The split between Gall and Spurzheim (1813–1818)

An acerbic footnote in Volume 3 (1818) of the five-volume great work of Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General and of the Brain in Particular with Observations on the Possibility of Understanding the Many Moral and Intellectual Dispositions of Man and Animals by the Configuration of Their Heads, marked the end of the collaboration between Gall, the founder of organologie, and Spurzheim, promoter of phrenology. We discuss the background of this note and the nature of the rift that marked the end of Gall and Spurzheim’s collaboration.     

Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776–1827) on Gall’s craniognomic system,zoology, and comparative anatomy

ABSTRACT

Most of what was known about Franz Joseph Gall’s (1758–1828) organology or Schädellehre prior to the 1820s came from secondary sources, including letters from correspondents, promotional materials, brief newspaper articles about his lecture-demonstrations, and editions and translations of some lengthier works of varying quality in German. Physician Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776–1827) practiced in Vienna’s General Hospital in 1797–1798; attended some of Gall’s public lectures; and, in 1801–1802, became one of the first physicians to provide detailed reports on Gall’s emerging organology in French and English, respectively. Although Bojanus considered the human mind to be indivisible and did not entirely agree with Gall’s assumption that the brain consists of a number of independent organs responsible for various faculties, he provided valuable information and thoughtful commentary on Gall’s views. Furthermore, he defended Gall against the charge that his sort of thinking would lead to materialism and cautiously predicted that the new system would be fruitful for developing and stimulating important new research about the brain and mind. Bojanus became a professor of zoology in 1806 and a professor of comparative anatomy in 1814 at Vilnius University, where, among other accomplishments, he established himself as a founder of modern veterinary medicine and a pioneer of pre-Darwinian and pre-Lamarckian evolutionism.     

The reception of Gall’s organology in early-nineteenth-century Vilnius

Much has been written about the development and reception of Franz Joseph Gall’s (1758–1828) ideas in Western Europe. There has been little coverage, however, of how his Schädellehre or organology was received in Eastern Europe. With this in mind, we examined the transmission and acceptance/rejection of Gall’s doctrine in Vilnius (now Lithuania). We shall focus on what two prominent professors at Vilnius University felt about organology. The first of these men was Andrew Sniadecki (1768–1838), who published an article on Gall’s system in the journal Dziennik Wileński in 1805. The second is his contemporary, Joseph Frank (1771–1842), who wrote about the doctrine in his memoirs and published an article on phrenology in the journal Bibliotheca Italiana in 1839. Both Frank and Sniadecki had previously worked in Vienna’s hospitals, where they became acquainted with Gall and his system, but they formed different opinions. Sniadecki explained the doctrine not only to students and doctors but also to the general public in Vilnius, believing the new science had merit. Frank, in contrast, attempted to prove the futility of cranioscopy. Briefer mention will be made of the assessments of Johann Peter Frank (1745–1821) and Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776–1827), two other physicians who overlapped Gall in Vienna and went to Vilnius afterward. Additionally, we shall bring up how a rich collection of human skulls was used for teaching purposes at Vilnius University, and how students were encouraged to mark the organs on crania using Gall’s system. Though organology in Vilnius, as in many other places, was always controversial, it was taught at the university, accepted by many medical professionals, and discussed by an inquisitive public.     

On the origin of the term decussatio pyramidum

There is no consensus regarding the origin of the term decussatio pyramidum. Various anatomists of the past are honored by modern scholars, for example, Vieussens, Reil, and Collins. However, contralateral effects of brain lesions were already mentioned in Hippocratic treatises. Aretaeus of Cappadocia assumed that the anatomical reason for this phenomenon is the interchange of the nerves and called it chiasmos. This opinion was discussed in modern times and the anatomists used the term decussatio nervorum. The authorship of the first demonstration of decussatio pyramidum is given to Mistichelli (1709) and Petit (1710), but neither the term decussatio nor any of its vernacular forms are present in their work. A milestone in the history of the term is the Mémoire of Gall and Spurzheim presented to the Institut de France in 1808. In the French printed form of the Mémoire (1809), the word combination décussation des pyramides was used for the first time in anatomical literature.     

