visit functions of the brain
The Functions of the Brain: Gall to Ferrier (1808-1886)
By Robert M. Young*
THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES and particularly psychology have been made the
wastebasket of the scientific revolution. In his classical discussion of The
Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, E. A. Burtt referred to
the concept of mind as a convenient receptacle for the refuse, the chips and
whittlings of science, rather than a possible object of scientific
knowledge.l A. G. A. Balz made the same point in his Cartesian Studies,
where he noted that psychology "had to be whatever the new physics and the
related metaphysics permitted it to be."2 A diagnosis of the limitations of
the explanatory model of the scientific revolution has been made many times.
The writings of Burtt and of A. N. Whitehead are but two examples of
penetrating discussions of the difficulties involved in attempting to
include biology, psychology, and the social sciences in the explanatory
paradigm of the physical sciences.3 The prescriptions provided by these same
authors show just how far we are from providing an alternative. It is
arguable that a pre requisite to useful reconstructive work to repair what
Burtt called "a rather radical piece of cosmic surgery" 4 is at least a
generation of careful historical research. 5 In spite of Edwin G. Boring's
admirable pioneer studies, this work has not yet begun.6
Speaking of the seventeenth-century metaphysician-scientists, Burtt asks,
Did it never cross their minds that sooner or later
people would appear who craved verifiable knowledge
about mind in the same way they craved it about physical
events, and who might reasonably curse their elder
scientific brethren for buying easier success in their
own enterprise by throwing extra handicaps in the way of
their successors in social science?7
Cartesian dualism and the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities
enabled the physical sciences to develop, but this was achieved at the
expense of the biological and behavioral sciences. The present study is an
attempt to trace some of the im-
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* Whipple Science Museum, University of Cambridge. (For current address, see
end of article.)
1 E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (2nd
ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1932), p. 319.
2 A. G. A. Balz, Cartesian Studies (New York Columbia Univ. Press, 1951), p.
196.
3 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1925), Chs. 3, 6, 9.
4 Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations, p 302.
5 See my essay review on "Philosophy of Mind and Related Issues" in British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science 1967 18: 325 330.
6 Cf. Robert M. Young, "Scholarship and the History of the Behavioural
Sciences," History of Science, 1966, 5: 1-51.
7 Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations, pp. 31 319.
plications of this world view in the scientific writings of psychologists
and neurophysiologists in the nineteenth century. This topic was chosen
because the relations among brain, mind, and behavior seem to be the obvious
and crucial area for investigating the limitations of Cartesian dualism as
applied to the biological sciences. It seems clear at the outset that the
major difficulty of those who did crave verifiable knowledge about the mind
was that they were very slow and timid about cursing their elder scientific
brethren. By Cartesian dualism is meant, of course, the conception of two
ontological substances: matter, which is extended, divisible, passive, and
law-like; and mind, which is unextended, indivisible, active, and free.
These substances were defined in such a way that any relationship between
them seemed impossible in a metaphysical sense. The psychologists and
physiologists were left with the problem of explaining how, in fact,
impressions on the sense organs caused ideas, and thoughts caused movements,
that is, how interaction occurred when it was metaphysically inconceivable.
Mind-body dualism played an important part in the period when attempts began
to be made to apply the categories of science to the study of mind and
brain. If attention is restricted to empirical investigation of these
issues, one must begin in the nineteenth century, with the work of Franz
Joseph Gall (1758-1828). After his doctrine has been considered, its
relations with three other traditions will be outlined: first, the
association psychology; second, the application of the categories of
sensation and motion to progressively higher parts of the nervous system;
third, a changing context for psychology, from a primarily philosophic
approach within the static framework of the great chain of being to a
biological approach based on the dynamics of evolutionary change. Thus, when
the psychological principle of association was combined with the physiology
of sensation and motion and integrated into a sensory-motor
psychophysiology, this unified doctrine was almost immediately reinterpreted
in terms of the theory of evolution as applied to mind and brain and to the
relations between organisms and their environments. The body of the paper is
concerned with a closely interrelated set of influences extending from early
empirical studies on mind and brain to the establishment of experimental
research on this topic. My aim is to suggest that when the study of the mind
came to be considered in physiological and biological terms, powerful
philosophic constraints were at work which narrowed the issue and
impoverished the study of the mental functions of human and other organisms.
These developments occurred in the course of debates about the principle of
cerebral localization, which may be defined as the doctrine that various
parts of the brain have relatively distinct mental, behavioral, and
physiological functions. For example, it is generally believed that the
forebrain subserves intellectual functions, that just behind that is an area
for the control of muscular movements, and that beneath the motor areas are
a number of structures which regulate metabolic functions. Speculative
localizations of functions date from Herophilus and Galen, that is, from the
beginnings of anatomy and physiology. Various schemes of cerebral
localization were proposed before the nineteenth century; for example, in
the sixteenth century Gregor Reisch localized sensation, imagination,
reasoning, and memory in the ventricles of the brain.8 After attention was
shifted from the ventricles (and the associated pneumatic physiology) to the
solid parts of the brain, the same faculties were variously localized.9
___________________________
8 H. W. Magoun, "Early Development Ideas Relating the Mind with the Brain,"
in G. E. W. Wolstenholme and C. M. O'Connor, eds., Neurological Basis of
Behaviour (London: Churchill, 1958), p. 16.
9 A. Macalister, "Phrenology," in The Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th ed.,
Edinburgh: Black, 1885), Vol. XVIII, pp. 842-849; Jules Soury, Le Système
nerveux central: structure et fonctions: histoire critique des théories et
des doctrines (Paris: Carre & Naud, 1899), Vol. I; F. N. L. Poynter, ed.,
The History and Philosophy of Knowledge of the Brain and Its Functions
(Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1958).
253
The work of Franz Joseph Gall provides the first empirical approach both to
the nature of the faculties and to their localizations.10 The prevailing
view just before Gall began his researches can be gathered from George
Prochaska's Dissertation on the Functions of the Nervous System, published
in Vienna in 1784, twelve years before Gall took his medical degree there.
Prochaska argued that cerebral localization was probably valid, that the
relevant faculties were the understanding, the will, imagination, and
memory, but that "the conjectures by which eminent men have attempted to
determine these are extremely improbable, and that department of physiology
is as obscure now as ever it was;...'' 1l It is noteworthy that in 1799
Bichat still maintained confidently that the brain was the seat of the
intellect but not of the passions. 12 Gall insisted that the brain was the
physiological basis of all mental functions.
Gall's ideas developed from childhood observations of his playmates. Those
who could memorize better than he, had bulging eyes.l3 This was merely a
physiognomical correlation, with no apparent physiological basis. Gall
extended the correlation in two ways. First, he based it on a doctrine about
the brain: bulging eyes were caused by a large underlying brain area for the
faculty of verbal memory.14 Second, he argued that this faculty was innate -
thus opposing the prevailing sensationalism of the idéologues. 15 He
generalized these points to argue that a science of human nature could be
founded on four types of variables:
1 2 3 4
STRIKING implies FACULTY implies CORTICAL implies CRANIAL
BEHAVIOUR »» »» ORGAN «« PROMINENCE
«« «« »»
causes causes causes
(talent, (activity (size
propensity, (innate varies varies with
mania) instinct) with size) underlying
organ)
_____________________
lO Francois Joseph Gall and J. C. Spurzheim, Anatomie et physiologie du
système nerveux en général et du cerveau en particulier avec des
observations sur la possibilité de reconnaître plusieurs dispositions
intellectuelles et morales de l'homme et des animaux par la configuration de
leurs têtes, 4 vols., with an atlas of 100 engraved plates. (Paris: Schoell,
1810-1819). (Gall is sole author of Vols. III and IV.) Gall, Sur les
fonctions du cerveau et sur celle de chacune de ses parties 6 vols. (Paris:
Ballière, 1822-1825). Gall, On the Functions of the Brain and Each of Its
Parts: With Observations on the Possibility of Determining the Instincts,
Propensities and Talents, or the Moral and Intellectual Dispositions of Men
and Animals, by the Configuration of the Head, trans, Winslow Lewis, Jr., 6
vols. (Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon, 1835). Gall, et al., On the Functions of
the Cerebellum by Drs Gall, Vimont, and Broussais, trans. George Combe
(Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart, 1838).
