Inclusiveness and coherency in the history of the neurosciences

The International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN) defines "neurosciences" broadly, and we want to encourage the widest possible range of scholarly approaches to our subject. However, this deliberate inclusiveness could potentially cause problems with internal coherency in our organization and in the scholarship that we are trying to create. In other words, we need to avoid the pitfalls of the internalist-externalist tension without losing the benefits of both perspectives. In fact, I think that there is a large and interesting "gray zone," where the boundary between these supposedly separate approaches is both artificial and porous. This should be one of the most rewarding intellectual domains for the study of neuroscience history, because our subject is always culturally loaded by the mind/body problem and by the assumptions that it entails. Of course, neuroscience history is also influenced by all of the other cultural and scientific aspects of the milieus in which it is conducted. Understanding neuroscience history in all of its multiple historical contexts will require the participation of a wide range of scholarly viewpoints. To keep ourselves coherent in the process, we will have to educate each other.     

WHERE NEUROSCIENCE GETS THINGS WRONG (AND RIGHT)

Alex Rosenberg's book How History Gets Things Wrong holds that our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long evolutionary pedigree and a genetic basis, but this vehicle involves a defective theory of human nature because it involves a defective theory of the brain as shown by neuroscience. Reviewing his arguments, I argue that our attachment (if any) to history as a vehicle of understanding is not an inherited characteristic as evolutionary theory, if relevant, would require, but is developed culturally. I also argue that an evolutionary basis for a cognitive capacity does not undermine its reliability as a vehicle of knowledge or understanding. Moreover, evolutionary theory and neuroscience are separable theories, and neuroscience is misused and misunderstood by Rosenberg. Rosenberg holds that neuroscience provides a better theory of mind than does the “theory of mind” used by historians (as he understands them), where the latter is assumed by him to involve explaining by reference to beliefs and desires. However, Rosenberg illegitimately adopts what philosophers of mind call “theory‐theory” to characterize historians' assumptions and does not recognize that neuroscience need not be conceived as a rival theory of explanation of action. He wrongly supposes that historical narratives are essentially explanations of individual action. A better use of neuroscience is to learn that “imagining the past” and “imagining the future” use the same brain processes, and just as imagining the future has no causal chain linking the relevant brain states directly to reality, so we have no reason to think that “imagining the past” does. Getting our imaginings correct requires sound historiographical expertise.     

Strange encounters: a dialogue on cultural geography across the political divide

Disagreement is a fundamental aspect of scholarly inquiry, yet it is exceedingly rare for scholars on opposite sides of the political spectrum to engage in a sustained dialogue across the political divide. This article seeks to contribute to precisely such a dialogue with specific reference to the field of cultural geography. The discussion featured herein consists of an encounter between “critical” and “conservative” approaches to cultural geography in the form of a back-and-forth exchange of arguments and counter-arguments by the interlocutors. The dialogue covers a wide range of issues, including the cultural politics of essentialism, white supremacy, racial segregation, patriarchy, traditional morality, secularism, justice, authority, friendship, difference-as-strangeness, and the very question of disagreement itself. The broader aim of this dialogical intervention is not to find some sort of common ground that will resolve all differences but rather to explore what those differences are with the hope of opening up a space for more constructive dialogue on cultural geography across the political divide.     

性别维度下的“慰安妇”问题研究及其限界北大核心CSSCI

近年来,性别维度作为分析框架被广泛运用到日军“慰安妇”问题及战争性暴力研究中,由此带动研究方法及视角的转移,并促进研究领域的拓展及研究的深入和细化。但一些研究也出现对性别维度的过度依赖或盲目迷信,如以性别史代替政治史,提出超越国家与民族立场,以及由此导致的模糊甚至否认“慰安妇”制度实质等非历史主义倾向。“慰安妇”问题有其复杂性和特殊性,它既是性别史的研究对象,更是政治史研究的范畴,在使用性别维度时需要厘清其研究的限界,并保持应有的警惕。     

ON LAWFULNESS IN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

The use of general and universal laws in historiography has been the subject of debate ever since the end of the nineteenth century. Since the 1970s there has been a growing consensus that general laws such as those in the natural sciences are not applicable in the scientific writing of history. We will argue against this consensus view, not by claiming that the underlying conception of what historiography is—or should be—is wrong, but by contending that it is based on a misconception of what general laws such as those of the natural sciences are. We will show that a revised notion of law, one inspired by the work of Sandra D. Mitchell, in tandem with Jim Woodward's notion of “invariance,” is indeed applicable to historiography, much in the same way as it is to most other scientific disciplines. Having developed a more adequate account of general laws, we then show, by means of three examples, that what are called “pragmatic laws” and “invariance” do in fact play a role in history in several interesting ways. These examples—from cultural history, economic history, and the history of religion—have been selected on the basis of their diversity in order to illustrate the widespread use of pragmatic laws in history.     

