figures ranging from the first-rank (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Cudworth, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Kant) to less well-known individuals (Scaliger, Martini) or prominent natural philosophers who have been neglected in recent years (Willis, Steno, etc.). The volume moves from early modern (...) medicine and physiology to late Enlightenment and even early 19th-century psychology, always maintaining a conceptual focus. It is a contribution to a newly active field in the history and philosophy of early modern life science. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of medicine and the development of mechanistic theories. (shrink)

Table of Contents 0. Introduction Part I. Life and mechanism 1. Guido Giglioni (Macerata) Scaliger Bacon Harvey: A Trajectory in the Early Modern History of Vegetative Life 2. Andreas Blank (Klagenfurt) Jacob Schegk on Plants, Medicaments, and the Question of Emergence 3. Oana Matei (Arad/Bucharest) Particles, universal spirit, and seeds: John Evelyn's theory of matter in Elysium Britannicum 4. Luca Tonetti (Bologna) Stimulus and fibre theory in Giorgio Baglivi’s medicine: A reassessment 5. Antonio Clericuzio (Roma Tre) ‘Febris non est (...) morbus, sed bellum contra morbum’. A study of seventeenth-century theories of fevers. 6. Riccardo Chiaradonna (Roma Tre) Plotinus and Ficino in Ralph Cudworth’s philosophy of nature 7. Raphaële Andrault (CNRS-ENS Lyon) The chain of motions and the chain of thoughts. The diachronic mechanism of Spinoza's friends. 8. Antonio M. Nunziante (Padova) Both Natural and Supernatural: Leibniz’s Integrated Model of Life 9. Marco Storni (Neuchâtel) Experience, Analogy and Mechanism in Maupertuis’s Theory of Generation 10. Cécilia Bognon-Küss (Louvain-La-Neuve) Intussusception, vital mechanisms and the ontology of life 11. Charles Wolfe (Toulouse) Expanded mechanism or heuristic vitalism? Part II. Mechanisms of the mind 12. Emanuela Scribano (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) Powers of the Body and Eclipse of the Soul. From Descartes On 13. Ursula Renz (Graz) Shaftesbury’s Conception of Human Thought 14. Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) Psychology and Mechanism: Christian Wolff on the Soul-Body Analogy 15. Federico Boccaccini (Brasilia) Mental Machinery and active powers from Hartley to Ward 16. Paolo Pecere (Roma Tre) Mechanism, organization, mind: a Kantian legacy in 19th century psychology 17. Lydia Patton (Virginia Tech) Organic Memory and the Perils of Perigenesis: the Helmholtz-Hering Debate. (shrink)

Chapter Overview: This chapter looks at the foundations of modern psychiatry, with its stress on neurological malfunction, and asks about its strengths and limitations. We start by tracing some of the historical development of the ideas that have found their way into modern psychiatry from their roots in 19th-century medicine and neuroscience. Turning to the present day, we briefly look at competing conceptions of mental illness, before we discuss the philosophy of science that forms some of the theoretical foundations (...) of modern psychiatry. We suggest that modern psychiatry makes a number of commitments that are quite familiar to philosophers of psychology, employing mechanistic explanations to address disorders that are seen as natural kinds. We end with an example that seems to fit this picture, specific phobia, and one that seems not to, addiction. (shrink)