1l George Prochaska, A Dissertation on the Functions of the Nervous System,
trans. Thomas Laycock (London: Sydenham Society, 1851), pp. 446, 447.
12 Xavier Bichat, Physiological Researches on Life and Death, trans. F. Gold
(London: Longmans, n.d.), pp. 62, 252.
13 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain, Vol. I, pp. 57-58.
14 Ibid., p. 59.
15 Ibid., pp. 80-83, 95-171. See also Pierre J. C. Cabanis, Rapports du
physique et du moral de l'homme, 2 vols. (2nd ed., Paris: Crapart, Caille &
Ravier, 1805); François Picavet, Les Idéologues (Paris: Alcan, 1891); George
Rosen, "The Philosophy of Ideology and the Emergence of Modern Medicine in
France," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1946, 20 : 328-339; George
Boas, French Philosophies of the Romantic Period (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Press, 1925), Chs. 1 and 2; Madison Bentley, "The Psychological Antecedents
of Phrenology," Psychological Monographs, 1916, 21: 102-115; Owsei Temkin,
"The Philosophical Background of Magendie's Physiology," Bull. Hist. Med.,
1946, 20: 10-35; Temkin, "Gall and the Phrenological Movement," Bull. Hist.
Med., 1947, 21: 275-321 (on the idéologues, see esp. pp. 289-299). Temkin's
article on Gall is the best secondary source available on this subject.
254
Given this paradigm, Gall argued that the then-prevailing categories of
interpretation - intelligence, reason, will, and so forth - were wholly
inadequate to account for the obvious behavioral differences among species
and individuals.l6 Where these categories stressed the relations between
minds and objects for knowledge, Gall emphasized the adaptation of organisms
to their environments.17 As he put it, "every hypothesis which renders no
reason for the daily phenomena which the state of health and the state of
disease offer us, is necessarily false.''l8 He argued that "the most sublime
intelligence will never be able to find in a closet, what exists only in the
vast field of nature.''l9 The implication was that psychology is not a
branch of epistemology, but of general biology, and he devoted himself to
making comparisons among the striking talents of men, the different habits
and abilities of different species, and the compilation of a truly natural
classification of functions.
Gall's findings and his influence played a seminal role in neuroanatomy and
in the development of the concept of cerebral localization in
neurophysiology and neurology,20 but in his own work it was undermined by
his belief in "bumps" as accurate reflections of the relative size of areas
of the underlying brain. This is only one example of a principle which Gall
stated but which he was unable to carry out in practice. He established once
and for all that the brain is the organ of the mind. Even Pierre Flourens,
Gall's arch-opponent, granted this.2l His naturalist viewpoint, coupled with
his critique of philosophical psychology, played an important part in
removing psychology from philosophy and placing it in biology. Most
important, however, was his argument that neither the study of the
physiology of the brain nor the introspective study of mind would alone
provide adequate categories for interpreting experience and behavior.
Comparative studies of animals and observation of man in society -
particularly the extraordinary (geniuses and maniacs)-were the essential
prerequisites for arriving at a psychology which might explain mind, brain,
and behavior.22
There is no reason to dwell on Gall's methods or the final formulation of
his psychology.23 One concludes from a study of his large compendium of
evidence for his faculties that the phrenological method is a textbook case
in support of a falsificationist view of scientific method, for he sought
confirmations and failed to take exceptions seriously enough.24 One should
emphasize the value of his naturalist,
__________________________
16 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain, Vol. I., pp. 88-89.
17 Ibid., p. 84.
18 Ibid., Vol. V, p. 251
19 Ibid., p. 317.
20 Erwin H. Ackerknecht and Henri V. Vallois, Franz Joseph Gall, Inventor of
Phrenology and His Collection, Wisconsin Studies in Medical History, No. 1
(Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1956), pp. 13-27. For Gall's contributions
to neuroanatomy, see Owsei Temkin, "Remarks on the Neurology of Gall and
Spurzheim," in E. A. Underwood, ed., Science, Medicine and History (London:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1953), Vol. II, pp. 282-289.
21 Pierre Flourens, Phrenology Examined, trans. Charles Meigs (Philadelphia:
Hogan & Thompson, 1846), pp. 27-28.
22 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain, Vol. III, pp. 133-135; Vol. IV, p.
162.
23 Gall discusses his methods in ibid., Vol. III, pp. 108-130.
24 This article is primarily concerned with the ways in which phrenology
influenced developments in psychology and the study of the nervous system. A
most interesting study of the parallel development of the phrenological
movement in Britain, France, and America in this same period could provide a
counterpoint to my rather Whiggish emphasis on the "winning side." For
criticism of the cranioscopic method see Richard Chevenix, "Gall and
Spurzheim-Phrenology," Foreign Quarterly Review, 1828, 2: 1-52; William
Carpenter, "Noble on the Brain and Its Physiology," British and Foreign
Medical Review, 1846 22 : 488-544 (esp. pp. 520 ff. ); George H. Lewes,
"Phrenology in France," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1857, 32: 665-674.
The reactions of phrenologists to criticism can be judged from reading
almost any article in the Phrenological Journal. See also the list of
phrenological controversies appended to Gall et al., On the Functions of the
Cerebellum. The history of scientific physiology and psychology parted
company with the practice of phrenological delineation (popularly known as
"head-reading") over the legitimacy of the cranioscopic method. The history
of applied phrenology formed an important part of the development of the
scientific study of man by virtue of its wide popularity and its influence
on Robert Chambers, A. R. Wallace, and Auguste Comte, among others. The
American movement has received some attention. See John D. Davies,
Phrenology Fad and Science: a 19th Century American Crusade (New Haven: Yale
Univ. Press, 1955); David Bakan, "The Influence of Phrenology on American
Psychology," Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences, 1966, 2:
200-220. The British movement would repay closer study. There is a very
large literature, and the influence of phrenology on evolutionary theory,
various forms of social reform, and the behavioral sciences is very
interesting indeed. In 1820 George Combe helped to found a phrenological
society in Edinburgh and became its first president. By 1832 there were 29
phrenological societies in Britain and several journals in Britain and
America. Their publications provide a most illuminating perspective on
contemporary scientific developments. The British Phrenological Society was
incorporated in 1899. It continued to publish a newsletter until 1966. The
Society functioned until February 1967, when it went into voluntary
liquidation. Its past president, Miss Frances Hedderly, F.B.P.S., has guided
its affairs over the last few years and is now convinced that the work of
the Society is completed. Its valuable library has been deposited at
University College, London, and at the Whipple Science Museum, Cambridge. My
research has been aided in many ways by the co-operation of Miss Hedderly
and other members of the Society.
