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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology
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The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology (Hardcover)
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The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology (Hardcover)
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How do we become aware of things and events in the outside world,
and how does the brain control the muscular system and behavior?
This book examines the history of Western attempts to explain how
messages might be sent from the sense organs to the brain and from
the brain to the muscles. It focuses on a construct called animal
spirit, which would permeate philosophy and guide physiology and
medicine for over two millennia.
The authors' story opens along the Eastern Mediterranean, where
they examine how Pre-Socratic philosophers related the soul to
air-wind or pneuma. They then trace what Hippocrates, Plato and
Aristotle wrote about this pneuma, and how Stoic and Epicurean
philosophers approached it. They also visit Alexandria, where
Hellenistic anatomists provided new thoughts about the nerves and
the ventricles. Thereafter, the authors return to the Greek
mainland, where they show how Galen's pneuma psychikon or spiritus
animae would provide an explanation for sensations and movements.
Galen's writings would guide science and medicine for well over a
thousand years, albeit with some modifications. One change, found
in early Christian writers Nemesius and Augustine, involved
assigning perception, cognition, and memory to different
spirit-filled ventricles. After examining how pious Scholastics
later dealt with the nerve spirit, the authors turn to how
questions began to be raised about it in the 1500s and 1600s. Here
they examine the rise of modern science with its revealing
experiments, microscopic observations, and attempts to break with
the past. Descartes, Swammerdam, Borelli, Glisson, Willis, Newton,
Hartley, Boerhaave and Haller are among the featured players in
this part of the story.
Nevertheless, the animal spirit doctrine continued to survive
(although modified), because no adequate replacement for it was
immediately forthcoming. The replacement theory stemmed from
experiments on electric fishes started in the 1750s. Additional
research on these fishes and then on frogs eventually led
scientists to abandon their time-honored ideas. The authors trace
some of the developments leading to modern electrophysiology and
end with an epilogue centered on what this history teaches us about
paradigmatic changes in the life sciences.
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