This volume of essays examines the problem of mind, looking at how the problem has appeared to neuroscientists from classical antiquity through to contemporary times. Beginning with a look at ventricular neuropsychology in antiquity, this book goes on to look at Spinozan ideas on the links between mind and body, Thomas Willis and the foundation of Neurology, Hooke’s mechanical model of the mind and Joseph Priestley’s approach to the mind-body problem. The volume offers a chapter on the 19th century (...) Ottoman perspective on western thinking. Further chapters trace the work of nineteenth century scholars including George Henry Lewes, Herbert Spencer and Emil du Bois-Reymond. The book covers significant work from the twentieth century, including an examination of Alfred North Whitehead and the history of consciousness, and particular attention is given to the development of quantum consciousness. Chapters on slavery and the self and the development of an understanding of Dualism bring this examination up to date on the latest 21st century work in the field. At the heart of this book is the matter of how we define the problem of consciousness itself: has there been any progress in our understanding of the working of mind and brain? This work at the interface between science and the humanities will appeal to experts from across many fields who wish to develop their understanding of the problem of consciousness, including scholars of Neuroscience, Behavioural Science and the History of Science. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to a comparison between Ernst Mach's and Friedrich Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical approach to scientific and philosophical concepts. By making reference to Mach’s early essay on the conservation of energy (Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit, 1872), I argue that Nietzsche shares with him the idea that the concepts we adopt are only useful fictions developed during the history of humankind and its culture. This idea is fundamental for the development of (...) modern science, since Mach’s epistemology contributed to give up the mechanistic (Newtonian) view of physics. (shrink)

This essay explores Socrates’ rejection of early materialist attempts to explain human behavior leading to his revolutionary development of an ethical based approach to psychology.

H.m. is the science of the most general laws and root forces in the development of human society. H.m. came into being in the mid-19th century. Its creators were the leaders and ideologists of the working class: Marx and Engels. In founding a new philosophical world view, dialectical materialsm, Marx and Engels applied it to cognition of society, its history and life.

Abstract: The 1960s saw the publication of many works in philosophy in which materialism (or physicalism) was a major theme even if not always endorsed. But how should we assess the ‘materialist sixties’? This paper argues that what is distinctive about the period is that it combines materialist metaphysics with materialist meta-philosophy, and, in so doing, solved a problem that dogged the discipline of philosophy since it assumed its modern form in the 19th century.

The reversibility problem (better known as the reversibility objection) is usually taken to be an internal problem in the kinetic theory of gases, namely the problem of how to account for the second law of thermodynamics within this theory. Historically, it is seen as an objection that was raised against Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases, which led Boltzmann to a statistical approach to the kinetic theory, culminating in the development of statistical mechanics. In this paper, I show that in the (...) late nineteenth century, the reversibility problem had a much broader significance - it was widely discussed and certainly not only as an objection to Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases. In this period, there was a conflict between mechanism and irreversibility in physics which was tied up with central issues in philosophy of science such as materialism, empiricism and the need for mechanistic foundations of physical theories, as well as with concerns about the heat death of the universe. I discuss how this conflict was handled by the major physicists of the period, such as Maxwell, Kelvin, Duhem, Poincaré, Mach and Planck, as well as by a number of lesser-known authors. (shrink)

Medical schools are among the most important spaces for the history of the body. It is here that students come to know the anatomical bodies of their future patients and, through a process of cognitive and embodied practice, that the knowing bodies of future clinicians are also shaped. Practical and theoretical understandings of medicine are formed in these affective and historied buildings and in collaboration with a broad material culture of education. Medical schools are, however, both under-theorised and under-historicised. (...) This article integrates ‘materialist’ considerations of the body with Henri Lefebvre’s philosophy of space and rhythm in order to compare two markedly different spaces – the 19th-century Anatomy Department at Semmelweis University in Hungary and the mid-20th-century ‘skills laboratory’ at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. This comparison suggests that biomedical bodies are variously shaped by the agential and affective material histories present in the everyday experience of contemporary medical education. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I present Hermann Cohen's foundation for the history and philosophy of science. My investigation begins with Cohen's formulation of a neo-Kantian epistemology. I analyze Cohen's early work, especially his contributions to 19th century debates about the theory of knowledge. I conclude by examining Cohen's mature theory of science in two works, The Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and its History of 1883, and Cohen's extensive 1914 Introduction to Friedrich Lange's History of Materialism. In (...) the former, Cohen gives an historical and philosophical analysis of the foundations of the infinitesimal method in mathematics. In the latter, Cohen presents a detailed account of Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanics of 1894. Hertz considers a series of possible foundations for mechanics, in the interest of finding a secure conceptual basis for mechanical theories. Cohen argues that Hertz's analysis can be completed, and his goal achieved, by means of a philosophical examination of the role of mathematical principles and fundamental concepts in scientific theories. (shrink)