THE CONCEPT “SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY”: THE CASE OF JACOB BRUCKER'S HISTORIOGRAPHY OF PHILOSOPHY1

In this essay I examine and discuss the concept “system of philosophy” as a methodological tool in the history of philosophy; I do so in two moves. First I analyze the historical origin of the concept in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thereafter I undertake a discussion of its methodological weaknesses–a discussion that is not only relevant to the writing of history of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but also to the writing of history of philosophy in our times, where the concept remains an important methodological tool. My first move is to analyze Jacob Brucker's employment of the concept in his influential history of philosophy, Historia critica philosophiae, dating from 1742–1744. To Brucker, a “system of philosophy” is characterized by the following four features: (a) it is autonomous in regard to other, non‐philosophical disciplines; (b) all doctrines stated within the various branches of philosophy can be deduced from one principle; (c) as an autonomous system it comprises all branches of philosophy; (d) the doctrines stated within these various branches of philosophy are internally coherent. Brucker employed the concept on the entire history of philosophy, and he gave it a defining role in regard to two other methodological concepts, namely “eclecticism” and “syncretism,” which he regarded as more or less successful forms of systematic philosophy. My second move is to point out the weakness of the concept of “system of philosophy” as a methodological tool in the history of philosophy. I argue that the interdisciplinary nature of much premodern philosophy makes Brucker's methodological concept “system of philosophy” inadequate, and that we may be better off leaving it behind in our future exploration of premodern philosophy.     

Toward a Received History of the Holocaust

In this article, I examine both the problem of so-called postmodern history as it relates to the Holocaust and suggest the ways that Saul Friedlander's recent work successfully mediates between the somewhat overly polemicized positions of “relativist” and “positivist” history. In this context, I find that in his search for an adequately self-reflexive historical narrative for the Holocaust, Hayden White's proposed notion of “middle-voicedness” may recommend itself more as a process for eyewitness writers than as a style for historians after the fact. From here, I look at the ways Saul Friedlander's reflections on the historian's voice not only mediate between White's notions of the ironic mode and middle-voicedness, but also suggest the basis for an uncanny history in its own right: an anti-redemptory narrative that works through, yet never actually bridges, the gap between a survivor's “deep memory” and historical narrative. For finally, it may be the very idea of “deep memory” and its incompatibility to narrative that constitutes one of the central challenges to Holocaust historiography. What can be done with what Friedlander has termed “deep memory” of the survivor, that which remains essentially unrepresentable? Is it possible to write a history that includes some oblique reference to such deep memory, but which leaves it essentially intact, untouched and thereby deep? In this section, I suggest, after Patrick Hutton, that “What is at issue here is not how history can recover memory, but, rather, what memory will bequeath to history.” That is, what shall we do with the living memory of survivors? How will it enter (or not enter) the historical record? Or to paraphrase Hutton again, “How will the past be remembered as it passes from living memory to history?” Will it always be regarded as so overly laden with pathos as to make it unreliable as documentary evidence? Or is there a place for the understanding of the witness, as subjective and skewed as it may be, for our larger historical understanding of events? In partial answer to these questions, I attempt to extend Friedlander's insights toward a narrow kind of history-telling I call “received history”—a double-stranded narrative that tells a survivor-historian's story and my own relationship to it. Such a narrative would chart not just the life of the survivor-historian itself but also the measurable effect of the tellings—both his telling and mine—on my own life's story. Together, they would compose a received history of the Holocaust and its afterlife in the author's mind—my “vicarious past.”     