255
biological approach in psychology but grant that the conclusions he drew
invited the criticism which has been earned by all faculty psychologies:
they substitute classification for explanation.25 To explain that a mother
loves her child because she has a large cerebral organ producing a strong
faculty of "philoprogenitiveness" is on a level with Molière's physician who
explained the action of opium by invoking a "soporific virtue."26
Gall's anecdotal and correlative methods and his faculty psychology can
serve only as object lessons in the misuse of scientific method. However,
the obvious alternative - experiment - had failed to produce significant
advances in understanding the functions of the nervous system until 1822,
six years before Gall died.27 In his critique of the experimental method,
Gall pointed out that it was difficult to repeat findings or to make
inferences based upon, for instance, the sexual performance of an animal
which was rapidly ceasing to live from uncontrollable loss of blood.28
However, these objections were rapidly overcome by technical and
methodological developments, and one's claims for Gall are confined to the
principles
_______________________
25 For criticisms of faculty psychologies see Carroll C. Pratt, "Faculty
Psychology " Psychological Review, 1929, 36: 142-17; George F. Stout, "The
Herbartian Psychology," Mind, 1888, 13: 321-338 and 473-498 and Stout,
"Herbart Compared with English Psychologists and with Beneke," Mind, 1889,
14 : 1-26; Charles E. Spearman, The Abilities of Man: Their Nature and
Measurement (London: Macmillan, 1927), pp. 28 ff.
26 Cf. Galen: ". . . so long as we are ignorant of the true essence of the
cause which is operating, we call it a faculty." On the Natural Faculties,
trans. A. J. Brock (London: Heinemann, 1963), p. 17.
27 Pierre Flourens, Recherches experimentales sur les propriétés et les
fonctions du système nerveux dans les animaux vertebrés (Paris: Crevot,
1824); J. M. D. Olmsted François Magendie (New York: Schuman's, 1944), Ch.
7.
28 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain Vol. III, p. 257. Cf. ibid., pp.
97-100 and 240-263; Vol. VI, pp. 153 and 239.
256
mentioned in the preceding paragraphs and his prediction that the
physiological experimenters ran the danger of reducing mental life to
sensibility, irritability, and muscular motion.29 It will become apparent
that he was most prescient.
In the experimental work which began to give significant results in 1822,
the most important early sensory-motor physiologists were Pierre Flourens,
François Magendie, and Johannes Müller. Their methods and some of their
findings were very elegant indeed, but their analyses of the "organ of mind"
were highly conditioned by their philosophical preconceptions. Flourens'
careful methods of excision, control of bleeding, and observation of animals
over long periods led to his classical findings on the regulatory functions
of the cerebellum in muscular co-ordination and his location of the
respiratory center in the medulla oblongata. 30 Magendie demonstrated by
experiment that the anterior spinal nerve roots are motor in function and
the posterior roots are sensory. (The functional division between the
anterior and posterior spinal nerve roots came to be known as the
Bell-Magendie law, since Bell reached the same conclusion on anatomical
grounds.31) Johannes Müller confirmed and extended these findings, and they
were widely read in his classical Handbuch.32 In the period between 1822 and
1845 these three men were the leaders in establishing the experimental
method in neurophysiology. Their work was a continuation of the
investigation of physiological properties which was begun by Francis Glisson
and made experimental by Albrecht von Haller.33 The discoveries which von
Haller had made about the properties of the peripheral nerves they extended
to the spinal cord and some higher centers. Furthermore, they adopted the
paradigm of explanation - sensation and motion - which was to be
progressively used to account for all nervous functions.
It is when one turns to the brain that the influence of philosophic
constraints on their approach becomes apparent. Flourens' experiments on the
brain involved successive slicing of the cortical substance without
reference to the alleged cortical organs. Even if Gall's localizations had
been true, this technique could only lead to successive loss of all
functions.34 Flourens concluded that the cortex acts as one organ and that
all its supposed faculties are indivisible. Thus the lower centers were for
sensation and motion, while the cortex was a unitary organ for a unitary
mind.35 The basis of this view is clear from the dedication of his Examen de
la Phrénologie: "I frequently quote Descartes: I even go further; for I
dedicate my work to his memory. I am writing in opposition to a bad
philosophy [Gall's], while I am endeavoring to recall a sound one."36 It
should be stressed that while Flourens'
______________________
29 ibid., Vol. VI, pp. 160-161; cf. Vol. III, p. 245.
30 Flourens, Recherches expérimentales (2nd ed., Paris: Ballière, 1842). See
also J. M. D. Olmsted, "Pierre Flourens," in Underwood, ed., Science,
Medicine and History, Vol. II, pp. 290-302.
31 Olmsted, François Magendie, Ch. 7.
32 Johannes Müller, Elements of Physiology, trans. W. Baly, 2 vols. (London:
Taylor & Walton, 1838-1842), Vol. I, pp. 640-646; cf. John T. Merz, A
History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 4 vols. (Edinburgh:
Blackwood, 1904-1912), Vol. II, p. 384n.
33 Albrecht von Haller, "A Dissertation on the Sensible and Irritable Parts
of Animals" (1735), trans. M. Tissot, reprinted with an introduction by
Owsei Temkin, Bull. Hist. Med., 1936, 4: 651-699. Cf. Temkin, "The Classical
Roots of Glisson's Doctrine of Irritation," Bull. Hist. Med., 1964, 37:
297-328. On the relationship between the concepts of Glisson, Haller, and
Flourens, see Anon., "Recent Discoveries on the Physiology of the Nervous
System," Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, 1824, 21: 141-159, p. 144.
34 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain Vol. VI, pp. 164-166; Vol. III, p.
244.
35 Flourens, Recherches experimetales (1842), pp. xvi, 97, 208, 235,
243-244.
36 Flourens, Phrenology Examined, p. xiv; cf. pp. xi, xiii, 38, 45, 53, 57,
96.
257
findings were not inconsistent with his interpretation of them, some of his
extreme claims - for example, that the cortex is not the origin of any nerve
- cannot be reconciled with the state of contemporary knowledge without
allowing a large role for preconception. 37 In the light of Gall's
injunctions it is interesting to note that neither Flourens nor Magendie nor
Müller - for all their emphasis on observation and experiment - made any
attempt to determine the categories of function. They reverted to such
traditional ones as memory, reason, and will.
Magendie's initial remarks about the brain were more promising: its study
was a branch of physiology like the study of the functions of any other
organ.38 However, when he specified what he meant by "physiology" in this
context, a hiatus appeared, for the study of the physiology of the brain was
identified as idéologie - the sensationalist analysis of mind which grew out
of the work of Locke and Condillac and was then represented in Paris by
Destutt de Tracy and Cabanis.39 These assumptions were, of course, different
from Flourens' Cartesianism, but one result was the same: the analysis of
the brain was separated from that of the lower centers. Will became a
species of desire in the philosophy of the idéologues, but its cerebral
basis was not directly connected with the cause of muscular contraction.40
Furthermore, the method used in this supposedly "physiological"
investigation was introspection.4l
Müller, like Flourens and Magendie, rejected cerebral localization and the
categories of Gall and separated the organs of mind from motor functions.42
As he put it in his Handbuch, "The fibres of all the motor, cerebral and
spinal nerves may be imagined as spread out in the medulla oblongata, and
exposed to the influence of the will like the keys of a piano-forte." It was
impossible to determine how an exertion of the will excites these fibres.43
There is little point in multiplying examples of this separation except to
emphasise that it became the accepted account. The standard British text,
William Carpenter's Principles of Physiology, reiterates it through all
editions, and he expounds it in his other writings right up to and including
his review of the experiments of David Ferrier which decisively disproved
it. 44 The cortex was a unitary organ, "superadded" to the sensory-motor
centers. The latter were said to be the instruments of the mind, and the
mind's cortical organ had no connection with purely excito-motor actions.45
The motor aspect of this orthodoxy has been nicely summarized by Sir
Geoffrey Jefferson:
From Haller . . . onwards to the best observer of them
all, Flourens, and on again to Magendie and everyone
else, all were agreed upon this, the brain was
unresponsive except at the lower and lowest levels. The
hemispheres were the seat of the "will"; they excited
movements by playing on these motor mechanisms. But how
they did so no one knew and no nice man would ask !46
__________________________
37 Flourens, Recherches expérimentales (1842), pp. xiii, 19, 22, 50,
237-239.