The materialist approach to the body is often, if not always understood in ‘mechanistic’ terms, as the view in which the properties unique to organic, living embodied agents are reduced to or described in terms of properties that characterize matter as a whole, which allow of mechanistic explanation. Indeed, from Hobbes and Descartes in the 17th century to the popularity of automata such as Vaucanson’s in the 18th century, this vision of things would seem to be correct. In this paper (...) I aim to correct this inaccurate vision of materialism. On the contrary, the materialist project on closer consideration reveals itself to be, significantly if not exclusively, (a) a body of theories specifically focused on the contribution that ‘biology’ or rather ‘natural history’ and physiology make to metaphysical debates, (b) much more intimately connected to what we now call ‘vitalism’ (a case in point is the presence of Théophile de Bordeu, a prominent Montpellier physician and theorist of vitalism, as a fictional character and spokesman of materialism, in Diderot’s novel D’Alembert’s Dream), and ultimately (c) an anti-mechanistic doctrine which focuses on the unique properties of organic beings. To establish this revised vision of materialism I examine philosophical texts such as La Mettrie’s Man a Machine and Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream; medical entries in the Encyclopédie by physicians such as Ménuret and Fouquet; and clandestine combinations of all such sources (Fontenelle, Gaultier and others). (shrink)

The scientific study of consciousness in the late 19th century, which took place in Western countries across disciplines such as neurology, physiology, neuropathology, psychology, psychiatry and philosophy, appears to have striking parallels to current crossdisciplinary developments in the neurosciences. The 19th century period, however, has received little scholarly attention from historians of medicine, psychology, or science. Historians of depth psychology have investigated the area as part of the history of psychiatry, but cleaved most closely to the versions (...) presented by early psychoanalysts- turned-historians, who have consistently portrayed Freud as the only legitimate history of the period, thus marking the territory of the late 19th century as inherently Freudo-centric. More recently a new line of historiography emanating from the work of the late Henri Ellenberger has launched a post-Freudian perspective in which the classical depth psychologies of Freud, Jung, and Adler may now be understood in a wider and deeper historical context defined by the development of a so-called French, Swiss, English, and American psychotherapeutic axis between 1881 and 1918, before the advent of psychoanalysis. Chief among the prime movers of this axis was Frederic William Henry Myers, graduate of Cambridge University, and co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research in England in 1882. Myers' grasp of the literature of the day regarding the scientific study of consciousness was both profound, and highly influential, particularly on such figures as William James. Since the period itself has yet to be fully reconstructed, the identity of Myers and his contribution to the scientific study of consciousness remain obscure, but are also receiving new attention in the area of modern consciousness studies. (shrink)

Should studies of social history engage in questions of important socio-political changes? The answer is undoubtedly affirmative. So far as the important changes in 19th century China are concerned, some case studies in regional social history have presented a picture of greater complexity and diversity. The Ningbo case, for example, shows that when a port that has had a history of foreign trade becomes embroiled in conflict between Chinese and foreigners, this conflict may simply become one (...) mode of interaction amongst many between Chinese and foreigners. The case of Turmot is an important turning point in Chinese history, since it marks the reversal of 2000 years of frequent attempts by nomadic tribes to expand southward. This trend is completely reversed by the Han nationalities’ northward immigration and reclamation, a development as significant as the Western invasion of China in terms of consequent social transformations. These historical traces revealed from within regions deepen our comprehension of these social transformations; consequently, such studies in social history may manage to provide answers different from those offered by the traditional model of political history. (shrink)

The article gives an overview of works on philosophy published in the 19 th and 20 th centuries in Belarus, widely influenced by the reception of philosophical views and trends of leading Western European thinkers. The main philosophical ideas of German philosophers (I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, K. Marx, F. Nietzsche and others) found creative reflections among the intellectuals of the Northwestern Krai (Region) of the Russian Empire, which included Belarus in the 19 th century. The authors analyze the role of (...) foreign ideas in the first third of the 20 th century on the example of one of the first textbooks on dialectical materialism published by S.Ya. Wolfson in the 1920s (has undergone seven editions). On the basis of the analysis of dissertations (over 800 dissertation of the 1950s–1980s), the authors demonstrate the significance of Western socio-philosophical ideas for the development of philosophical culture in Belarus. Considering the content and features of the processes of transfer of foreign philosophical ideas for two centuries, it can be concluded that is the dominance of the conceptions of German philosophy, especially in the 19 th century. Interest in German philosophy also prevailed in pre-war Soviet philosophy, while the focus was on Marxism and materialistic philosophy in general. Another trend is the significant role of works on the history of philosophy, including personalities and approaches. All this demonstrates that national Belarusian thought developed in the context of European philosophical culture. (shrink)

Diffusion theory explains in physical terms how materials move through a medium, e.g. water or a biological fluid. There are strong and widely acknowledged grounds for doubting the applicability of this theory in biology, although it continues to be accepted almost uncritically and taught as a basis of both biology and medicine. Our principal aim is to explore how this situation arose and has been allowed to continue seemingly unchallenged for more than 150 years. The main shortcomings of diffusion theory (...) will be briefly reviewed to show that the entrenchment of this theory in the corpus of biological knowledge needs to be explained, especially as there are equally valid historical grounds for presuming that bulk fluid movement powered by the energy of cell metabolism plays a prominent note in the transport of molecules in the living body. First, the theory's evolution, notably from its origins in connection with the mechanistic materialist philosophy of mid nineteenth century physiology, is discussed. Following this, the entrenchment of the theory in twentieth century biology is analyzed in relation to three situations: the mechanism of oxygen transport between air and mammalian tissues; the structure and function of cell membranes; and the nature of the intermediary metabolism, with its implicit presumptions about the intracellular organization and the movement of molecules within it. In our final section, we consider several historically based alternatives to diffusion theory, all of which have their precursors in nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy of science. (shrink)

This book provides an overview of key features of (philosophical) materialism, in historical perspective. It is, thus, a study in the history and philosophy of materialism, with a particular focus on the early modern and Enlightenment periods, leading into the 19th and 20th centuries. For it was in the 18th century that the word was first used by a philosopher (La Mettrie) to refer to himself. Prior to that, 'materialism' was a pejorative term, used for wicked thinkers, as (...) a near-synonym to 'atheist', 'Spinozist' or the delightful 'Hobbist'. The book provides the different forms of materialism, particularly distinguished into claims about the material nature of the world and about the material nature of the mind, and then focus on materialist approaches to body and embodiment, selfhood, ethics, laws of nature, reductionism and determinism, and overall, its relationship to science. For materialism is often understood as a kind of philosophical facilitator of the sciences, and the author want to suggest that is not always the case. Materialism takes on different forms and guises in different historical, ideological and scientific contexts as well, and the author wants to do justice to that diversity. Figures discussed include Lucretius, Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Toland, Collins, La Mettrie, Diderot, d'Holbach and Priestley; Büchner, Bergson, J.J.C. Smart and D.M. Armstrong. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to a comparison between Ernst Mach's and Friedrich Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical approach to scientific and philosophical concepts. By making reference to Mach’s early essay on the conservation of energy (Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit, 1872), I argue that Nietzsche shares with him the idea that the concepts we adopt are only useful fictions developed during the history of humankind and its culture. This idea is fundamental for the development of (...) modern science, since Mach’s epistemology contributed to give up the mechanistic (Newtonian) view of physics. (shrink)

Volume Three, “The Crisis of Humanism,” commences with an important essay on the challenge to the humanist tradition posed in the late 19th century by historical materialism, existentialism and positivism. These Jewish thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th century addressed the general European value crisis while laying foundations for Jewish renewal: Hess, Lazarus, Cohen, Ahad Ha-Am, Dubnow, Berdiczewski, and the theorists of Yiddishism and Labor Zionism.

The invention of film technologies in France at the end of the 19th century inspired neurologists and associated professionals to engage with this new medium to demonstrate their theories of the brain, the nervous system, and the mind. Beginning with the origins of cinema in Paris, this article explores how film technologies were used at La Salpêtrière, and beyond, to visualise internal mental processes, and to support the burgeoning sciences of the mind. This film-making became increasingly sophisticated by the (...) late 1910s and early 1920s, creating innovative ways to present psychological experiences on film. This article focuses on films produced by Albert Londe, Vincenzo Neri, Gheorghe Marinescu, and Jean Comandon. It argues that these polymaths created new filming techniques that built complexity into the visual articulation of psychological concepts. Their films were essential to shaping early debates in neurology, psychology, and the observational sciences during this critical period in the establishment of the modern sciences of the self. (shrink)

The content of Boscovich’s Theoria philosophiae naturalis was well-known to his contemporaries, but both scientists and philosophers chiefly discussed it during the 19th century. The observations that Boscovich presented in this text, and that he himself defined as “philosophicas metitationes”, soon showed their being a good programme for the forthcoming atomic physics, and contributed to get rid of the mechanistic paradigm in science. In this paper I’ll go back to some meaningful moments of the history of Boscovich’s reception (...) in the era of contemporary philosophy, by referring to what authors such as Popper, Cassirer, Nietzsche and Fechner wrote about him. These thinkers, indeed, particularly stressed the importance of the Theoria in the history of Western thought, and showed that it can easily be evaluated beyond the plane of a pure scientific investigation. (shrink)

Consciousness is currently a thriving area of research in psychology and neuroscience. While this is often attributed to events that took place in the early 1990s, consciousness studies today are a continuation of research that started in the late 19th century and that continued throughout the 20th century. From the beginning, the effort built on studies of animals to reveal basic principles of brain organization and function, and of human patients to gain clues about consciousness itself. Particularly important and (...) our focus here is research in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s involving three groups of patients—amnesia, split brain, and blindsight. Across all three groups, a similar pattern of results was found—the patients could respond appropriately to stimuli that they denied seeing (or in the case of amnesiacs, having seen before). These studies paved the way for the current wave of research on consciousness. The field is, in fact, still grappling with the implications of the findings showing that the ability to consciously know and report the identity of a visual stimulus can be dissociated in the brain from the mechanisms that underlie the ability to behave in a meaningful way to the same stimulus. (shrink)

The history of modern logic is usually written as the history of mathematical or, more general, symbolic logic. As such it was created by mathematicians. Not regarding its anticipations in Scholastic logic and in the rationalistic era, its continuous development began with George Boole's The Mathematical Analysis of Logic of 1847, and it became a mathematical subdiscipline in the early 20th century. This style of presentation cuts off one eminent line of development, the philosophical development of logic, although (...) logic is evidently one of the basic disciplines of philosophy. One needs only to recall some of the standard 19th century definitions of logic as, e.g., the art and science of reasoning (Whateley) or as giving the normative rules of correct reasoning (Herbart). In the paper the relationship between the philosophical and the mathematical development of logic will be discussed. Answers to the following questions will be provided: 1. What were the reasons for the philosophers' lack of interest in formal logic? 2. What were the reasons for the mathematicians' interest in logic? 3. What did "logic reform" mean in the 19th century? Were the systems of mathematical logic initially regarded as contributions to a reform of logic? 4. Was mathematical logic regarded as art, as science or as both? (shrink)

