fullinwider. darwin faces kant - a study in nineteenth-century physiology (article)

5/20/2018 Fullinwider. Darwin Faces Kant - A Study in Nineteenth-Century Physiology (Article)

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The ritish Society for the History of Science

Darwin Faces Kant: A Study in Nineteenth-Century PhysiologyAuthor(s): S. P. FullinwiderSource: The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 21-44Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of The British Society for the History ofScience

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2/25

BJHS, 1991,

24,

21-44

Darwin faces Kant: a

study in nineteenth-

century

physiology

S.

P.

FULLINWIDER'*

Recentexplorations into SigmundFreud's ntellectualdevelopment by FrankSulloway and

Lucille Ritvo

have

directed

attention to the

significance

of

evolutionary

theory

for

psycho-

analysis.1

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

Brucke)

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.

Freud's

colleague Sigmund Exner used what he considered to

be Darwin's

theories both

to

aid

in

creating

a

synthesis

of the two Leibniz-Kant trends

and to save their

Kantian

elements for science.

In

so

doing

he fleshed out an

alternativebrain model to the

one Freud

used

in

his 1895

'Project

for a Scientific

Psychology'. Arguably,

Freud

made increased

use

of the

alternative brain model

in

his later

writings,

and in so

doing

fell back in

significant

ways upon

the

Leibniz-Kant tradition.

1

Johannes

Muller

(1801-58)

physiologist

and

anatomist at the

University

of Berlin

was not

only

a

leading light

in

the

physiology

of his

day,

he

was

the

master under

whom

Brucke,

du

Bois-Reymond

and Helmholtz learned their

physiology.

It is with their

rebellion

against

his vitalism that

historians often

begin

their studies of Freud's

education.2 It is

sometimes

overlooked that their rebellion took

place

within the context of the

physiology

of the

senses

*

Department

of

History,

Arizona

State

University,

Tempe,

AZ

85281,

USA.

1

Frank

Sulloway,

Freud,

Biologist

of the

Mind:

Beyond

the

Psychoanalytic

Legend,

London,

1979, pp.

238-76,

361-92;

Lucille

Ritvo, 'Carl

Claus as

Freud's

Professorof

the New

Darwinian

Biology',

International

Journal of

Psychoanalysis,(1972),53, pp. 277-83, and 'The impactof Darwin on Freud',PsychoanalyticQuarterly,(1974),

43,

pp.

177-92,;

Darwin's

Influence on

Freud,

New

Haven,

1990.

2

See,

e.g., Ernest

Jones,

Sigmund

Freud:Life

and

Work,Vol.

I,

The

Young

Freud,

1856-1900,

London, 1953,

pp.

45ff;

Sigfried

Bernfeld, 'Freud's

earliest

theories and

the School

of

Helmholtz',

Psychoanalytic

Quarterly,

(1944),

13, pp.

341-62; Paul

Cranefield,

Freud and the

School of

Helmholtz ',

Gesnerus,

(1966),

23,

pp. 35-9;

Peter

Amacher,

Freud's

Neurological

Education and

its

Influence

on

Psychoanalytic

Theory,

Vol.

IV,

Psychological

Issues,

New York,

1964-65.

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3/25

22 S. P.

Fullinwider

that grew out

of the Leibniz-Kanttradition. The physiology

of the senses

they developed

from mid-centuryonwards was largely structuredby their response to that tradition.

Muller advanced the

proposition

that became controlling: sensation

is an attribute not

of some real object

in

the outer

world but

of

the sensory nerves:

Sensation, herefore, onsists

n

the

communicationo the sensorium, ot

of the qualityor state

of the externalbody,butof

the

condition

f thenerveshemselves, xcited

by the external auses.

We do not feel the knifewhichgives

us pain,

but

the painful

tateof our nervesproduced y

it.3

He was one with the Scot David

Hume as to the subjectivity of our

representations, but

he

did not adopt

the

British naive

realism

(that

Nietzsche was to

call the dogma of

immaculate

perception)

which held

that

the

sensory nerves

are

neutral conductors.

Muller's critique of the neutral conductor theory was straightforward.He pointed out

that

all

sensory

nerves transmit certain sensory impressions,

for

example

such impression

as

might

be

given

by electricalstimulation. But

often the qualitative results

differ depending

upon

the nerve stimulated. To the nerves of sight the electrical

stimulus might manifest

itself

as a flash of light; not

so

to the nerves

of

touch.

Again,

some sensory nerves transmit

the

sun's

radiation

as

light,

others as heat.

And

yet again, some sensory

nerves will transmit

sound,

or

etc.,

some will not. From these facts

of

everyday

life Muller concluded that

the

sensory quality

experienced

is

specific

to

the

nerve stimulated. He

spoke

of 'specific nerve

energies':

'...each

peculiar

nerve

of

sense

has

special

powers

or

qualities which

the

exciting causes merelyrender manifest'.' Thus, sounds, colours, light itself, are not merely

subjective, they

are innate.

Though

influenced

by Kant,

Muller tended

at

times

to

push

back

to

Leibniz. In asserting

that

each

species

is

innately

endowed

with

a

unique

'organizing principle'

or

'ruling

idea'

and

in

rejecting

Kant's transcendental orms

('I

do

not

adopt

the

opinion

that

the mind is

originally

occupied by

the

primitive

ideas of

Kant,

or the

categories

of

Aristotle;

these

appear

to be the

fruit of

experience

and of the

power

of

abstraction.')5

he was close to

advocating

a Leibnizian-like

pre-established

harmony

between the

experienced

world

of

subjective

sensations

and events

in the 'outer world'

which the

subjective

sensations

are

thought

somehow to

accompany.

Muller'snotion of a rulingidea (which, thoughhe used it in the contextof fixedbiological

species,

in

some

ways anticipated

today's

notions about

genetic programming)6

carried

within it a

principle

destined

to

shape

the German

response

to

Darwin,

the

principle

that

it

is

the unconscious

formative action

of such a

ruling

idea that

structures

man's relation

to

his world:

A

piece

of mechanism

s formed

n

accordance

ith the idea held

by

the

artificer,

his

idea

being

the

purpose

or which

t was

intended.

An

'idea'

also

regulates

he

structure f

everyorganism,

andeach

of its

component rgans.

n the former

ase,however,

he

ruling

deaexistsexternal

o

the artificial

mechanism, amely,

n the mindof the

artificer;

while the

idea,

which

s the cause

of

harmony

f

organicbodies,

s in

action

n

the

organism

tself,exerting

n it a formative

ower

unconsciously,ndin obedience o determinateaws.7

Muller

suggested

the action

of

a

'vital

principle'

here, by

which he

meant the

operation

3 Johannes

Muller,

Elements of Physiology,

Vol.

I,

2nd edn

(tr.

William Baly), London, 1840,

p. 819.

4 Ibid.

5

Ibid., II,

p. 1348.

6 Ibid.,

II, p. 1334.

7

Ibid., II,

p. 1333.



4/25

Darwin faces Kant 23

of the organizing principle

or ruling

idea: he defined the vital

principle

as the

fact

that an

organizing idea is at work in the organism.8

The friends

-

du

Bois-Reymond, Brucke and

Helmholtz

-

who

early-on joined

hands in

opposition to Muller's vital principle or,

as

they

called

it,

'life

force',

set themselves the

group goal

of

creating

a

physiology

defined

by

the laws of

physics

and

chemistry.9

By the German reading, an important part

of David Hume's 1730-40

critique

of

rationalism

turned on the notion that

since

our

ideas

(the

German

Vorstellungen

or

representations)are subjectiveand learned, so must be the connections

between them. Since

those connections

are not known a

priori they

lack the

element of

necessity.

Muller

agreed

whole-heartedly.

He

added, however,

that an animal

might

be

expected

to learn

that

certain events follow upon certain others but that it could neverdevelop the abstract notion

of

necessary

cause. Thus

in

his view

the human mind has a

unique power inexplicable by

the laws of

physics

and chemistry.

He turned to the

organizing principle

notion

to

explain

why man alone has the power

of

abstracting

and

generalizing

from his

experience.10

Muller's students set

about

confronting

his

legacy:

because

of the

subjectivity

of

specific

nerve energies they

had to find an explanation

for the apparent harmony between that

subjectivity

and the world

it

represents, yet they

were sworn

to work

within

the context

of their reductionism. How

do

the laws of

physics

and chemistry make possible the sensory

events that

give

us a

working picture

of the world?

Du Bois-Reymond,

the most

dogmatically

reductionist

of the

friends,

liked to

point

out

that when taken within the context of Helmholtz's 1847 classic, Ueber die Erhaltungder

Kraft (On

the Conservation of Force),

the notion of

pre-established harmony,

which du

Bois-Reymond

saw

coming

down

from Leibniz and

Kant,

as their solution

to the

riddle,

involves

an

impossible

miracle in

that

it

requires (divine)

creative

act[s]

contrary

to the

Erhaltung's showing

that

creating something

out of

nothing

is

impossible.

Du Bois-

Reymond implicated

both the

Leibniz version which

featured the

principle

of sufficient

reason and

'the inborn Kantian

categories'.

Yet

having

himself

adopted

Muller's notion

of

specific

nerve

energies

he had little choice but

to

recognize

a

subject-object harmony

of

some sort.

From this unenviable

position

du

Bois-Reymond

issued his famous lament that

neither the human mind nor what he called the LaplacianGeist (i.e. Laplace's demon) are

capable

of

solving

the riddle of

harmony.

Du

Bois-Reymond,

who was

instrumental n

getting

Helmholtz's

Erhaltungpublished

in

the first

place,

saw that

work as a final nail

in

the coffin of the miraculous

'vital

principle'

because that principle imagines a (vital) force spontaneously

springing out of nothing at the

organism's

birth

and

just

as

spontaneously passing back

into nothing at the organism's

demise.'2

It is

possible

that in his

enthusiasm for the

Erhaltung he overlooked the

8

Ibid.,

II, p. 1334.

9

See,

e.g.,

Charles Culotta,

'German

biophysics,

objective knowledge,

and romanticism', Hist. Studies in the

Physical Sciences, (1975), 4, pp. 3-38; Karl Rothschuh, History of Physiology (tr. Guenter Risse), Huntington,

New York,

1972, pp. 152, 205; June Goodfield,

The

Growth of ScientificPhysiology:

Physiological Method and

the Mechanistic Vitalistic

Controversy,New York,

1975.

10 Muller, op. cit. (5), p.

1334.

11 Emil du Bois-Reymond, 'Leibnizische

Gedanken

in

der

neueren Naturwissenschaft'

(1870), Vortrage

ueber

Philosophie

und Gessellschaft (ed. Sigfried

Wollgast) Hamburg,

1974, pp.

38ff; 'Uber die

Grenzen

des

Naturerkennens', ibid.,

pp. 54-6.

12 Emil du Bois-Reymond,

Untersuchungen

ueber thierische

Elektricitat,

Vol.

I, Berlin, 1848,

xxxv-xlv.



5/25

24

S. P. Fullinwider

significance of the fact that in it

Helmholtz enshrined Leibniz's non-Cartesian

definition of

force (F

=

MV2). Helmholtz had situated himself on the Leibnizian side of

the

historic

debate over the true definition of

force.13

Leibniz

argued

in 1686 and

thereafter that the Cartesian definition of

force as

F

=

MV

(mass times velocity) was merely the correlate of

Descartes's

reduction of the world to mere

extension, figure, and motion. The specificproblem he found with

the

F

=

MV formulation

was that

it did not describe the force attained

by

a

falling body; it left gravity out

of the

world. When we consider that it is

gravity

that

pulls

the

pendulum

down

we are permitted

to

visualize

the

pendulum as acquiringwithin it the force

necessary

to

carry it back up

again against

gravity's pull. The force that it has acquired

in

its

downward swing is what

Leibniz called vis viva

(F

=

MV2).

The

point

is that vis viva

(living force)

can be

visualized

as a substantial thing within the object as opposed to a force exerted on the object from

outside.

It

anticipates

the notion of

energy.

Such

a

force can be seen as both

cause and

substance.

As

substance it is

conserved, meaning

that

nothing

can

be lost between cause

and effect. 'It is

enough',

he wrote in

1690,

'if I am

conceded that which is a

fact

in

my

opinion,

namely,

that what

I

call

force

is conserved and not that

which others have

called

by

that name. Because nature would not otherwise observe

the law of

equality between

effect and

cause...'.

14

In

short,

we

are

brought

to the assertion of

necessary

cause.

Necessary

cause,

a notion drawn from

logic,

was

thereby

tied to

activity

in

the

phenomenal

realm:

metaphysics

was linked to

physics.

Leibniz believed that were it true that extension, figureand motion alone describereality

we would be left with a world that is

merely

random and less than real.

MV2,

he

believed,

speaks

to us of

a

latent or

potential

force

(vis mortua)

which transforms tself into

an active

one

(vis viva),

thus in a

vaguely Aristotelian sense when

responding

to forces

an

object

is

obeying

its own form or

idea

(Leibniz's

substantial

form').

The force

transformationfrom

latent to vis viva comes

from within.

Every object

follows its own idea or

nature,

but this

is done

in

harmony (thus

in

relation)

with

all other

objects.

This is what Leibniz

meant

by

the

principle

of sufficientreason

(Satz

des

zureichenden

Grund).

The

principle

of

sufficient

reason met with

the MV2

definition

of force

in

Leibniz's notion of substantial form. As

the

substance

of

reality

substantial

form

(as opposed

to the Cartesian inactive

'matter')

was

13 The vis

viva controversy, pitting

followers of Leibniz

against the

Newtonians and

Cartesians,has been

addressed

by a number of historians in

the recent

past.

Thomas

Hankins, 'Eighteenth

century attempts to resolve

the vis viva

controversy',

Isis, (1965),

56, pp. 281-97,

holds

that Leibniz wanted

a conservation

principle

to

keep

the world from

'winding

down';

Wilson

Scott, The

Conflict

between Atomism and

Conservation

Theory,

1644-1860, London, 1970,

p. 25,

sees the

controversy

as

part

of the

larger

'hard

body'

atom

debate;

Erwin

Hiebert, Historical Roots

of

the

Principle of the Conversation

of

Energy,Madison, 1962, traces the

notion of

energy

back to

Leibniz's vis

viva;

but Yehuda

Elkana,

The

Discovery of

the

Conversation

of Energy,

London,

1974, p. 27,

disagrees, seeing vis viva as

fore-runner of

Naturphilosophie's concept

of

force,

this in

spite

of

Helmholtz's

express use

of

the vis

viv4 F

=

MV2;

Richard

Westfall, Force in Newton's

Physics: The

Science of

Dynamics in

the Seventeenth

Century,

London, 1971, p.

322, sees Leibniz's vis viva as

the

breakthrough

into

dynamics but

arguesthat Leibniz was

never able to free himself from

the impactof

theory of force. It was Gerd

Buchdahl,Metaphysicsand the Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins,Descartes to Kant, Oxford, 1969,

pp.

417ff, who expanded

the inquiry into an

exploration of the

relationship

between Leibniz's

physics and

metaphysics.

14

Gottfried Wilhelm

Leibniz,Discourse on

Metaphysics

(tr.

Peter Lucas

and Leslie

Grint),

Manchester, [1686]

1953,

pp. 28-33; quoted

in

Pierre

Costabel, Leibnizand Dynamics: The Texts

of

1692

(tr.

R. E.

W.

Maddisen),

London, 1973, p.

49.

I

have leaned

heavily

on Gerd

Buchdahl,

op.

cit.

(13),discussion of

Leibniz's use of F

=

MV2

and the

principle of sufficient reason.



6/25

Darwin faces Kant

25

to

be seen as

dynamic,

an

entelechy, unfolding

its

predicates

from its

subject.

This

process

of

unfolding

presumably obeys

the

principle

of

sufficient

reason

(God

chooses the

best of

the possible) in the

realm of real

substance,

and

obeying

the

constraints

of MV2 in the

realm of observable

phenomena.15

Devoted

as

he

was to the

reductionist

programme,

du

Bois-Reymond

nevertheless

could

not

blind

himself

to the fact

of

organization.

He

could

do

no better than to

make its

presence

in

the world one of

his insoluble

world

riddles.

By

adopting

F =

MV2 Helmholtz

served

notice

of

his

intention to

halt his

reductionism

somewhere short

of the world-randomness du

Bois-Reymond

believed

it

necessary

to

confront.

In the

Erhaltung

Helmholtz

defined the

principle

of

sufficient

reason as

'

comprehensibility'

(Begrieflichkeit).

He then added a statement

not

calculated to

enhance

du Bois-Reymond's easy repose: comprehending nature, he said, is the goal of science.16

Helmholtz

went

further. He said that science's

goal

would be

achieved when

all

proximate causes

are traced back to

'ultimate invariable

causes

of

natural

phenomena'.

When,

that

is,

all

natural

processes

are traced back to

'such

causes,

in which nature is

completely

comprehensible'

we will know that all

changes

lie

inside the 'law

of

causal

necessity'.17

He

was

in

effect

announcing

his intent to

find

a

way

of

equating

the

principle

of

sufficientreason

with

necessary cause. In this he was

prepared o

go

furtherthan Leibniz,

for

whom

necessity

was

inextricably bound with

analytic logic

(the principle of

contradiction).

In

seeking a less

than heavenly source

for the application

of logical necessity

to the world beyond one's subjectivity, Helmholtz decided to look at how events present

themselves

to

the

human

cognition

system. He thought

he found the

answer in the

formulation:

'like

effects

imply like causes'. The

next step was to

formulate a theory of

the

unconscious

inference of

lawlikeness.

Developing

such a

theory took

Helmholtz into

path-breaking studies of

optics and

hearing,

e.g.

Handbook

of

Physiological Optics

(1856-66)

and The

Theory of the

Sensation

of Tone as Foundation

for the

Theory of

Music

(1863).

Muller's theory of

specific nerve

energies provided his

point

of

departure.

He

argued, for

example, that the colour red

is not

just

a physiological

event,

it is a

logical

event

also,

in

that it is a

sign of its

cause operating

from the

outside

(trans-subjective)

world.

But

where a

single sign merely

indicates the

existence of

something beyond

itself,

like

signs

do

more. In a

talk

of

1868 he said

that they

give us an

'image'

of

lawlikeness:

The nerve

excitations

n

our

brain

and the ideas

in

our

consciousness

an

be

images

of the

processes

f the

outer

world,

n

so far

as the former

hrough

heir

time

sequence opy

the time

sequence

f the

latter,[or]

in

so far as

they

describe

ikeness

of the

objects

hrough ikeness

of

signs,

and thus also lawful order

hrough

awfulorder. 8

15 Leibniz, op. cit. (14), pp. 28-33.

16 Hermann

von

Helmholtz,

'The

Conservation

of

Force' (1847), Selected Writings of

Hermann

von

Helmholtz (ed. Russell Kahl), Middletown, Conn., 1971, p. 6.

17 Helmholtz, op.

cit.

(16), p.

4. For a

more complete

account

of

Helmholtz,

see

my 'Hermann

von

Helmholtz:

The problem of Kantian influence', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, (1990), 21, pp. 41-55; and

R. Steven

Turner's

excellent

'Helmholtz, sensory physiology,

and the

disciplinary development

of

German

psychology', in The

Problematic

Science: Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought (ed.

William Woodward

and

Mitchell Ash), New York, 1982, pp. 147-66.

18 Hermann von Helmholtz, 'Die neuren Fortschritte

n der

Theorie

des Sehens'

(1868),

Vortrage

und

Reden,

Vol. I, Braunschweig, 1896, p. 319. 'Die Nervenerrungenin unserem Hirn und

die

Vorstellungen

in

unserem

Bewusstsein konnen Bilder der Vorgange in der Aussenwelt sein, insofern

ersteredurch

ihreZietfolge

die

Zeitfolge



7/25

26 S.

P. Fullinwider

In a talk of

1878, 'The Facts

in

Perception', he summarized and

expanded upon the

epistemology outlined in the earlier Handbook of Optics. He said that in the way just

described signs 'can form an image of the law of this

thing

which

is

happening'.

He

pictured

the

process by

which the human

cognitive system

comes to

experience

lawlikeness

in the following way: because of the

physiological

fact of

specific nerve energies a

particular

sensation that a nerve renders functions not as a mirror

image

but

as

a

sign

of

that which stimulated

the nerve. The

likeness of two or more

signs gives us an

'image', an

image not

of some thing

in

the world out there but of its

lawlikeness. The lawlikeness is

experienced at first as 'substantiality'. The

cognitive system

to this

point has registered a

'relationship which remains alike between

altering magnitudes'.

This

relationship

is

expressed as the experience of an enduring object beyond our subjectivity. Thus the

'object'

is lawlikeness:

'What we

perceive directly

is

only

this law.'

Up

to this

point

experience

is

still

private;

it has not achieved the dimension

of

intersubjectivity,

the

dimension Kant attributed to the

operation

of the

category necessary

cause.'9

In

the 1868 talk

cited

above, Helmholtz described wo

ways

of

achieving ntersubjectivity,

the first through measurement,20

he

second

through

what he called the

'unconscious

inference'. He

introduced the notion

of the

unconscious inference

in his

1863 work on

sound to

explain

the

appearance

of the

mind-body harmony

he

discovered

in

the ear's

reception of

musical

melody.

