Matter over Mind ?: The Rise and Fall of Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century France
Résumé
Written off as pseudo-science for more than a century, phrenology is now undergoing something of a reappraisal. Indeed, some have argued that it should be considered as the first veritable human science, since it constitutes the first attempt to link psychological reasoning to the physiological study of the brain. For other scholars, in contrast, phrenology should be seen rather as an early example of the kind of narrowly-reductionist approach characteristic of modern neurobiology. What these otherwise contradictory readings have in common is that they see in the phrenological project a foreshadowing of concerns and questions which preoccupy contemporary science. It could be argued that this paradoxical and problematic legacy results, in part at least, from major ambiguities contained within the original theory itself, one which occupied an ambiguous position on the frontier between mainstream science and mere charlatanism.
Domaines
Histoire
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