The phenomenon of self-healing forces has again and again challenged doctors in the different historical periods of medical science. They relied on effects of self-healing forces in diagnosis and therapy. They also tried to explain these effects based on the current model of organism. The understanding of this phenomenon has always influenced the understanding of therapy and played a role in defining the concept of health and disease. In the 17th and 18th century the idea of self-healing force was interpreted (...) as a phenomenon related to the organic forces, whereas in the 19th century the explanation was reduced to a materialistic mechanism. Nowadays the knowledge of heath-shock-proteins open the way of a new understanding of the organic defense mechanisms. (shrink)

This article deals with the concept of “mechanism” from a historical point of view, focusing on its relationship with the evolution of hylomorphism in the 17th century. I try to address the following questions: is mechanism structurally bound to materialism or does it rather represent a form of complete determinism, reconcilable with an “updated” version of hylomorphism? In the first part of the essay, I make the point that the very notion of “mechanism” must be clarified by means of a (...) distinction between Boylean experimental mechanism and what Daniel Garber has called the “pre-history of the Mechanical Philosophy”. My aim is to highlight how the deterministic (and nominalistic) hylomorphism developed in the 17th Century came quite close to mechanism. In this framework, I present the ‘strange case’ of Marin Cureau de La Chambre (1594-1669), which represents a characteristic compromise – based on the possibility of a not bodily extension – between a deterministic mechanization of the lower functions of the vegetative and sensitive soul and Campanella’s panpsychism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ideas in the Brain: The Localization of Memory Traces in the Eighteenth CenturyTimo KaitaroPlato suggests in the Theaetetus that we imagine a piece of wax in our soul, a gift from the goddess of Memory. We are able to remember things when our perceptions or thoughts imprint a trace upon this piece of wax, in the same manner as a seal is stamped on wax. Plato uses this metaphor (...) to explain the errors which arise when we mistake something for something else: we connect the perception of an object with the trace belonging to another. The metaphor can also be used in explaining differences in people’s mnestic capacities: rapid learning and forgetting correspond to soft wax, impure wax results in muddled traces, etc.1 If we locate the traces in the brain instead of in the soul, Plato’s metaphor gains consistency and turns into a testable hypothesis. This move was already made by Quintilian.2So, the metaphor of memory as traces in the brain is evidently not a modern invention. This is easy to understand. To frame the hypothesis one needs only to reflect on how we use objects outside our brains for mnemonic purposes. We conserve ideas by tracing or printing letters and words on paper. We are also able to conserve images in drawings, paintings and prints. What could be more natural than to think of memory as the formation of traces in the brain? The development of even better information storage techniques in the form of pictures, symbols, and signs provides the metaphor extra plausibility. Plato’s seal allows us to imagine the imprint of a person’s likeness, but modern techniques of information storage and retrieval make it even easier to imagine memory in general as the formation of material traces.Explaining memory in terms of material traces could, of course, be taken [End Page 301] to mean that the formation of material traces in the brain is merely a necessary condition of memory. But one could also take a more reductionistic stance which identifies memory with the formation of material traces. Furthermore, one could identify specific mental items (sensations, ideas, memories) with specific physiological events or anatomical entities in the brain. This seems especially plausible if we imagine that the traces in the brain are as discrete and separate as ideas or memories are in our minds. Since the traces we form or print on paper consist of discrete letters and words, the thought that the traces in the brain are equally discrete and separate comes easily. Plato, in fact, made separateness a condition for the memory to work properly: it is not easy to read signs printed on one another.3 Of course, no traces are actually visible in the brain. But they are easy to imagine, as it is to imagine explanations of psychological phenomena, such as association, based on these traces.At the end of the seventeenth century, explanations of mental phenomena referring to material traces in the brain were used by writers, from Platonists to materialists, who supported widely different theories about the nature of the human mind.4 In fact, as I will show later in this paper, the question of the possible identity of mental entities, like ideas or sensations, with material entities or traces in the brain is relatively independent of the question of the existence of an immaterial soul. Or rather, if there is a systematic connection between the answers proposed to these two questions in the eighteenth century, it is not the connection one would expect. Nowadays we often tend to think of a prototypical materialist as someone who makes radical reductionistic claims about the identity of mental phenomena with brain states. We also tend to think of the eighteenth-century French materialists as “mechanistic.”5 In view of this reputation, it may come as a surprise to find that some eighteenth-century materialists, notably Denis Diderot, were in fact consistent anti-reductionists and opposed to mechanical or mechanistic explanations of the mental.6 In fact, the epithet “mechanistic” is misleading even when applied to the philosopher who is traditionally presented as the paradigmatic example of a “mechanistic materialist,” Julien Offray... (shrink)