“It was like lightning”: the theatrical resonances of Sarah Kane in Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

ABSTRACT

In 2013, Eimear McBride’s debut novel A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing was published to much critical acclaim. Commentators were quick to highlight McBride’s Joycean influences – but just as McBride is indebted to her Irish literary predecessor, so too is British playwright Sarah Kane a major influence. The strong resonances between the plays of Sarah Kane and A Girl serve to highlight the theatrical nuance of McBride’s original work. This article will investigate the thematic links of sibling love, grief and guilt in McBride’s novel and Kane’s Cleansed (1996), and the linguistic parallels with 4.48 Psychosis (1998). McBride’s experience as a trained actor encouraged a form of “method-writing” which I contend contributes to the inherent theatricality of her writing. This article ventures to uncover a small part of the huge scholarly potential which lies in the works of Eimear McBride, whose writing brings a uniquely theatrical style to Irish modernism.     

Franz Joseph Gall came to Copenhagen,and for a brief moment the brain was the talk of the town

ABSTRACT

When the inventor of phrenology, Franz Joseph Gall, came to Denmark in the fall of 1805, he was met with great enthusiasm and fascination among the general public, as well as within the scientific community. His visit was an event that was covered by the newspapers unlike any other scientific lecture. However, as soon as Gall left, public interest in phrenology almost instantaneously vanished. Different theories have been put forth in the attempt to answer the question as to why phrenology never found a audience in Denmark. The Danish phrenologist Carl Otto explained it by referring to the poor quality of the Danish phrenological publications. Danish historians have argued that phrenology was too incompatible with the dominant scientific paradigm, Natürphilosophie. This article argues that the newspaper coverage of phrenology was more about sensational news stories than about science, and ultimately phrenology was a fad that wore off when the newspapers shifted their focus to other news.     

Gall’s German enemies

ABSTRACT

Franz Joseph Gall’s (1758–1828) proposal for a new theory about how to represent the mental faculties is well known. He replaced the traditional perception-judgement-memory triad of abstract faculties with a set of 27 highly specific faculties, many of which humans share with animals. In addition, he argued that these faculties are dependent on specific cortical areas, these being his organs of mind. After several years of presenting his new views in Vienna, he was banned from lecturing for what he considered absurd reasons. The edict enticed him to make a scientific journey through the German states, both to present his ideas to targeted audiences and to collect more cases. This trip, started in 1805, was extended to include stops in Denmark, Holland, and Switzerland before finally ending in Paris in 1807. For the most part, Gall was received with great enthusiasm in what is now Germany, but there were some individuals who strongly opposed his anatomical discoveries and skull-based doctrine. In this article, we examine the concerns and arguments raised by Johann Gotlieb Walter in Berlin, Henrik Steffens in Halle, Jakob Fidelis Ackermann in Heidelberg, and Samuel Thomas Soemmerring in Munich, as well as how Gall responded to them.     

A legal theory for the nation state. Pasquale Stanislao Mancini,Hegelianism and Piedmontese liberalism after 1848

ABSTRACT

This article aims to shed light on the Italian liberals’ contribution to the post-1848 European debate on nationality, representative government and the theory of the state, through focus on the political thought of Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. Building on Vico and Hegel’s philosophies of law and history, Mancini developed a sui generis tradition of national liberalism that founded representative government on a theory of the state that identified freedom and nationality. Far from being the passive and provincial adaptation of Anglo-French currents of liberalism, Mancini’s political thought, while engaging with the contemporary European debates on freedom and constitutional government, nurtured an original constitutional theory that connected conflicting ideas of cosmopolitan freedom and national patriotism.     

Franz Joseph Gall on hemispheric symmetries

ABSTRACT

Franz Joseph Gall believed that the two cerebral hemispheres are anatomically and functionally similar, so much so that one could substitute for the other following unilateral injuries. He presented this belief during the 1790s in his early public lectures in Vienna, when traveling through Europe between 1805 and 1807, and in the two sets of books he published after settling in France. Gall seemed to derive his ideas about laterality independently of French anatomist Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802), who formulated his “law of symmetry” at about the same time. He would, however, later cite Bichat, whose ideas about mental derangement were different from his own and who also attempted to explain handedness, a subject on which Gall remained silent. The concept of cerebral symmetry would be displaced by mounting clinical evidence for the hemispheres being functionally different, but neither Gall nor Bichat would live to witness the advent of the concept of cerebral dominance.     

