History of the Human Sciences recent issues

Freud's dreams of reason: the Kantian structure of psychoanalysis

Tauber, A. I. — 2009-09-22

Freud (and later commentators) have failed to explain how the origins of psychoanalytical theory began with a positivist investment without recognizing a dual epistemological commitment: simply, Freud engaged positivism because he believed it generally equated with empiricism, which he valued, and he rejected ‘philosophy’, and, more specifically, Kantianism, because of the associated transcendental qualities of its epistemology. But this simple dismissal belies a deep investment in Kant’s formulation of human reason, in which rationality escapes natural cause and thereby bestows humans with cognitive and moral autonomy. Freud also segregated human rationality: he divided the mind between (1) an unconscious grounded in the biological and thus subject to its own laws, and (2) a faculty of autonomous reason, lodged in consciousness and free of natural forces to become the repository of interpretation and free will. Psychoanalysis thus rests upon a basic Kantian construction, whereby reason, through the aid of analytic techniques, provides a detached scrutiny of the natural world, i.e. the unconscious mental domain. Further, sovereign reason becomes the instrument of self-knowing in the pursuit of human perfection. Herein lies the philosophical foundation of psychoanalytic theory, a beguiling paradox in which natural cause and autonomous reason — determinism and freedom — are conjoined despite their apparent logical exclusion.

Sociology and positivism in 19th-century France: the vicissitudes of the Societe de Sociologie (1872--4)

Heilbron, J. — 2009-09-22

Little is known about the world’s first sociological society, Émile Littré’s Société de Sociologie (1872—4). This article, based on prosopographic research, offers an interpretation of the foundation, political-intellectual orientation and early demise of the society. As indicated by recruitment and texts by its founding members, the Société de Sociologie was in fact conceived more as a political club than a learned society. Guided in this by Littré’s heterodox positivism and the redefinition of sociology he proposed around 1870, the Société de Sociologie was intended first and foremost to accompany intellectually the political changes that Littré considered imperative in the early years of the Third Republic (1870— 1940). This expectation found little echo among the members of the society, and it seems possible that Littré himself and his closest associates were the ones to interrupt the society’s meetings. Some of its members’ general studies on the status of the social sciences and their main divisions were continued in the framework of the journal La Philosophie positive (1867—83), but the authors most committed to those studies were on the margins of the Littré network. Neither the dominant positivist republicanism, centered around Littré and Dubost, nor the general sociology of the more peripheral members of the network (Mesmer, Roberty, Vitry) represented an important intellectual contribution to the formation of academic sociology in France. Given that the Société de Sociologie did contribute to diffuse the project of a sociological science and developed forms of sociology coherent enough to be rejected by the pioneers of university sociology, the group constitutes a significant case of failure in the history of the discipline.

John Anderson's development of (situational) realism and its bearing on psychology today

Hibberd, F. J. — 2009-09-22

In 1927, the Scottish philosopher John Anderson arrived in Australia to take up the chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. By the late 1930s, the ‘macrostructure’ of his realist system was in place. It includes a theory of process and a substantial metaphysics, one that opposes positivism, linguistic philosophy and all forms of idealism. However, beyond Australia it remains largely unknown, despite its bearing on a number of current issues in psychology and the social sciences generally. This article outlines Anderson’s transition from Hegelian idealism to realism, describes aspects of his ontology and epistemology, compares some of Anderson’s ideas with Dewey’s pragmatism and explains their relevance to present-day psychology.

Movement as utopia

Couton, P., Lopez, J. J. — 2009-09-22

Opposition to utopianism on ontological and political grounds has seemingly relegated it to a potentially dangerous form of antiquated idealism. This conclusion is based on a restrictive view of utopia as excessively ordered panoptic discursive constructions. This overlooks the fact that, from its inception, movement has been central to the utopian tradition. The power of utopianism indeed resides in its ability to instantiate the tension between movement and place that has marked social transformations in the modern era. This tension continues in contemporary discussions of movement-based social processes, particularly international migration and related identity formations, such as open borders transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Understood as such, utopia remains an ongoing and powerful, albeit problematic instrument of social and political imagination.