The article starts by observing a parallel between the identification of Christ's humanity and universal human nature, for which Harnack repudiates some church fathers, and David Strauss' claim, in his Life of Jesus, that the subject of the Incarnation must be all humanity. It is argued that this oppositional stance is indicative of fundamental philosophical and theological differences between the Tübingen School and the Ritschl School. Those differences, however, are then explained as emerging from what is ultimately a common project (...) of a radical form of historical theology. This project, it is argued, Ritschl took over from Baur while correcting it in crucial ways. Taken together, the two central theological schools of the 19th century thus illustrate the potential and the limits of christian theology within the historicist paradigm. (shrink)

A lively and accessible history of Modernism, _The First Moderns_ is filled with portraits of genius, and intellectual breakthroughs, that richly evoke the _fin-de-siècle_ atmosphere of Paris, Vienna, St. Louis, and St. Petersburg. William Everdell offers readers an invigorating look at the unfolding of an age. "This exceptionally wide-ranging history is chock-a-block with anecdotes, factoids, odd juxtapositions, and useful insights. Most impressive.... For anyone interested in learning about late 19th- and early 20th- century imaginative thought, this engagingly (...) written book is a good place to start."—_Washington Post Book World_ "_The First Moderns_ brilliantly maps the beginning of a path at whose end loom as many diasporas as there are men."—Frederic Morton, _The Los Angeles Times Book Review_ "In this truly exciting study of the origins of modernist thought, poet and teacher Everdell roams freely across disciplinary lines.... A brilliant book that will prove useful to scholars and generalists for years to come; enthusiastically recommended."—_Library Journal_, starred review "Everdell has performed a rare service for his readers. Dispelling much of the current nonsense about 'postmodernism,' this book belongs on the very short list of profound works of cultural analysis."—_Booklist_ "Innovative and impressive... [Everdell] has written a marvelous, erudite, and readable study."-Mark Bevir, _Spectator_ "A richly eclectic history of the dawn of a new era in painting, music, literature, mathematics, physics, genetics, neuroscience, psychiatry and philosophy."—Margaret Wertheim, _New Scientist_ "[Everdell] has himself recombined the parts of our era's intellectual history in new and startling ways, shedding light for which the reader of _The First Moderns_ will be eternally grateful."—Hugh Kenner, _The New York Times Book Review_ "Everdell shows how the idea of "modernity" arose before the First World War by telling the stories of heroes such as T. S. Eliot, Max Planck, and Georges Serault with such a lively eye for detail, irony, and ambiance that you feel as if you're reliving those miraculous years."—Jon Spayde, _Utne Reader_. (shrink)

What does it mean to do philosophy historically, and when does the legend of philosophy begin? When Hegel tried to give a logical explanation of philosophy's history, was he doing the same thing as Eduard Zeller in his account of Creek thought, or Kuno Fischer in his narrative of modern philosophy? l do not believe so, and I shall sugges t in the following that we should carefully differentiate between the different activities commonly referred to as the history (...) of philosophy. I will point out the enormous productivity of the 19th century in terms of printed books devoted to the history of philosophy. I will also point to the context in which these were produced and used rather than examining individual works or authors. There is an entirely new context in the 19th century, which is the study of philosophy. A proper culture developed around the historical interest in philosophy, and it is this culture I want to sketch here. (shrink)