Broca’s faculté du langage articulé: Language or Praxis?

De Oliveira-Souza, Moll, and Tovar-Moll (this issue) historically reevaluate that Paul Broca’s aphemia should be considered as a kind of apraxia rather than aphasia. I argue that such a claim is unwarranted, given the interpretation of the faculty of speech Broca derived from his predecessors, Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud and Franz Joseph Gall, and also with a view on the then generally held opinion that the terms aphémie and aphasie were synonyms. I will discuss evidence that patients such as Leborgne, producing only very few words or syllables, suffer from a global aphasia, affecting all modalities, despite Broca’s statement that Leborgne’s comprehension was intact. I also point to Broca’s claim that the faculty of speech, located in the left anterior hemisphere, is independent from hand preference because it is an intellectual and not a motor function, and to his statement that the cerebral convolutions are not motor organs. I finally contend that, in order to determine whether a given language problem should be labeled as aphasia or apraxia, it is crucial to first be clear on the components of old and new models of language production.     

At the origins of a tenacious narrative: Jacob Thomasius and the history of double truth

ABSTRACT

This article enquires into the origins of the historiographical notion of double truth, a prominent and controversial category in the modern study of medieval philosophy. I believe that these origins are to be found in a short text by Jacob Thomasius from 1663, entitled De duplici & contradictoria veritate, which stands as a very early and highly original example of a history of double truth. I propose a detailed analysis of this document in order to shed light on the mechanisms that transformed duplex veritas from a keyword in Thomasius’s Protestant milieu into a historiographical category. As I show, the De duplici & contradictoria veritate provides a historical legitimation of Thomasius’s own brand of Lutheran Aristotelianism. It does so in a highly ambiguous fashion, namely by bringing together the Lutheran theologian and proponent of double truth Daniel Hofmann with anonymous medieval “Averroists”. I venture an explanation for Thomasius’s line of action by uncovering two of his implicit sources.     

The public playground paradox: ‘child’s joy’ or heterotopia of fear?

ABSTRACT

Literature depicts children of the Global North withdrawing from public space to ‘acceptable islands’. Driven by fears both of and for children, the public playground – one such island – provides clear-cut distinctions between childhood and adulthood. Extending this argument, this paper takes the original approach of theoretically framing the playground as a heterotopia of deviance, examining – for the first time – three Greek public playground sites in relation to adjacent public space. Drawing on an ethnographic study in Athens, findings show fear to underpin surveillance, control and playground boundary porosity. Normative classification as ‘children’s space’ discourages adult engagement. However, in a novel and significant finding, a paradoxical phenomenon sees the playground’s presence simultaneously legitimizing playful behaviour in adjacent public space for children and adults. Extended playground play creates alternate orderings and negotiates norms and hierarchies, suggesting significant wider potential to reconceptualise playground-urban design for an intergenerational public realm.     

Second Laws,Two Cultures,and the Emergence of an Ecosystem Aesthetics

Abstract

The appropriation of scientific concepts by the humanities and the visual arts exemplifies what many feel are both the pitfalls and possibilities of interdisciplinary engagement. The principle of entropy, which C. P. Snow claimed could serve as a litmus test of the ‘two cultures’ divide, provides an excellent starting point for exploring how artists have employed scientific concepts far beyond their original contexts. As a case study in interdisciplinarity, the use of entropy in the visual arts is also a lens to consider the evolution of an artistic proposal from the 1960s known as ‘system aesthetics’. As an early challenge to the clean demarcation of art and science, system aesthetics was a precedent for what might be described as the emergence of an ecosystem aesthetics within contemporary art and design today.     