THE VIRTUE OF A HISTORIAN: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN HERMAN PAUL AND CHINESE THEORISTS OF HISTORY

This article reflects on the role of scholarly virtues in the Chinese theory of history and compares it with the recent approach proposed by Herman Paul. The first three parts reconstruct what might be called a “Chinese virtue epistemology of history,” starting from Confucian views on sincerity in writing history and then turns to concepts of an “unbiased mind” and the “responsibility of a historian.” The latter ideas were developed by Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801), who introduced the concept of “the virtue of a historian (shide),” treating it as a sympathetic understanding toward the narrated characters. Interpretations of shide changed along with modern Chinese theorists of history, some of whom elaborated on it in the positivist manner. Thereafter, the article outlines Paul's view on the function of epistemic virtues in the formation of “historical persona.” In the summary, I will draw upon the main similarities and differences between Paul's position and the traditional Chinese view in order to point out the main directions for further research on this topic.     

近代学术转型中的子史关系——以国粹派“诸子亦史”说为中心

“诸子亦史”说是清末时期国粹派提出的重要创见,是中国传统学术转型的表现形态之一。该说的提出,一方面,基于清代学者章学诚、龚自珍等关于诸子与史关系的思考;另一方面,缘于在晚清经今古文之争的情境中,反思康有为对孔子及诸子的宗教化阐释。章太炎、邓实、刘师培虽对子史关系的论证方式存在差别,但皆主张“诸子亦史”。就其内涵而言,“诸子亦史”说是“六经皆史”说的延伸和深化,是“诸子出于王官论”的另一种表述,是“尊史”意识下的诸子学重构。此后,老辈学人张尔田、孙德谦、江璨皆有类似的学术主张,反映了清末民初诸子学发展中的学术共识。从学术转型的角度来看,“诸子亦史”说扩展了史学的范围,提升了史学的地位;增强了诸子学的社会角色,进一步推动了诸子学的复兴;提供了诸子学的史学化之内生转型路径。     

The "Return of the Subject" As a Historico-Intellectual Problem

Recently, a call for the “return of the subject” has gained increasing influence. The power of this call is intimately linked to the assumption that there is a necessary connection between “the subject” and politics (and ultimately, history). Without a subject, it is alleged, there can be no agency, and therefore no emancipatory projects—and, thus, no history. This paper discusses the precise epistemological foundations for this claim. It shows that the idea of a necessary link between “the subject” and agency, and therefore between the subject and politics (and history) is only one among many different ones that appeared in the course of the four centuries that modernity spans. It has precise historico‐intellectual premises, ones that cannot be traced back in time before the end of the nineteenth century. Failing to observe the historicity of the notion of the subject, and projecting it as a kind of universal category, results, as we shall see, in serious incongruence and anachronisms. The essay outlines a definite view of intellectual history aimed at recovering the radically contingent nature of conceptual formations, which, it alleges, is the still‐valid core of Foucault's archeological project. Regardless of the inconsistencies in his own archeological endeavors, his archeological approach intended to establish in intellectual history a principle of temporal irreversibility immanent in it. Following his lead, the essay attempts to discern the different meanings the category of the subject has historically acquired, referring them back to the broader epistemic reconfigurations that have occurred in Western thought. This reveals a richness of meanings in this category that are obliterated under the general label of the “modern subject”; at the same time, it illuminates some of the methodological problems that mar current debates on the topic.     

Women's International Thought in the Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Academy: Autobiographical Reflection,Oral History and Scholarly Habitus

Methodologies of textual and linguistic analysis have long held sway in Anglo-American practices of intellectual history. Such approaches tend to decouple the ideas being traced from the human subject, or scholar, producing the thought. Taking the lead from the rich theorising work done in feminist, gender, race and cultural histories, this article asks what changes in our understanding of intellectual histories of international thought when we connect the lived and bodily realities of the human subjects producing the ideas to the ideas themselves. In so doing, the article makes a case for the importance of fleshing out what the author calls ‘scholarly habitus’ and suggests the potential utility of oral history as a methodology for reconstructing ‘scholarly habitus’. The article will draw upon an oral history archive comprised of twenty interviews conducted with senior women International Relations scholars from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom to flesh out this argument. The article argues that oral history, as a medium for autobiographical practice, can reveal aspects of how gender, race and class shaped the scholarly practice and career trajectories of these women, as well as shed light on the historical dynamics of the discipline of International Relations as a whole.     