38 François Magendie, An Elementary Treatise on Human Physiology, trans.
John Revere (5th ed., New York: Harper, 1843), p. 146.
39 Ibid., p. 147. See also references cited above, n. l5.
40 Ibid., pp. 151, 243-246, 252-253.
41 Ibid., p. 146.
42 Müller, Elements of Physiology, Vol. I, pp. 834-838, Vol. II, p. 1345;
Flourens, Phrenology Examined, passim; Magendie, Elementary Treatise, p.
l5On.
43 Müller, Elements of Physiology, Vol. II, p. 934.
44 William Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physiology (London: King, 1874),
pp. 99-100, 715, 719.
45 Carpenter, "Noble on the Brain" pp. 5OO, 510-512, 515; Principles of
Human Physiology (5th ed., Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea, 1855), pp.
534-535, 489-490, 497-511.
46 Geoffrey Jefferson, Selected Papers (London: Pitman Medical, 1960), p.
116.
258
We are left therefore with precise findings about the sensory-motor function
of the spinal roots and some higher structures and an unphysiological
doctrine about the cortex. When science has an unequivocal theory in one
area and confusion in another, it is natural that an attempt will be made to
extend the former to account for the latter. What was needed for the full
exploitation of the sensory-motor paradigm of Bell and Magendie was a
suitable theoretical context for bringing it into contact with psychology.
The theoretical context for sensory-motor physiology was provided by
Alexander Bain. Bain was the heir to a psychological tradition which grew
out of Locke and Gay,47 whose anti-Cartesian sensationalism was united with
Newton's corpuscular theory of matter to provide the basis of the
association psychology, first clearly formulated by David Hartley. 48 The
associationists specified atomic units for what Descartes considered to be
indivisible mental substances. They argued that all complex mental phenomena
could be analyzed into sensations and that the larger mental elements were
built up by habit or repetition - the law of association. 49
Association psychologists prior to Bain had seen their work in a philosophic
context. Bain wrote psychology free from formal philosophy and set out to
integrate the science of mind with physiology. In the Preface of the first
volume ( The Senses and the Intellect ) of his major work he wrote,
"Conceiving that the time has now come when many of the striking discoveries
of the Physiologists relative to the nervous system should find a recognised
place in the Science of Mind, I have devoted a separate chapter to the
Physiology of the Brain and Nerves."50 He developed this approach on the
basis of an early interest in phrenology before he was exposed to the
influence of associationism through his relationship with John Stuart
Mill. 5l This mixture of influences led him to stress physiology but to
abandon the faculty psychology of phrenology in favor of the principle of
association and to reduce the phrenological faculties to, for example,
ocular sensibility. 52 He first reduced the numerous faculties to three -
intellect, feelings, and will - and then analyzed these into associated
sensations and motions. His chapter on the nervous system applied the
sensory-motor paradigm to subcortical structures but stopped short of the
hemispheres.53 Drawing on the work of Todd and Bowman,
____________________
47 John Locke added a chapter entitled "Of the Association of Ideas" to Book
2 of the 4th ed. of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Awnsham
& Churchill & Manship, 1690) to account for aberrant, unnatural, and
habitual connections between ideas. The Rev. John Gay wrote an anonymous
"Preliminary Dissertation concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or
Morality" which was appended to Edmund Law's translation of William King's
An Essay on the Origin of Evil, 2 vols. (2nd ed., Cambridge: Thurlbourn,
1732). Gay employed the association of ideas and the pleasure-pain principle
to account for the origin of the moral sense and all the passions, in lieu
of considering them to be innately given instincts.
48 David Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His
Expectations, 2 vols. (London: Leake & Frederick, 1749).
49 For an excellent contemporary exposition of associationism, see J. S.
Mill, "Bain's Psychology" (1859), reprinted in Dissertations and
Discussions, Vol. III (London: Long mans, 1867), pp. 97-152.
50 Alexander Bain, The Senses and the Intellect (London: Parker, 1855), p.
v. 51 Alexander Bain Autobiography (London: Longmans, 1901), pp. 27-28, 50,
90, 112, 215, 237-238, 259-260; On the Study of Character, Including an
Estimate of Phrenology (London: Parker, 1861), esp. pp. v-vi, 16. Michael
St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (London: Secker & Warburg,
1954), pp. 289, 271, 291, 359.
52 Bain, On the Study of Character, pp. 147-150, 155-158, 177; Mill,
Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. III, p. 110; Th. Ribot, English
Psychology trans, J. Fitzgerald (London: King, 1873, p. 198.
53 In 1861 Bain said, "We must not, however, stop short of the hemispheres
in our explanation of the control of the voluntary muscles ...." (On the
Study of Character, p. 153), but this is the only passage in his writings
which expresses this view.
259
he extended the Bell-Magendie law a stage higher so that the thalamus was
the highest sensory center and the corpus striatum the motor ganglion.54
From the physiological writings of Johannes Müller he adopted an emphasis on
motion which was novel for the associationist tradition, whose stress on
sensation had developed naturally from their interest in epistemology. 55
This new emphasis provided psychology with a balanced sensory-motor view.
Instead of concentrating on how we come to know through suffering
experience, Bain inaugurated an interest in behavior which eventually became
the dominant theme in behaviorist psychology - the concept of reinforcement.
In evaluating Bain's systematic treatises more broadly,56 one must conclude
that associationism provided an inadequate explanation of the complex
phenomena of emotion, instinct, and the biological functions which Gall had
stressed.57 Also, while Bain attempted to correlate most of the functions of
the brain with psychological processes, he left out the cortex and provided
theories which had little contact with general biology.
Where Bain gave the association psychology a new emphasis on motion and a
new alliance with physiology, Herbert Spencer provided it with a new
foundation in evolutionary biology. Like Bain, Spencer derived his initial
interest in psychology from phrenology and even wrote several phrenological
articles and designed an instrument for measuring bumps.58 The psychological
portions of his first book, Social Statics (1851), were based on a
phrenological view of man and of adaptation.59 We are fortunate in having an
essay written in his phrenological period and partially revised after he
came under the influence of the associationists George Henry Lewes and John
Stuart Mill. 60 One can point with some confidence to the place in the text
where his revision stopped, since the language shifts abruptly from
associationist terms to phrenological faculties. 61
__________________________
54 Robert B. Todd and William Bowman, The Physiological Anatomy and
Physiology of Man, 2 vols. (London: Parker, 1845), pp. 350-351; Bain, The
Senses, pp. 40-47, 53, and 3rd ed. (1868), pp. 44-45.
55 Müller, Elements of Physiology, Vol. I, p. 828; Vol. II, pp. 931-950;
Bain, The Senses (1855), pp. v-vi, 289; (1868), pp. 59, 64-73, 290-91,
296-306; cf. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. III, p. 121.