Book review: On the creation of Benthamism: Cyprian Blamires, The French Revolution and the Creation of Benthamism. Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. xii + 442 pp. ISBN13:978-0-230-55422-1 (hardback). {pound}60.00/$74.95

Levin, M. — 2009-09-22

Book Review: Cognitive variations: G. E. R. Lloyd, Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity & Diversity of the Human Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 201 pp. {pound}32.99 (hardback), ISBN: 9780199214617; {pound}14.99 (paperback), ISBN 9780199566259

Raphals, L. — 2009-09-22

Forests of citation: concluding unauthorized postscript to figured fragments of Bernard S. Cohn's `History and Anthropology: the State of Play'

Axel, B. K. — 2009-06-15

This text represents an exploration of the possible significance of Bernard S. Cohn's 1980 essay, `History and Anthropology: The State of Play', for understanding the present of historical anthropology and its futures. My discussion has two aims: (1) to reflect on both Bernard S. Cohn's pedagogy and mode of inquiry; and (2) to explore the complexity and nuance of citationality as a generative principle within the constitution of historical anthropology's subject. Toward this, I examine Cohn's notion of `the colonial situation' and reflect on how the emergence of the human sciences is intertwined with the proliferation of colonialism's enduring legacy within postcoloniality.

The rise and decline of character: humoral psychology in ancient and early modern medical theory

Bos, J. — 2009-06-15

Humoralism, the view that the human body is composed of a limited number of elementary fluids, is one of the most characteristic aspects of ancient medicine. The psychological dimension of humoral theory in the ancient world has thus far received a relatively small amount of scholarly attention. Medical psychology in the ancient world can only be correctly understood by relating it to psychological thought in other fields, such as ethics and rhetoric. The concept that ties these various domains together is character (êthos), which involves a view of human beings focused on clearly distinguishable psychological types that can be recognized on the basis of external signs. Psychological ideas based on humoral theory remained influential well into the early modern period. Yet, in 17th-century medicine and philosophy, humoral physiology and psychology started to lose ground to other theoretical perspectives on the mind and its relation to the body. This decline of humoralist medical psychology can be related to a broader reorientation of psychological thought in which the traditional concept of character lost its central position. Instead of the focus on types and stable character traits, a perspective emerged that was primarily concerned with individuality and transient passions.

Quentin Skinner's revised historical contextualism: a critique

Lamb, R. — 2009-06-15

Since the late 1960s Quentin Skinner has defended a highly influential form of linguistic contextualism for the history of ideas, originally devised in opposition to established methodological orthodoxies like the `great text' tradition and a mainly Marxist epiphenomenalism. In 2002, he published Regarding Method, a collection of his revised methodological essays that provides a uniquely systematic expression of his contextualist philosophy of history. Skinner's most arresting theoretical contention in that work remains his well-known claim that past works of political theory cannot be read as contributions to `perennial' debates but must instead be understood as particularistic, ideological speech acts. In this article I argue that he fails to justify these claims and that there is actually nothing wrong at all with (where appropriate) treating past works of political theory as engaged in perennial philosophical debates. Not only do Skinner's arguments not support the form of contextualism he defends, their flaws are actually akin to those he identified in his critique of previous methodological orthodoxies.

Sentimentality, communicative action and the social self: Adam Smith meets Jurgen Habermas

Wilson, D., Dixon, W. — 2009-06-15

There is a long and tortuous history of misinterpreting Smithian social theory. After rehearsing that history we offer here a way of understanding Smith that, unlike much of recent revisionist Smith scholarship, does not further add to this confusion. Our proposal is to understand the relation between moral and economic behaviour in Smith as analogous to the way in which Habermas makes strategic (and normatively oriented) behaviour parasitic on a more basic communicative competence. Given this analogy, it is ironic that Habermas's own understanding of Smith's theory also leaves much to be desired.

Book review: Archives of the imaginary: Alfred Maury, erudit et reveur: Les sciences de l'homme au milieu du XIXe siecle [Alfred Maury, Scholar and Dreamer: The Sciences of Man during the Mid-nineteenth Century], sous le direction de Jacqueline Carroy et Nathalie Richard. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007. ISBN 978--2-7535--0515--5. 204 pp. 18

Kroker, K. — 2009-06-15

Book review: Descent over descent: Paul Mengal, La naissance de la psychologie. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005. ISBN 2-7475-8293-0. 414 pp. Euro 33 (paperback). Fernando Vidal, Les sciences de l'ame XVIe--XVIIIe siecle. Paris: Honore Champion, 2006. ISBN 2-7453-1303-7. 463 pp. Euro 82

Richards, G. — 2009-06-15

R. D. Laing and theology: the influence of Christian existentialism on The Divided Self

Miller, G. — 2009-03-17

The radical psychiatrist R. D. Laing's first book, The Divided Self (1960), is informed by the work of Christian thinkers on scriptural interpretation — an intellectual genealogy apparent in Laing's comparison of Karl Jaspers's symptomatology with the theological tradition of `form criticism'. Rudolf Bultmann's theology, which was being enthusiastically promoted in 1950s Scotland, is particularly influential upon Laing. It furnishes him with the notion that schizophrenic speech expresses existential truths as if they were statements about the physical and organic world. It also provides him with a model of the schizoid position as a form of modern-day Stoicism. Such theological recontextualization of The Divided Self illuminates continuities in Laing's own work, and also indicates his relationship to a wider British context, such as the work of the `clinical theologian' Frank Lake.