UNIVERSAL AND PROFANE: THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONSEQUENCES OF NATURAL RELIGION

Natural religion in the eighteenth century was seemingly unhistorical or even antihistorical: it “dehistoricized” morality. It posited a morality that was uniform in all ages, not dependent on any particular revelation, watermarked onto the fabric of our nature, and accessible merely by the light of reason. Even so, natural religion played an important role in the secular historiographical turn in eighteenth-century England. There was in fact an organic relationship between the two, one that historians have failed to articulate. Precisely because natural religion was thought to rest on timeless and universally valid rational foundations, it became possible to treat traditional religion (meaning above all, but not only, Christianity) as a subject of secular historical study, in the sense that it was subject to the same laws of historical knowledge and historical development as all other subjects of historical study, and left no room for miracles. A central figure in this conceptual relationship was Conyers Middleton, a once-famous, now-obscure Cambridge librarian. Middleton's account of natural religion has been swamped by the attention lavished on Matthew Tindal, and his turn to secular historiography lies in the shadows cast by Edward Gibbon. Yet Middleton played a crucial and distinctive role in laying historiographical foundations without which Gibbon could not have written as he did. His understanding of natural religion differed from that of other participants in the “deist controversy” in ultimately far-reaching ways. Those differences explain why he could treat Cicero as a kind of saint in the church of natural religion, reversing, as it were, the elevation of the Bible above Cicero that Augustine had put into effect at the beginning of medieval history. They explain above all why Middleton could approach the history of Christianity in a manner that anticipated both Voltaire and Gibbon and made their historical writings possible.     

Capitalism's Anxious Whole: Fear,Capture and Escape in the Grundrisse

Abstract: Two Hegels inhabit the Grundrisse. The first is conservative of the “selfsame” subject that continuously returns to itself as non‐identical identity and propels “history”. The other Hegel tarries with the “negative” he (which or variously calls “non‐being”, “otherness”“difference”) to disrupt this plenary subject to Marx's reading of a Hegel who is different‐in‐himself lends Grundrisse its electric buzz: seizing Hegel's “negative” as the not‐value of value, i.e. “labor”, Marx explains how capital must continuously enroll labor to its will in order to survive and expand. But this enrollment is never given; hence, despite its emergent structure of necessity, capital's return to itself as “self‐animating value” is never free of peril. The most speculative aspect of my argument is that the figure of “labor” in Grundrisse, because of its radically open formulation as not‐value, anticipates the elusive subject of difference in postcolonial theory, “the subaltern”—that figure which evades dialectical integration, and is in some ontological way inscrutable to the “master”. Unexpectedly, then Grundrisse gives us a way to think beyond the epistemic and geographic power of “Europe”.     

Neoliberal Reason and Its Forms: De‐Politicisation Through Economisation

This paper offers a historically contextualised intellectual history of the entangled development of three competing post‐war economic approaches, viz the Austrian, Chicago and post‐Walrasian schools, as three forms of neoliberalism. Taking our cue from Foucault's reading of neoliberalism as a mode of governmentality under which the social is organised through “economic incentives”, we engage with the recent discussions of neoliberal theory on three accounts: neoliberalism is read as an epistemic horizon including not only “pro‐” but also “post‐market” positions articulated by post‐Walrasian economists who claim that market failures necessitate the design of “incentive‐compatible” remedial mechanisms; the Austrian tradition is distinguished from the Chicago‐style pro‐marketism; and the implications of the differences among the three approaches on economic as well as socio‐political life are discussed. The paper maintains that all three approaches promote the de‐politicisation of the social through its economisation albeit by way of different theories and policies. © 2013 The Author. Antipode © 2013 Antipode Foundation Ltd.     

Das Treffen in Telgte

Transcendental consciousness is described by Kant as “the one single thing” in which “as in the transcendental subject, our perceptions must be encountered.” The unity of that subject depends on intellectual functions. I argue that its singularity is just the same as that of Kant's pre-intellectual “form” of spatiotemporal “intuition.” This may seem excluded by Kant's claim that it is through intellect that “space or time are first given as intuitions.” But while pre-intellectual form is insufficient for space and time as distinct “things,” it is sufficient for the constitution of a “single thing” indifferently construable as both. Contrary to what are typically seen as the main differences between Kant and Hume on identity of “self,” there is thus already a difference in play below the level of either's concern with the sorts of connections available for the combining, or illusion of combining, of manifolds of “impressions” or “ideas.”     