A Witness to the Early Reception of Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaëmeron: Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford (c. 1286) — Introduction and Text

Abstract

This essay presents a brief introduction to and an edition of Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford, which begins with the biblical verse, O altitudo diviciarum sapiencie et sciencie Dei (Romans 11. 33). This leccio may have been Nicholas’s inaugural sermon as a Master of Theology at Oxford and therefore dates to 1286. Whatever the precise genre of Nicholas’s leccio, the text is also important because much of it copies entire sections of St Bonaventure’s (d. 1274) Collationes in Hexaëmeron. Nicholas’s text is therefore a witness to Oxford University practices of the late thirteenth-century and to the late thirteenth-century reception of Bonaventure.     

Originality and Eroticism: Constantine Cavafy and the Alexandrian Epigram

Abstract

Although it has become generally accepted by critics that Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) was influenced greatly by the Hellenistic epigram ‘in attitude, subject matter, and technique’, a close comparison of that poetic tradition and Cavafy's poems reveals interesting differences as well as similarities. We know that Cavafy was familiar with Hellenistic literature and that he had a copy of J. W. Mackail's Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology in his personal library. His reading, however, ‘was much more extensive than his library’. More significant than this is the evidence to be found in his poems, which range from an actual mention of ancient epigrams to obvious imitations of them. Cavafy's poems for the most part, however, are quite original in their tone and erotic stance when compared directly to the Alexandrian epigrams.     

On the 80th anniversary of the Racial Laws. Articles reflecting the current scholarship on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism in honour of Michele Sarfatti

ABSTRACT

This special issue of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies, edited by Annalisa Capristo and Ernest Ialongo, marks the 80^th anniversary of the implementation of the Racial Laws in Fascist Italy. It is an opportunity to assess the evolution of the historical literature on Fascist anti-Semitism and to mark future directions for research, but also to pay homage to Michele Sarfatti, who was critical in the development of the current state of the historiography on the subject. Where the earlier work, before the 1980s, was founded on the idea of ‘Italiani brava gente’, wherein Italy’s role was downplayed in the persecution of the Jews and in the Holocaust, that Italians were simply too humane to have participated in such horrific events, Sarfatti’s work launched a veritable revolution in the field, which dismantled all the tenets of the original consensus. This introduction surveys these developments, and summarizes the contributions of the varied authors published here who continue to challenge old truths and bring us closer to a more full and accurate understanding of Fascist anti-Semitism.     

Narokobi’s Melanesian Philosophy in the Papua New Guinean Legal System

ABSTRACT

Bernard Narokobi dedicated his career as a law reformer, jurist and parliamentarian to making Papua New Guinea’s legal system a catalyst for a distinctively Melanesian philosophy. This philosophy, ‘the Melanesian Way’, emphasized Papua New Guineans’ embeddedness within their local social worlds, including spirits and the natural environment. The legal foundation for the Melanesian Way was set down in the National Goals and Directive Principles and Basic Social Obligations, which are stated in the Preamble to the Constitution of Papua New Guinea. These make the ideals of social justice, participatory democracy, national sovereignty and sustainable development a legal aspiration and an impetus for formally recognizing the social forms that Papua New Guinean people themselves experience as providing order in their lives. Legislation that Narokobi promoted over the course of his career offered practical mechanisms for operationalizing these ideals in accordance with their original constitutional foundation.     

1968 and its other worlds: Global events and (anti-)state dynamics in France,Mozambique and Vanuatu

ABSTRACT

This article de-centres the moment, event and impact of 1968 and expands it temporally and spatially. Taking a longue durée approach charting a trajectory from the 1960s into the 1980s, we analyse statist and anti-statist dynamics through a comparison of the May 1968 Paris riots with the Nagriamel movement in Vanuatu and the phenomenon of Naparama in Mozambique. Such a horizontal triangulation and spatio-temporal expansion is undertaken to contribute to a more global understanding of what we term ‘the 1968 event’ entails. However, this comparative analysis also underlines how its impact should be measured as, first, an experimentation with and attack on political reality, second, how the intricate connections between Euro-American and other worlds were integral to its articulation and, third, how paradoxically 1968 and its response spawned the rise of an authoritarian form of nation-state – eclipsing the openings in the firmament of the political, social and the real afforded by the original event.