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Impure Epistemology and the Search for the Nervous Agent: A Case Study in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Neurophysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Alexandre Métraux
Alexandre Métraux
Affiliation:
Otto-Selz InstituteUniversity of Mannheim
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Abstract

In this contribution, I argue for epistemological impurity as the key to the historical reconstruction of the proto-biological sciences of the eighteenth century.

The traditional approaches to the more or less complex and more or less stratified past of science either focus on the ideal content of that which has in the meantime been recognized as standard biological knowledge (transmitted from generation to generation by textbooks) or otherwise try to uncover the implicit cognitive principles at work in order to reveal their shortcomings (as measured against today's accepted criteria = epistemological presentism).

A closer look at the breakdown of the classical models of mechanistic explanation and the detailed analysis of the new empirico-experimental research in the neurophysiology of the eighteenth century shows, however, that eclectic procedures of various kinds have dominated the field. This eclecticism (the principle of epistemological impurity) supported, and was in turn supported by, what has recently become known as “thinking with one's hand.” The paper illustrates this specific kind of thinking (and experimental acting) with reference to the case of Nicolas Le Cat's microphysics of nervous activity.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Spring 1996 , pp. 57 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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