Great Ideas of Philosophy

Lecture Thirty-SevenPhrenology⎯A Science of the MindScope: Even as the philosophers speculated throughout the 17 th and 18 th centuries about whether or not a scienceof the mind was possible, the more medically and biologically oriented thinkers had already satisfiedthemselves that the answer was “yes.”Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) was one of leading neuroanatomists of his time. On the basis of his studiesof the brain, he propounded a theory that would explain the psychological dimensions of life by way of thestructural and functional features of the brain. Gall’s “science” of phrenology would become all the rage,only to fall on hard times, but the larger perspective that supported it—that brain structures are related tobrain functions—would come to be dominant in the scientific thinking of the 19 th century and thereafter.OutlineI. Even as Hume, the philosophes, Kant, and other major philosophers of the Enlightenment were changing themap of thought, the scientific imagination of the period was scarcely at rest.A. Pierre Gassendi, who helped to revive Epicurean philosophy and the ontology of Democratus and theatomists, argued that, ultimately, everything is reducible to an atomic particulate form.B. Newton’s physics is corpuscularian, and his methods, as well as Galileo’s, sanctioned a reductionisticapproach to complex problems.C. Locke’s philosophy of mind is corpuscular—reduce mind to its elementary sensations, then figure out theprinciples by which it is built into more complex ensembles.D. Despite the claims of his mind/body dualism, Descartes’s psychology is radically biological.1. Descartes eventually finds a super-rational, abstract, theorem-generating part of the mind that savesthe whole system from vulgar materialism.2. Except for the uniquely rational powers conferred on human beings by Descartes’s philosophy, the restof his philosophical psychology is entirely biological.3. Descartes establishes a solid philosophical foundation for a materialistic approach to issues of mindand mental life.E. La Mettrie’s Man, A Machine becomes almost a rallying cry for those who think that scientificunderstanding of the brain is the key to solving the problems of knowledge, conduct, and governance.II. By the end of the 18 th century, commitment to this precept was increasing in scientific and medical circles.A. The Swiss naturalist Joseph Lavater developed the theory of physiognomy, which correlated human facialcharacteristics with various social types, such as artists, geniuses, and criminals.B. Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) developed a similar scientific theory meant to explain the complexities ofhuman personality.1. Born in Baden, Germany, Gall studied medicine at Strassburg and the University of Vienna.2. Gall formed the theory in his youth that a close relationship obtained between large eyes and a largememory and, more generally, that one might be able to judge all sorts of talents by examining physicalfeatures.3. By 1791, in his early 30s, Gall committed himself to his first full-blown theory—cranioscopy, whichheld that careful examination of the cranial formations allows a doctor to assess a patient’s underlyingmental and moral faculties.4. Concerned that Gall’s theory—now dubbed phrenology—led to a materialistic, atheistic account ofhuman moral and mental powers, the clergy successfully had government sanctions imposed on Gall in1802.5. Gall abandoned Austria and made his way as a lecturer in various German university towns, settlingfinally in Paris in 1807.6. Over the next years, Gall would answer charges of atheism, fail to be elected to the French Academyof Sciences, and otherwise spread his celebrity with multivolume treatises on the functions of thebrain.2©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership