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.