56 Bain, The Senses (1855); The Emotions and the Will (London: Parker,
1859). 57 Bain's On the Study of Character was a failure. It went unnoticed
by the critics and by Bain's contemporaries. There was no second edition.
For criticisms of the adequacy of l9th-century associationism for explaining
the phenomena of emotions and personality, see Mill, Dissertations and
Discussions, Vol. III, p. 132; Ribot, English Psychology, p. 327; Gordon W.
Allport, Personality. A Psychological Interpretation (New York: Holt, 1937),
p. 87.
58 Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography, 2 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate,
1904), Vol. I, pp. 200-203, 225, 227-228, 246-247, 297, 378-379, 540-543,
The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, ed. David Duncan (London: Methuen,
1908), p. 40; George B. Denton, "Early Psychological Theories of Herbert
Spencer," American Journal of Psychology 1921, 32: 5-15; Jefferson, Selected
Papers pp. 35-44.
59 Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (London: Chapman, 1851), pp. 5, 19-20,
32-38 75-89, 274, 280, 466.
60 Herbert Spencer, "The Philosophy of Style," in Essays: Scientific,
Political and Speculative, 3 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1901), Vol.
II, pp. 333-369- Spencer Autobiography, Vol. I, pp. 225, 405. On the
influence of Lewes and Mill, see ibid., pp. 378-379, 391-392, Life and
Letters, pp. 418, 544.
61 The transition occurs in Essays, Vol. II, p. 360. The last sentence in
associationist language refers to "mental energy" and "strain on the
attention." The next sentence contains the first mention of "perceptive
faculties." The MS in the British Museum appears to be a re-copy of the
revised essay and neither confirms nor refutes my reading (MS, p. 113).
260
The development of Spencer's theory of evolution is a fascinating but
complex story.62 It grew out of phrenology, the study of zoology, and a
contrary acceptance of Lamarck derived from Lyell's supposed refutation of
Lamarck in the Principles of Geology. Rather than consider his general
doctrine here, attention will be confined to its original context in
psychology, that is, evolutionary associationism. Spencer argued for the
continuity of all mental phenomena beginning with the contractions of the
sensitive polyp and extending to the forms of thought. He also links the
organism to the environment; psychology thereby becomes a biological
science, and mind becomes an instrument of adaptation. Learning, in this new
context, is the continuous adjustment of inner relations in the mind to
external relations in the environment. If one suspends judgment on Spencer's
"Lamarckian" mechanism, the relationship between associationism and
evolution by the inheritance of acquired characteristics becomes one of
simple extension. Habits are built up by the repeated juxtaposition of ideas
in experience, and they are then transmitted as modifications in the nervous
system. The tabula rasa of the individual is replaced by that of the race.
This view allows Spencer to argue that the emotions, instincts, and
faculties can be accounted for as stable phenomena for the individual,
though their genesis is still explained by the experience of the species.
It was on the basis of these beliefs that Spencer criticized Bain.63 Bain
had attempted a natural history of the mind, but the "nature" he consulted
was the contents of his own mind - by introspection. 64 Spencer argued that
Bain should have relied instead on comparative and developmental studies and
thereby become a genuine naturalist.65 In insisting on this, Spencer
challenged a fundamental assumption of those psychologists who believed that
philosophical and introspective analysis provides sequences and categories
which can serve as a natural classification of mental life - that what we
can arrive at by examining our own adult minds accurately reflects the
actual synthesis in evolution and in individual experience.66 Plausible
verbal analyses are replaced by biological observation and (later)
experiment. Having said this, however, Spencer (and those who followed)
failed to grasp its implications for psychology: the search which Gall had
attempted for a genuine naturalism in the categories of psychological
analysis.
Horace W. Magoun has claimed that there can be no question of "the
predominant influence of Spencer upon Hughlings Jackson and, through him,
upon the formation of evolutionary concepts of the organization and function
of the brain in Western neurological thought."67 For his own part, Jackson
considered his theories to be merely applications of Spencer's evolutionary
associationism to the nervous system in the light of clinical evidence.68
There were two other important influences on Jackson's thinking. The first
was Bain, whose motor theory was used by Jackson for a motor theory of
speech, thus replacing the faculty concept.69 The second was
_____________________
62 This paragraph is expanded, with detailed documentation, in my paper on
"The Development of Herbert Spencer's Concept of Evolution," Actes du XIe
Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences (Warsaw: Ossolineum, 1967),
Vol. II, pp. 273-278.
63 Herbert Spencer "Bain on the Emotions and the Will" (1860), in Essays,
Vol. I, pp. 241-264.
64 Ibid., pp. 242, 244, 247, 257.
65 Ibid., pp. 249-252.
66 Ibid., pp. 254-256.
67 Horace W. Magoun, "Darwin and Concepts of Brain Function," in J. F.
Delafresnaye, ed., Brain Mechanisms and Learning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961),
p. 17.
68 Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson, ed. James Taylor, 2 vols.
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1931), Vol. I, pp. 147 n., 238n, 375; Vol. II,
pp. 40n, 42, 45, 80n., 98, 346n., 395, 431-432.
69 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 167-68, 39, 50-51; Vol. II, pp. 123, 233-234.
261
an unfairly neglected figure - Thomas Laycock.70 Just before Spencer worked
out his theories on the basis of evolution, Laycock (who also had heavy
debts to phrenology) applied the principle of continuity to all of the
nervous system (including the cortex) on the basis of the older philosophy
of biology, the great chain of being.71 Jackson's intellectual mentors
provided him with the best of the old and the new versions of the principle
of continuity as applied to the nervous system.
Four aspects of Jackson's thinking are important in this context. First, on
the basis of the views of Spencer and Laycock, Jackson held that the
interpretation of the central nervous system in terms of sensation and
motion (which began with the Bell-Magendie law) had to extend throughout the
nervous system. As he put it in 1870, "If the doctrine of evolution be true,
all nervous centres must be of a sensori-motor constitution." 72 Since the
highest centers have the same composition as the lower, being made up of
cells and fibres, "It would be marvellous if, at a certain level, whether we
call it one of evolution or not, there were a sudden change to centres of a
different kind of constitution. Is it not enough difference that the highest
centres of the nervous system are greatly more complicated than the
lower?"73 Second, Jackson adopted Spencer's concept of cerebral localization
- the only specific feature which Spencer retained from his earlier
phrenological period.74 Centers of co-ordination for complex sensations and
motions were localized in place of Gall's faculties. Complex mental
phenomena were thus reduced to aggregates of sensations and motions
paralleled by sets of fibres and cells.75 Third, Jackson explicitly applied
this view to the cerebral cortex as a motor organ and argued against those
who "think the cerebrum to be likened to an instrumentalist, and the motor
centres to an instrument; one part . . . for ideas, and the other for
movements."76 Even though some of his writings before 1870 are equivocal
about the role of the cortex in movements, 77 he did put the issue more
clearly than anyone else and ridiculed those who "speak as if at some place
in the higher parts of the nervous system we abruptly cease to have to do
with impressions and movements, and begin all at once to have to do with
mental states"78 - the view that "physical states in lower centres fine away
into psychical states in higher centres."79
_____________________
70 Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. ix, 37, 123, 167.
71 Thomas Laycock, ~Treatise on the Nervous Diseases of Women (London:
Longmans, 1840); "On the Reflex Functions of the Brain," Brit. For. Med.
Rev., 1845, 19: 298-311; "Phrenology," in The Encyclopaedia Britannica (8th
ed., Edinburgh: Black, 1859), Vol. XVII, pp. 560-561; James Crichton Browne,
The Doctor Remembers (London: Duckworth, 1938), pp. 40-41; Young,
"Scholarship," pp. 25-26.
