The book presents an original synthesizing framework on the relations between ‘the biological’ and ‘the social’. Within these relations, the late nineteenth-century emergence of social sciences aspiring to be constituted as autonomous, as 'scientific' disciplines, is described, analyzed and explained. Through this framework, the author points to conceptual and constructive commonalities conjoining significant founding figures – Lamarck, Spencer, Hughlings Jackson, Ribot, Durkheim, Freud – who were not grouped nor analyzed in this manner before. Thus, the book offers a rather unique synthesis of the interactions of the social, the mental, and the evolutionary biological – Spencerian Lamarckism and/or Neo-Lamarckism – crystallizing into novel fields. It adds substantially to the understanding of the complexities of evolutionary debates during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It will attract the attention of a wide spectrum of specialists, academics, and postgraduates in European history of the nineteenth century, history and philosophy of science, and history of biology and of the social sciences, including psychology.
Author(s): Snait B. Gissis
Series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2024
Language: English
Pages: 320
Lamarckism and the Emergence of ‘Scientific’ Social Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Britain and France
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Introduction
References
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: La marche de la nature
1.1 Lamarck’s Mature Positions
1.2 Lamarck’s Transition Period
1.2.1 Contexts—Conceptual and Institutional
1.2.2 Texts
1.2.3 Concluding Remarks
1.3 Lamarck’s Neuro-physiological Psychology
1.3.1 ‘Feelings’
1.3.2 Sentiment intérieur
1.3.3 Concluding Remarks
1.4 Notes on Lamarck’s Historiography
1.4.1 Periodization
1.4.2 Lamarck’s Biologie and Recent Historiography
1.5 Concluding Comment
References
Chapter 2: Herbert Spencer: The Tripartite Model
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Spencer’s Conceptual Framework
2.2.1 Spencer’s ‘Fundamental Principle’
2.2.2 Environment
2.2.3 Short Comment on Darwin’s Natural Selection
2.3 Lamarckism Transferred
2.3.1 Individuals and Collectivity: The Centrality of Lamarckian Evolutionism
2.3.1.1 General Framework of Individuation in Principle of Biology i
2.3.1.2 Individuals and Hierarchies
2.3.2 Biological Heredity and Cultural Inheritance in the Two Editions of the Principles of Psychology 1855, 1870/72
2.3.3 Biological Heredity and Cultural Inheritance in Principles of Sociology
2.4 Concluding Comment
References
Chapter 3: Interlude: The Cluster of Plasticity and the Impact of Its Transfer
References
Chapter 4: John Hughlings Jackson: A Clinical Scientist
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Jackson’s Clinical Work as Scientific Practice
4.2.1 The Uses of Medical Cases
4.2.2 Medical Context: Medical Specialization, Caring Frameworks for ‘Nervous Diseases,’ Recording Medical Data
4.3 Spencerian-Lamarckian Evolutionary Models and Mechanisms as Applied to the Description and Analysis of the Nervous System
4.4 Localization—Aphasias, Epilepsies, and Clinical Practice as Science
4.4.1 Aphasias and Localization
4.4.2 Epilepsy and Localization
4.5 Philosophical Concerns of a Clinical Scientist: Parallelism, the Mental—Consciousness, Unconscious States, ‘Self’
4.5.1 Parallelism
4.5.2 Relations of Brain, Mind, Consciousness, Unconscious States, ‘Self/Person’
4.6 Concluding Comment
References
Chapter 5: Théodule Armand Ribot: ‘Scientific Psychology’ in France
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Methodological Issues
5.2.1 Early Positions
5.2.2 Late Positions
5.2.3 ‘Introspection’
5.2.4 The Use of Medical Cases and the ‘Pathology Model’
5.3 Psychological Heredity: L’hérédité, étude Psychologique (1873)
5.4 Foundational Notions
5.4.1 Hierarchical Order
5.4.2 The Law of Reversion/Dissolution
5.4.3 Memory–Heredity Continuum
5.4.4 The ‘Self’/Personality
5.4.5 The Collectivity
5.5 Concluding Comment
References
Chapter 6: Interlude: ‘Hierarchy’ in the Nineteenth-Century Spencerian Lamarckism/neoLamarckism and Its Transfer
References
Chapter 7: David Émile Durkheim: Founding ‘Scientific Sociology’
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The Early Period: 1882–1892
7.2.1 Spencerian Lamarckism/French neoLamarckism as Resources for a Nonbiologist
7.2.2 Durkheim: Sociology and Biology
7.2.2.1 The Spencerian Lamarckism/French neoLamarckism Repertoire
7.2.2.2 Constituting a New ‘Scientific’ Discipline
7.2.2.3 The Object of Scientific Sociology
7.3 The Middle Period: 1893 to the Late 1890s
7.3.1 Durkheim and Spencerian Lamarckism/French neoLamarckism
7.3.1.1 ‘Lutte’ and Some Other Darwinian Terms
7.3.1.2 The Physiological and Social Division of Labor
7.3.1.3 Distinguishing the Social from the Biological
7.3.2 Durkheim’s Theoretical Position on the Concept of ‘Social Continuum’
7.4 The Late Period: The Late 1890s–1917
7.4.1 Durkheim’s Endeavor: Bounding and Extending a Novel Scientific Field
7.4.1.1 L’Année Sociologique
7.4.1.2 Sociology–Philosophy
7.4.1.3 Sociology–Psychology
7.4.2 The Late Writings: From French neoLamarckism to ‘Evolution’
7.5 Concluding Comment
References
Chapter 8: Sigmund Freud, a neoLamarckist Very – Short Coda
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Spencerian Lamarckism/neoLamarckism, Memory, Individual, and Collectivity
References
Chapter 9: Interlude: ‘Collectivity’ in the Nineteenth Century Between the Biological and the Social
References
Chapter 10: Concluding Reflection
References
Appendix: Concise Biographical Portraits
References
Index
