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Darwin faces Kant: a study in nineteenth-century physiology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

S. P. Fullinwider
Affiliation:
Department of History, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA.

Extract

Recent explorations into Sigmund Freud's intellectual development by Frank Sulloway and Lucille Ritvo have directed attention to the significance of evolutionary theory for psychoanalysis. In this paper I shall pursue the exploration by showing how Darwin was received by members of the so-called Helmholtz circle (Hermann von Helmholtz, Emil du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Brücke) and certain of Freud's teachers in the University of Vienna medical school. I will make the point that the Leibniz–Kant background of these several scientists was important for this reception. I will argue that the Leibniz–Kant tradition came forward to Freud by two roads, Helmholtz's unconscious inference as foundation for a physiology of the senses, and Arthur Schopenhauer's not unrelated uses of the principle of sufficient reason to explain the possibility of lawlikeness in a universe of lawless energies. Finally, I will suggest ways in which Freud received and used the tradition.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1991

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References

1 Sulloway, Frank, Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend, London, 1979, pp. 238–76, 361–92Google Scholar; Ritvo, Lucille, ‘Carl Claus as Freud's Professor of the New Darwinian Biology’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, (1972), 53, pp. 277–83Google ScholarPubMed, and ‘The impact of Darwin on Freud’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, (1974), 43, pp. 177–92Google Scholar; Darwin's Influence on Freud, New Haven, 1990.Google Scholar

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5 Ibid., II, p. 1348.

6 Ibid., II, p. 1334.

7 Ibid., II, p. 1333.

8 Ibid., II, p. 1334.

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36 Sherman, Paul, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century: The Young–Helmholtz–Maxwell Theory, Bristol, 1981, p. 90Google Scholar, holds that Helmholtz's rejection of the equivalence of mixing light with mixing colours was a revolution in the area of colour theory on a par with the rejection of the fixed earth theory in astronomy. Sherman, who points out that Helmholtz found five fundamental colours, does not discuss Helmholtz's physiological theory regarding colour reception.

37 Brücke, Ernst, Vorlesungen ueber Physiologie, Vol. II, Vienna, 1885, pp. 167–71.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 156.

39 Ibid., pp. 155–6, 224. ‘Das Gehirn übernimmt es, das, was an dem unmittelbaren Sinneseindruck mangelhaft ist, zu ergänzen.’

40 Ibid., p. 226. ‘Wir gehen eben unbewusste Schlüsse aus allen Sinneseindrucken, aus welchen sie gezogen werden können, and die ganz Welt unserer Vorstellungen setz sich aus solchen Schlüssen zusammen.’

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45 Ibid., p. 368. ‘Ich sehe kein Hinherniss für die Annahme, das auch beim Menschen die Association swischen der Empfindung der Veränderung und deren Ursache auf wissentlich denzelben Verhältnissen beruht: es wird so erklärlich, dass die geschilderten Verwandtschaften der Rinderbahnen, da sie bis in das Thierreich zurrückgreifen, sich auch im Kampfe ums Dassien stets als nützlich erwiesen haben…’

46 Ibid., p. 370.

47 Ibid., p. 347; he cited Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Theodor Ziegler.

48 For Leibniz's use of the principle of sufficient reason see Broad, C. D., Leibniz: An Introduction (ed. Lewy, C.), London, 1975, pp. 1012.Google Scholar Broad quoted Leibniz on his principle as ‘Nothing happens without it being possible to have a reason why it happened as it did and not in another way.’ For Leibniz's use of the principle as the agent of selection, pp. 31–5, though this is not the point Broad was trying to make. For Schopenhauer's use of the principle see his On the Fourfold Roots of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (tr. Payne, E. F. J.), LaSalle, Ill.: [1813, 2nd rev. edn 1847], 1974.Google Scholar Though Schopenhauer gave Leibniz little credit for the development of the principle, his definition was the same: ‘Nothing is without a ground or reason why it is’ (p. 6). According to Schopenhauer (pp. 30–45) the first great advance in understanding the principle was taken by Kant in his Über eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernuft durch eine ältere entberlich gemacht werden soll (1790)Google Scholar, when he differentiated between the principle as used in formal logic as the necessity of having sufficient ground for a conclusion and its use as necessary cause.

49 For the question of conflation, see in general Heimann, P. M., ‘Helmholtz and Kant: The Metaphysical Foundations of Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, (1974), 5, pp. 221–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and for the question whether Kant himself conflated the order that we suppose to exist in nature with that imposed by our cognitive constitution see the debate between Gerd Buchdahl (‘The Conception of Lawlikeness in Kant's Philosophy of Science’, Synthese, (1971), 23, pp. 24–6Google Scholar, and ‘The Kantian “Dynamic of Reason,” with Special Reference to the Place of Causality in Kant's System’, Kant Studies Today (ed. Beck, Lewis), LaSalle, Ill., 1969, p. 355)Google Scholar and Strawson, P. F., The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, London, 1966.Google Scholar

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55 Ibid., p. 356.

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66 ibid., p. 178.

67 Exner, Sigmund, ‘Die Moral as Waffe in Kampf ums Dasien,’ Vienna, 1892, p. 248.Google Scholar ‘“Der lustvoll gefärbte Affect ist mit Ausgriffsbewegungen, der unlustvolle mit Abwehrbewegungen associirt”, sagt Meynert.’

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71 Ibid., p. 253. ‘die Pflicht. Die Frage Kant's “woher stammst Du?” wird der Mensch stets beantworten müssen durch jene Fechner'schen Geister, die in ihm hineindenke, “von einem anderen Mittelpunkte aus als seinem eigenen”, d.h. niemals auf Grund von Erfahrungen der Person, immer auf Grund von Erfahrungen der Gesammtheit.’

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78 See, for example, Freud, Sigmund, Interpretation of Dreams (1990), Vol. 5, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (ed. Strachey, James), London, 1953, p. 514.Google Scholar

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85 Ibid., p. 149.

86 Ibid., p. 182.

87 Ibid., pp. 153–7.

88 Ibid., p. 198.

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96 Ibid., p. 64; Freud also mentioned this usage in the 1911 Schreber case, op. cit. (90), p. 66.

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102 Ibid., p. 29.

103 Ibid., p. 36.