72 Jackson, Selected Writings, Vol. II, p. 63.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid., pp. 216, 234.
75 Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Psychology (London: Longmans, 1855),
pp. 606 611.
76 Jackson, Selected Writings, Vol. I, p. 26n. After Jackson's ideas had
received experimental support, he never tired of quoting this note in his
later papers, e.g., ibid., pp. 42, 58; Vol. II, pp. 63-64, 67.
77 In fact, a close study of his writings before 1870 - when his view was
demonstrated experimentally - shows that he was less emphatic than has
sometimes been supposed in applying the hypothesis that the cortex was a
motor organ: the corpus striatum held his loyalties as the primary motor
organ in spite of striking evidence implicating the cortex in disorders of
movement. Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 27, 38; Vol. II, pp. 121, 122-123, 127, 216,
233, 239, 240-241, 244. In 1868 he reported a case of "corpus striatum
Epilepsy" which involved a post-mortem finding of blood, the bulk of which
"lay in one spot over the frontal convolutions, and was so placed as I
imagined, to squeeze the corpus striatum...." The discussion refers all
symptoms to the corpus striatum and does not mention the convolutions
(ibid., Vol. II, p. 218; cf. Vol. 1, p. 9).
78 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 48.
79 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 156.
262
This point was linked closely in Jackson's mind with a fourth -
philosophical - issue. While his predecessors had indulged in two sorts of
interactionism between the unitary mind and the unitary cortex on the one
hand and between the mind and its sensory-motor instruments on the other,
Jackson (again drawing heavily on Spencer) argued that a clear-cut dualism
should be maintained without interaction and that one should postulate a
doctrine of concomitance or psychophysical parallelism. The nervous system
was to be uniformly sensory-motor, and its physiological processes were
paralleled by ideas of sensation and movement.80 This assumption - in the
hands of Freud (who adopted it from Jackson)81 and of the majority of later
psychologists - continued to be used as a justification for ontological
agnosticism about body and mind, while they and the physiologists pursued
separate studies, seeking only occasional specification of what is happening
in the world of matter and motion when something else occurs in the world of
mind. Expressions of dualism could no longer find a convenient demarcation
within the nervous system. The "organ of mind" could not be held to be
physically as well as functionally discontinuous from the rest of the
neuraxis. The fundamental separation of mind from body could still be
expressed in the form of psychophysical parallelism, but there was
continuity of structure, function, and analytic units within the nervous
system itself.
Meanwhile, there were two findings which led the sensory-motor school to
consider cerebral localization with renewed seriousness. (The term findings
is used advisedly, since the interpretations put on them were vehemently
rejected by Jackson and Ferrier.)
Paul Broca provided the first convincing evidence for cerebral localization
in 1861 . His work was an application of Gall's localizations. Indeed, the
faculty of articulate language had been Gall's first discovery (the large
flaring eyes which, Gall said, "gave the first impulse to my researches, and
was the occasion of all my discoveries").82 However, Broca also insisted on
precise study of the brain itself rather than reliance on the measurement of
cranial protuberances. 83 Broca also argued that speech was an intellectual
faculty, not a motor function. 84 As he said in a significant aside,
"Everyone knows that the cerebral convolutions are not motor organs."85 Even
though his first case showed partial paralysis, Broca referred this symptom
to the corpus striatum, though the patient's speech defect was localized in
the third frontal convolution of the cortex.86
________________________
80 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 49, 52, 52 n., 55; Vol. II, pp. 84-86, 156.
81 Sigmund Freud, On Aphasia. A Critical Study (1891), trans. E. Stengel
(New York: International Universities Press, 1953), pp. 54-56. This position
was held consistently throughout Freud's writings, up to and including his
last book, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940), trans. J. Strachey (New
York: Norton, 1949), pp. 13, 34. See also E. Stengel, "A Re-evaluation of
Freud's Book On Aphasia: Its Significance for Psycho-analysis,"
International Journal of Psycho-analysis, 1954, 38: 85-89; Walther Riese,
"Freudian Concepts of Brain Function and Brain Disease," Journal of Nervous
and Mental Disease, 1958, 127: 287-307.
82 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain, Vol. V, p. 8. The best treatment of
the history of research on aphasia in the l9th century remains Henry Head,
Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1926), Vol. I, Chs. 1-5.
83 Paul Broca, "Remarks on the Seat of the Faculty of Articulate Language"
(1861), trans. Gerhard von Bonin, Some Papers on the Cerebral Cortex
(Springfield: Thomas 1960), pp. 58-59, 72.
84 Ibid., pp. 54, 57
85 Ibid., p. 70.
86 Ibid. Broca's researches on the seat of the faculty of articulate
language once again roused the Cartesians, who maintained that the brain
must act as a whole. The positions in this debate were paralleled by
political views: the conservatives were Cartesians, while the younger
liberals and republicans favored cerebral localization. The debate was
acrimonious and prolonged in Parisian medical circles. See Head, Aphasia,
Vol. I, p. 25.
263
Nine years later two young German physicians, Gustav Fritsch and Eduard
Hitzig, published a paper entitled "On the Electrical Excitability of the
Cerebrum," which demonstrated by experiment that electrical stimulation of
discrete cortical areas produced combined muscular contractions.87 Until
this epoch-making result, no new experiments fundamentally affecting the
role which the cortex was supposed to play in movement had been conducted
for almost fifty years. Thus, it is appropriate that Fritsch and Hitzig
address their remarks directly to Flourens.88 In the intervening period the
sensory-motor paradigm had been applied to progressively higher structures
in the nervous system, until a point had been reached just below the cortex
(thalamus and corpus striatum). This analysis was not extended by further
experiments for twenty-five years. Fritsch and Hitzig eliminated this
hiatus. They established cortical excitability, a role for the cortex in the
mechanism of movements, and the doctrine of cerebral localization. From
their experiments on dogs, five centers were specified at constant foci: for
the muscles of the neck, for the extensors and adductors of the anterior
leg, (behind that) for the flexion and rotation of the same leg, for the
posterior leg, and for the facial nerve.89 Fritsch and Hitzig stress an
important reason for the delay in discovering the electrical excitability of
the cerebral cortex. The assumption of cerebral equipotentiality had allowed
experimenters to refrain from examining and stimulating every part
separately. 90 Thus, Flourens' belief in Cartesian dualism and the
indivisibility of the mind appears to have made it easy for him to refrain
from the sort of systematic, localized ablations which would have confirmed
cerebral localization. Fritsch and Hitzig were also Cartesian dualists and
wrote in interactionist terms about the soul and its material instruments.
Their results supported cerebral localization of motor functions, but they
argued that their findings left room for other (nonmotor) parts of the
cortex as the organ of mind. They felt that psychological functions might
also be localized. 91 Their views should be contrasted with those of the
sensory-motor school in two respects: (1) their interactionism and (2) their
distinction between psychological functions and sensory-motor functions.
The examples of Flourens and of Fritsch and Hitzig indicate that
philosophical assumptions can, and do, strongly influence the conduct of
research and the interpretation of results, even though no empirical finding
can falsify a philosophical belief. The relations between philosophical
assumptions and scientific research form one of the most interesting aspects
of the study of the history and philosophy of science, but it is important
to appreciate that these interactions do not occur as formal deductions: the
relationships are more subtle and idiosyncratic.