A few laced genes: women's standpoint in the feminist ancestry of Dorothy E. Smith

Smythe, D. — 2009-03-17

This article looks at the feminist activism of particular women in the ancestry of the eminent Canadian sociologist, Dorothy E. Smith, and at the archival data that confirm the traces of their influence found in her theory-building. Using the method of interpretative historical sociology and a conceptual framework drawn from Marx called the `productive forces', the article examines the feminist theology of her Quaker ancestor, Margaret Fell, and the militant suffrage activism of her mother and her grandmother, Dorothy Foster Place and Lucy Ellison Abraham, respectively. The article argues that the household labour of the remarkable women in her family line became a `productive force' that facilitated her imagining of the feminist theory, `the standpoint of women'.

Polynesia and polygenism: the scientific use of travel literature in the early 19th century

Carhart, M. C. — 2009-03-17

Christoph Meiners (1747—1810) was one of 18th-century Europe's most important readers of global travel literature, and he has been credited as a founder of the disciplines of ethnology and anthropology. This article examines a part of his final work, Untersuchungen über die Verschiedenheiten der Menschennaturen [Inquiries on the differences of human natures], published posthumously in the 1810s. Here Meiners developed an elaborate argument, based on empirical evidence, that the different races of men emerged indigenously at different times and in different places in natural history. Specifically this article shows how a sedentary scholar who never left Europe constructed a narrative of human origins and migrations on the basis of (1) French theory from the 1750s (Charles de Brosses and Simon Pelloutier) and (2) data gathered by explorers as reported in travel literature (J. R. Forster, Pérouse, Cook, Marsden).

The social, cosmopolitanism and beyond

Schillmeier, M. — 2009-03-17

First, this article will outline the metaphysics of `the social' that implicitly and explicitly connects the work of classical and contemporary cosmopolitan sociologists as different as Durkheim, Weber, Beck and Luhmann. In a second step, I will show that the cosmopolitan outlook of classical sociology is driven by exclusive differences. In understanding human affairs, both classical sociology and contemporary cosmopolitan sociology reflect a very modernist outlook of epistemological, conceptual, methodological and disciplinary rigour that separates the cultural sphere from the natural objects of concern. I will suggest that classical sociology — in order to be cosmopolitan — is forced (1) to exclude non-social and non-human objects as part of its conceptual and methodological rigour, and (2) consequently and methodologically to rule out the non-social and the non-human. Cosmopolitan sociology imagines `the social' as a global, universal explanatory device to conceive and describe the non-social and non-human. In a third and final step the article draws upon the work of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde and offers a possible alternative to the modernist social and cultural other-logics of social sciences. It argues for a inclusive conception of `the social' that gives the non-social and non-human a cosmopolitan voice as well.

Review symposium: Steve Fuller's The New Sociological Imagination: introduction: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006. 240 pp

Baber, Z. — 2009-03-17

Fuller's project of humanity: social sciences or sociobiology?: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Remedios, F. — 2009-03-17

The fabrication of man: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Baehr, P. — 2009-03-17

Disenchantment of the world and the devaluation of human species: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Choon-Lee, C. — 2009-03-17

Fuller's nostalgic imagination: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Kevill, C. — 2009-03-17

In search of sociological foundations for the project of humanity: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Fuller, S. — 2009-03-17

Journals under threat: a joint response from history of science, technology and medicine editors

2009-01-26

Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity

Vidal, F. — 2009-01-26

If personhood is the quality or condition of being an individual person, brainhood could name the quality or condition of being a brain. This ontological quality would define the `cerebral subject' that has, at least in industrialized and highly medicalized societies, gained numerous social inscriptions since the mid-20th century. This article explores the historical development of brainhood. It suggests that the brain is necessarily the location of the `modern self', and that, consequently, the cerebral subject is the anthropological figure inherent to modernity (at least insofar as modernity gives supreme value to the individual as autonomous agent of choice and initiative). It further argues that the ideology of brainhood impelled neuroscientific investigation much more than it resulted from it, and sketches how an expanding constellation of neurocultural discourses and practices embodies and sustains that ideology.