DOES HISTORY MATTER? CHARLES TAYLOR ON THE TRANSCENDENTAL VALIDITY OF SOCIAL IMAGINARIES

Since its appearance in 2007, Charles Taylor's monumental book A Secular Age has received much attention. One of the central issues in the discussions around Taylor's book is the role of history in philosophical argumentation, in particular with regard to normative positions on ultimate affairs. Many critics observe a methodological flaw in using history in philosophical argumentation in that there is an alleged discrepancy between Taylor's historical approach, on the one hand, and his defense of fullness in terms of openness to transcendence, on the other. Since his “faith‐based history” is unwittingly apologetic, it is not only “hard to judge in strictly historical terms,” but it also proves that “when it comes to the most ultimate affairs history may not matter at all.” This paper challenges this verdict by exposing the misunderstanding underlying this interpretation of the role of history in Taylor's narrative. In order to disambiguate the relation between history and philosophy in Taylor's approach, I will raise three questions. First, what is the precise relation between history and ontology, taking into account the ontological validity of what Taylor calls social imaginaries? Second, why does “fullness” get a universal status in his historical narrative? Third, is Taylor's position tenable that the contemporary experience of living within “an immanent frame” allows for an openness to transcendence? In order to answer these questions, I will first compare Peter Gordon's interpretation of the status of social imaginaries with Taylor's position and, on the basis of that comparison, distinguish two definitions of ontology (sections I and II). Subsequently, I try to make it clear that precisely Taylor's emphasis on the historical character of social imaginaries and on their “relaxed” ontological anchorage allows for his claim that “fullness” might have a trans‐historical character (section III). Finally, I would like to show that Taylor's defense of the possibility of an “openness to transcendence”—as a specific mode of fullness—is not couched in “onto‐theological” terms, as suggested by his critics, but that it is the very outcome of taking into account the current historical situation (section IV).     

A Review of: “Theodore L. Sourkes. The Life and Work of J.L.W. Thudichum (1828–1901).”

This article explores the short history of “neuroscience” as a discipline in its own right as opposed to the much longer past of the brain sciences. It focuses on one historical moment, the formation of the first British “neuroscience” society, the Brain Research Association (BRA), renamed in 1996 to the British Neuroscience Association (BNA). It outlines the new thinking brought about by this new science of brain, mind, and behavior, it sketches the beginnings of the BRA and the institutionalization of neuroscience in the British context, and it further explores the ambiguous relation the association had towards some of the ethical, social, and political implications of this new area of research.     

5. INDIA,ITIHASA, AND INTER‐HISTORIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE

An effective and enriching discourse on comparative historiography invests itself in understanding the distinctness and identity that have created various civilizations. Very often, infected by bias, ideology, and cultural one‐upmanship, we encounter a presumptuous‐ness that is redolent of impatience with the cultural other and of an ingrained refusal to acknowledge what one's own history and culture fail to provide. This “failure” need not be the inspiration to subsume the other within one's own understanding of the world and history and, thereby, neuter the possibilities of knowledge‐sharing and cultural interface. It is a realization of the “lack” that provokes and generates encounters among civilizations. It should goad us to move away from what we have universalized and, hence, normalized into an axis of dialogue and mutuality. What Indians would claim as itihasa need not be rudely frowned upon because it does not chime perfectly with what the West or the chinese know as history. accepting the truth that our ways of understanding the past, the sense of the past, and historical sense‐generation vary with different cultures and civilizations will enable us to consider itihasa from a perspective different from the Hegelian modes of doing history and hence preclude its subsumption under the totalitarian rubric of world history. How have Indians “done” their history differently? What distinctiveness have they been able to weave into their discourses and understanding of the past? Does the fact of their proceeding differently from how the West or the Chinese conceptualize history delegitimize and render inferior the subcontinental consciousness of “encounters with past” and its ways of being “moved by the past”? This article expatiates on the distinctiveness of itihasa and argues in favor of relocating its epistemological and ideological persuasions within a comparative historiographical discourse.