Where Fritsch and Hitzig had found five motor centers, an Englishman, David
Ferrier, soon found fifteen and went on to specify areas for each of the
five senses.92 Ferrier began his experiments as an attempt to confirm
Jackson's clinical findings by reproducing seizures by means of electrical
stimulation of the cortex.93 He also
____________________
87 Von Bonin, Some Papers, pp. 81, 96.
88 Ibid., pp. 75-78.
89 Ibid., pp. 83-84.
90 Ibid., p. 90.
91 Ibid., pp. 77, 92, 96.
92 David Ferrier, "Experimental Researches in Cerebral Physiology and
Pathology," West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports, 1873, 3: 30-96; The
Functions of the Brain (London: Smith, Elder, 1876), pp. 163-196; 2nd ed.
(1886), pp. 268-345. [I visited this mental hospital in August 1996. It was,
like most of the old custodial asylums, closed, but on the map of the site,
one ward was named `Ferrier'.]
93 Ferrier, "Experimental Researches," pp. 30, 85-87; The Localization of
Cerebral Disease (London: Smith, Elder, 1878), p. 14.
264
set out to confirm and extend the work of Fritsch and Hitzig. 94 The
significance and continuity of influences can be seen from the fact that the
monograph which summarized and interpreted his findings was dedicated by
Ferrier to Jackson.95 In fact, he is as lavishly deferential toward Jackson
as Jackson was toward Spencer. 96 Sherrington, in turn, dedicated his
classical lectures on The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (1906) to
Ferrier. 97 In his obituary notice of Ferrier for the Royal Society
Sherrington pointed out that Ferrier had done the most important research in
proving cerebral localization, in placing it at the center of neurological
interest, and in providing the basis for a "scientific phrenology." 98
The significance of Ferrier's work was quickly appreciated. Accounts from
the British Association, the President's Address to the Royal Society, and
the 1901 supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as contemporary
reviews of his works, all confirm that it made as much a stir as the
Bell-Magendie law had fifty years earlier.99 Even Carpenter was moved to
rank Ferrier's localizations among the greatest advances in the physiology
of the nervous system which had been made in the last fifty years, and he
acknowledged the existence of the missing fibres connecting the cortex and
lower centers, although he held fast to his former separation of the cortex
and its functions from the sensory-motor paradigm - the hiatus which was
undermined in the very report which he was praising so lavishly. He saw no
inconsistency between his former views and Ferrier's findings. 100
Ferrier referred to the psychological interpretation of his findings as
"scientific phrenology." He reasoned as follows. His first experiment was on
a guinea pig which died before its responsiveness to electrical stimulation
could be determined. His next experiments were on rabbits and cats.
Electrical stimulation produced more or less localized convulsions (thus
confirming Jackson) but no discrete movements. 101 It was in his fourth
experiment (on a cat) that Ferrier obtained localized, discrete movements.
For example, in one place stimulation produced slow
_____________________
94 Ferrier, "Experimental Researches," p. 30.
95 "To Dr Hughlings Jackson who from a clinical and pathological standpoint
anticipated many of the more important results of recent experimental
investigation into the functions of the cerebral hemispheres, this work is
dedicated as a mark of the author's esteem and admiration." Ferrier, The
Functions of the Brain (1876), p. v.
96 David Ferrier, "The Localisation of Function in the Brain" (MS).
Communicated by J. B. Sanderson 5 March 1874. Archives of the Royal Society
AP.56.2. (Abstract in Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1874, 22: 229-232),
MS, p. 129V; cf. Ferrier, The Functions of the Brain (1876), pp. 256-257;
Localization, p. 14.
97 Charles S. Sherrington (New York: Scribner's, 1906), p. v: "In token
recognition of his many services to the experimental physiology of the
nervous system."
98 Charles S. Sherrington, "Sir David Ferrier, 1843-1928 " Proc. Roy. Soc.,
1928, 103B: viii-xvi, pp, x, xiii.
99 William Rutherford, "Address to the Department of Anatomy and
Physiology," Report of the Forty-Third Meeting of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science (London: Murray, 1874), Transactions, pp.
119-123, p. 122; George B. Airy, "President's Address," Proc. Roy. Soc.,
1873 1874, 22: 2-12, p. 9; Anon. (C. S. Sherrington), "Phrenology," in The
New Volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (10th ed., Edinburgh: Black,
1902), Vol. XXXI, p. 710 George C. Robertson, "Critical Notice of 'The
Functions of the Brain', by David Ferrier," Mind, 1877, 2: 92-98, p. 92. For
an accurate dramatization of the significance of Ferrier's findings, see
Jürgen Thorwald, The Triumph of Surgery, trans. R. and C. Winston (London:
Thames & Hudson, 1960), Ch. 1. The medical applications of Ferrier's
findings in localizing neurosurgery deserve further historical study.
100 William Carpenter, "On the Physiological Import of Dr. Ferrier's
Experimental Investigations into the Functions of the Brain," West Riding
Lunatic Asylum Med. Reps., 1874, 4 : 1-23, pp. 2, 7-8, 18-19; Mental
Physiology, pp. 709, 715, 719.
101 Ferrier, "Experimental Researches," pp. 34 38.
265
flexion of the phalanges of the left forepaw and elevation of the left
shoulder; in another place it produced signs of pain, screams, and kicking
with both hindlegs, especially the left.l02 Thus, he found that motion and
signs of sensation resulted from stimulation of the cortex. However, he soon
extended his interpretations. In a later experiment (on a dog) stimulation
produced behavior interpreted as dream like on general observation,
including wagging of the tail and spasmodic twitching of the right ear.l03
Ferrier received a grant from the Royal Society which allowed him to extend
his researches to monkeys. He identified centers for advance of the opposite
hind limb, as in walking; and retraction, with adduction of the opposite
arm, as in swimming.104 By 1874 he was convinced that he was investigating
not merely artefacts and induced contractions, but the basis of voluntary
movements. l05 Thus, his inferences moved from contraction to purposive
movement to biological functions. This reasoning led him to claim that he
could "artificially excite conditions similar to normal psychic or
volitional stimuli" and to "translate into their psychological signification
and localize phrenologically the organic centers for various mental
endowments.''106
The resulting conception of the functions of the brain is a corollary of the
theories of Bain, Spencer, and Jackson, for which Ferrier felt that he
provided the experimental evidence: ". . . it must follow from the
experimental data that mental operations in the last analysis must be merely
the subjective side of sensory and motor substrata" - a view which he
attributes to Jackson.l07 He adds in the second edition, "For the cerebral
hemispheres consist only of centers related respectively to the sensory and
motor tracts, which connect them with the periphery and with each
other.'' l08 Ideas are revived associations of sensations and movements,
thought is internal speech, and intellectual attention is ideal vision.l09
The centers for special sensory and motor activities "in their respective
cohesions, actions, and interactions form the substrata of mental operations
in all their aspects and all their range.''110 In short, all conceptions of
function are reducible to sensation, motion, and association. Ferrier's work
represents the final extension of the Bell-Magendie paradigm to the most
rostral part of the neuraxis - the cerebral cortex - and its use as an
all-embracing explanatory conception in both physiology and psychology.