The curious rise and fall of experimental psychology in Mind

Green, C. D. — 2009-01-26

The journal Mind is now a wholly philosophical journal. At the time of its founding, in 1876, however, its mission was rather different in character. Its aim was to discover whether scientific psychology was a truly viable enterprise and, if so, what its boundaries with philosophy, with other scientific disciplines, and with the earlier generation of discredited attempts at `scientific' studies of the mind (e.g. phrenology, mesmerism) might be. Although at first Mind published mostly philosophical pieces and literature reviews, by the mid-1880s it was publishing primary experimental research, mostly by American psychologists who as yet had few outlets of their own. For a time it was the leading journal of experimental psychology in the English-speaking world. As the international competition among scientific and scholarly journals intensified in the 1890s, however, Mind started to lose its share of experimental contributions, and with the editorial takeover of the journal of George Stout in 1892, the journal soon became one dedicated purely to philosophy.

`Leading a universal life': the systematic relevance of Hegel's social philosophy

Quante, M., Schweikard, D. P. — 2009-01-26

This article starts from two observations. The first is that some of the most prominent debates in social and political philosophy over the last few decades have been deeply obscured by the confusion of ontological/methodological and normative questions. And the second is that the renewed interest in Hegel's social philosophy has not yet yielded anything like a widely shared view as to whether it should be banned as a totalitarian or reappraised as a liberal account. The aim of this article is first to specify systematically the ontological/methodological and normative dimensions of social philosophy by giving precise definitions of core concepts and paramount positions. Secondly, it is argued that Hegel's social philosophy can be characterized as combining what is called vertical holism with liberal communitarianism. This, thirdly, sheds new light both on the nature of fundamental questions in social philosophy and on the systematic relevance of Hegel's social philosophy.

From (B)edouin to (A)borigine: the myth of the desert noble savage

Graulund, R. — 2009-01-26

This article examines the myth of the supposed superiority of the desert noble savage over civilized man. With the Bedouin of Arabia and the Aborigines of Australia as its two prime examples, the article argues that two versions of this myth can be traced: one in which the desert noble savage is valorized due to his valour, physical prowess and martial skill (Bedouin); and another, later version, where the desert noble savage is valorized as a pacifist, an ecologist and a mythmaker/storyteller (Aborigines). The article concludes by examining the way in which this turn from one type of desert noble savage to another reflects the manner in which western modernity has shifted its values from Cartesian dualities and Enlightenment rationalism to that of networks, potentialities, ecology and myth.

Cultural encounters in the social sciences and humanities: western emigre scholars in Turkey

Ergin, M. — 2009-01-26

Turkish modernization relied on the western social sciences and humanities not only as an abstract and distant model, but also in the form of close encounters and interactions with western refugee scholars. This article examines the activities of western intellectuals and experts who visited Turkey in the early republican era (1923—50), especially focusing on a group of émigré scholars who were employed in Turkey after the university reform of 1933. While European and North American social scientists were drawn to meticulous comparisons of `East' and `West' in this period, elites in the former component of this comparative dichotomy were seeking creative ways to turn this taxonomy to their advantage. In the Turkish case, the project of adopting modernity contained universalistic aspects intended to function for particular local needs. A body of racial, historical and linguistic theories attempted to create and sustain a nationally homogeneous society while, at the same time, emphasizing the contributions of Turkishness to western and modern history. Republican scholars tried to establish the Turkish origins of western civilization with the help of western social sciences in general and of western émigré scholars in particular. In the process of facilitating the local efforts to import western modernity into the specificity of Turkishness, refugee scholars encountered contradictory demands and employed different strategies to respond to these demands.

Book review: Psychiatry and empire: Sloan Mahone and Megan Vaughan (eds) Psychiatry and Empire, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ix + 243 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-4711-6 hbk

Crozier, I. — 2009-01-26

Book review: The birth of psychology: Paul Mengal, La naissance de la psychologie. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005. ISBN 2-7475-8293-0. 414 pp. Euro 33 (paperback). Fernando Vidal, Les sciences de l'ame XVIe--XVIIIe siecle. Paris: Honore Champion, 2006. ISBN 2-7453-1303-7. 463 pp. Euro 82

Smith, R. — 2009-01-26

Book review: Melancholy and the care of the soul: Jeremy Schmidt, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in Early Modern England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007

Sullivan, E. — 2009-01-26

Book review: When species meet: Donna Haraway, When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8166-5046-0. x + 420 pp. $24.95

Wilson, D. — 2009-01-26