When Gall finished his work On the Functions of the Brain in 1825, he re
marked that he would have liked to withhold it longer but that death was
imminent, "and I must be content with leaving this first effort in the
physiology of the brain, far less perfect than it will be fifty years
hence.''111 In 1876 Ferrier's monograph, with the same title, appeared. In
comparing them, one finds the balance between physiological and
psychological statements reversed. Gall's work was almost wholly devoted to
the discovery and exposition of the faculties or functions. Ferrier devotes
only ten per cent of his text to what he calls "the subjective aspect of the
functions of the brain." Most of his book is devoted to the "physiological
aspects," and he concluded that these consist of "a system of sensory and
motor centers. In their subjective aspect the functions of the brain are
synonymous with mental operations, the consideration of which belongs to the
science of psychology." All that
____________________
102 Ibid., pp. 41-42.
103 Ibid., p. 51.
104 Ferrier, The Functions of the Brain (1876), pp. 141-142.
105 Ferrier, "Localisation" (MS), pp. 95 97, 117-118.
106 Ferrier, "Experimental Researches," pp. 72, 76.
107 Ferrier, The Functions of the Brain
(1876), pp. 256-257.
108 Ibid. (1886), p. 426
109 Ibid., pp. 437, 462, 463-464.
110 Ibid., p. 467.
111 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain Vol. VI, p. 293.
266
Ferrier felt was needed to convert his physiological findings into
psychologically significant statements was the assumption of psychophysical
parallelism and the phrase "subjective aspect.''112
If Gall was naive in believing that the organization and physiology of the
brain corresponded with his faculties in a one-to-one fashion, Ferrier was
equally so in suggesting that the primary sensory and motor areas could
explain psychological functions in a simple manner. He had localized sensory
and motor areas, but he had not provided a psychophysiology which accounts
for the adaptations of organisms to their environments. As a recent
commentator put it, "Whatever its role in the production of muscular
activity, the motor cortex cannot be regarded as the seat of any function
recognisable to the student of behaviour.''113
Experimental sensory-motor physiology was on a firm experimental basis,
built up by progressive extension of the Bell-Magendie law - a certain fact
about the nervous system - and then united with the concept of cerebral
localization. However, cerebral localization had become scientific only by
abandoning the goals which Gall had laid down at the beginning of his
research: to relate the significant variables in the character and behavior
of men and animals to the functioning of the brain. The sensory-motor school
was undoubtedly right in rejecting Gall's faculty psychology. However, in
being grounded on a secure physiological basis, the sensory-motor tradition
cut itself off from the approach to psychology which was the most important
aspect of Gall's work and which had been extended by Spencer's conception of
psychology as a biological science. In rejecting Gall's answers, it lost
sight of the significance of his questions. Insufficient attention was paid
to what the sensory-motor elements should be required to explain. In default
of significant questions, the only answers that were forthcoming were about
sensory modalities and muscular movements and led only to a partial
understanding of the primary projection areas of the somatic cortex. The
role of many of these in normal behavior has yet to be determined. Questions
about adaptive, biologically significant functions had to be asked anew by
other branches of biology which developed independently on the basis of
other aspects of the ideas of Bain, Spencer, and Darwin. The problem which
Ferrier bequeathed to the present century was that of retaining scientific
rigor while regaining contact with biologically significant functions.
Gall and Ferrier can be seen as extremes on a continuum of possible
approaches in brain and behavior research. Gall stressed functions as
adaptive and related them to character, mastery of the environment, and
social and intellectual achievements. He allowed his catalogue of functions
to dictate how the brain must be organized and made no significant findings
in neurophysiology. Ferrier, on the other hand, sacrificed the significance
of functions to physiological accuracy. As John Dewey said in 1900, "Unless
our laboratory results are to give us artificialities mere scientific
curiosities, they must be subjected to interpretation by gradual
re-approximation to the conditions of life.''114 That is, mediation between
the extremes required integration of the independent findings of
physiologists, psychologists, and students of animal behavior (ethologists).
Though Gall was unable to follow his own advice, latter-day behavioral
scientists are in a better position to do so. He said, "Whoever would not
remain in complete ignorance of the resources which
___________________
112 Ferrier, The Functions of the Brain (1876), pp. 255-257.
113 O. L. Zangwill, "The Cerebral Localisation of Psychological Functions,"
Advancement of Science 1963-1964 20: 335-344 p 337
114 John Dewey, "Psychology and Social Practice," Psych. Rev., 1900, 7:
105-124, p. 119.
267
cause him to act . . ., should know, that it is indispensable, that the
study of the organization of the brain should march side by side with that
of its functions.''115
Before concluding, one might recall Gall's influence and suggest that there
is still more to be learned from him. As G. H. Lewes said, "Gall rescued the
problem of mental functions from Metaphysics and made it one of
Biology.''116 "In his vision of Psychology as a branch of Biology, subject
therefore to all biological laws, and to be pursued by biological methods,
he may be said to have given the science its basis.''117 His influence on
Bain and Spencer was most significant, and lesser figures such as Laycock
and Carpenter also derived much from Gall's approach. However, neither they
nor their modern heirs - the behaviorists - have transcended the categories
which Gall opposed in the name of biology. The functional psychology of
William James and John Dewey advocated the study of mental functions as
adaptations, but they also failed to provide new and significant categories.
In 1940, Sherrington pointed out that the new phrenology was as far as the
old had been from understanding the role of the nervous system in integrated
behavior and that there were not even names for the categories which are
ultimately needed.118 Modern brain and behavior research is still attempting
to find ways of asking and answering the question, What are the functions of
the brain? It appears that the answers to this question will, in the first
instance, owe more to the field studies of the ethologist than to
physiological experiments. It was Gall who made the point that we must first
know the functions before we can ask intelligent questions about the
organization and physiology of the brain. A century and a half later, one
finds a recent reviewer of the concept of cerebral localization turning to
Gall in support of the thesis that "in exploring the functions of the brain,
I am convinced that we must limit ourselves to the study of biologically
significant behavior patterns, no matter how complex their underlying
physiology may be.''119 This, it seems to me, is the scientific lesson of
the foregoing account.
Turning to the philosophical issues, if anyone believes that the problems
set by Descartes no longer plague biological psychology, he should consider
the fact that modern research is not dealing only with the two languages of
extended substances and thinking substances. Though Descartes might well
recognize the activities and concepts of the physiologist, he would be
puzzled by the coexistence of the categories of function in the Passions of
the Soul and the Treatise on Man (that is, memory, reason, intelligence)
with the atomistic units of the association psychology. These last have in
turn been made objective in a third language-the stimuli and responses of
the behaviorist which, their claims not withstanding, have defied reduction
to matter and motion. Thus, we have one language of brain, two of mind, and
a fourth of behavior. Add to these the concepts of the evolutionary
biologist, and we find five sets of variables.
The problem for the future can be approached by two paths. The first
involves transcending these several languages with a new ontology. The
second - which is at present in vogue - is to find translation rules among
them. Whichever approach is taken, it seems clear that careful historical
studies can help to provide the per
___________________
115 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain, Vol. II, pp. 45-46
116 George H. Lewes, The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte, 2 vols.
(3rd .ed. London: Longmans, 1867-1871), Vol. II, p. 425
117 Ibid., p. 423.
118 C, S. Sherrington, Man on His Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1940), p. 228
119 Zangwill, "Cerebral Localisation," p. 338.
268
spective on the current confusion which is necessary for increased
communication among the physiologist, the layman, the behaviorist, and the
ethologist. As a final remark, one might suggest that no set of translation
rules will transcend the problems which Descartes has bequeathed to us. The
best that can be hoped for from compiling a dictionary of translation rules
is better communication, not a coherent ontology for interpreting
nature-including human nature.
This article first appeared in Isis Vol. 59, Part 3, No. 198, 1968, pp.
251-68. It is a summary, stressing philosophical implications, of the
argument of my Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century:
Cerebral Localization and Its Biological Context from Gall to Ferrier
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970; reprinted N. Y.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990).
© History of Science Society Inc.