In a

talk of 1892

('Goethe's Anticipation of Subsequent

Scientific

Ideas')

he further

developed

the

arguments

he had made in

1863 and in various

places and

times since

(e.g.

the 1878 'Facts

in

Perception'),

at the same time

taking

the

opportunity

to make amends for an earlier attack on the

poet (1853,

'The

Scientific

Researches

of

Goethe').

Helmholtz had

long

liked to

speak

of the

'actual'

world

and

to

say

that

it

consists

of

energy

transformations.21

The

conservation of

energy,

he

said,

presumes

that all these

energy

transformations

are without

exception completely

lawful.

When

we become

aware

of

them, he

explained

in

1892,

it

is because

they

have come

to us as

sensory

events. But we

are not at

the

outset conscious

of their

lawlikeness because the

regular,

the

enduring,

is

clothed

in the

particular,

the accidental. Unless it clothes the lawlike

the

particular

will

spark momentaryconsciousness and be forgotten.22

As

sign the Helmholtzian sensation

pointed

to its cause. As

image

it

went

beyond that,

It implied

that

the cause

it

pointed

to

was (logically) necessary: like

effects (or sensations)

implying

like

causes

or

lawlikeness.

For

the

moment, though one

has already become

aware of

substantiality,

the

logical

inference of

lawlikeness will remain unconscious.

der letztern nachahmen, insofern sie Gleichheit der Zeichen, under daher auch gesetzliche Ordnung durch

gesetzliche Ordnung

darstellen'.

19 Hermann von Helmholtz, 'The facts in perception'

(1878),

in Hermann von

Helmholtz: Epistemological

Writings (ed. P. Hertz and M. Schlick, tr. M. Lowe),

Dordrecht, 1977, pp. 143,

139.

20 Hermann von Helmholtz, 'Recent progressin the theory of vision', Helmholtz on Perception (ed. R. and

R.

Warren), New York, 1968, p. 135.

21

Hermann von Helmholtz, 'Ueber der Erhaltungder Kraft' (1862/1863), op. cit. (18), 198, 226; 'Ueber die

Wechselwirkung der Naturkrafte und die derauf bezeuglichen

neuestenErmittelungender Physik' (1854), ibid.,

pp. 57, 75.

22

Hermann

von

Helmholtz, 'Goethe's Anticipation of Subsequent Scientific Ideas' (1892), op. cit. (16), p.

484ff.



8/25


Helmholtz illustrated the process by

which it

reaches consciousness by portraying the artist

at his canvas. The artist becomes aware of the lawlikeness as it appearsbefore him on his

canvas. It

is

the inspiration

of

harmony

and

universality,

which

if

it finds

its way into the

painting will have brought the lawlikeness into the public (intersubjective) ealm and at the

same time

will

have been made public by the projection of lawlikeness.

Helmholtz was striving to achieve a union between Newton and Goethe, Enlightenment

mechanism and

Romantic

form.

But the inner thrust of Helmholtz's theorizing was deliberately Kantian. In 1881 he

admitted to the

strong

Kantian influence on

his

1847

Erhaltung.23

Two

years before his

death he said that

'physiological investigations

of the

sense organs and

of

their activities

have at last produced results which agreein essential points ... with Kant

.24

Helmholtz had

consciously

tried

to capture

in

physiological events that

which was

valid

in

Kant's notions

of a

priori

forms

imposed upon experience by

the

cognitive

constitution.

Leibniz had long before suggested the principle

of

sufficient reason as a principle of

selection.

Out

of the

infinitude

of

logical possibilities

God selects

only

those

that will make

for an

orderly

world. Leibniz characterized the world of mere

possibility (which is prior

to the selection

process)

as one of

randomness;

sufficient

reason

brings organization.

Helmholtz's sensory physiology achieved much the same result. Those sensory events that

occur

randomly

are

forgotten,

those that

symbolize

order remain in

memory

to become

the

basis

for the unconscious inference. We

begin

with the

randomly

mechanistic and end

with

organized form.

For Muller matter in motion without more could not explain life forms. For Helmholtz

it could not without more

explain

the world of our

experience.

For du

Bois-Reymond

we

have

no

license

to entertain

any

other

principle than matter in motion. He then gained fame

by denying

the

possibility

of ever

explaining organization.

When he was

twenty-four

du

Bois-Reymond

wrote to a friend that 'Brucke

and

I

have

sworn to advance the truth

that

no

other force is

acting

in the

organism

than the

merely

physical-chemical.'25

He had not

changed

his mind

in

1848 when he

brought out

his

Investigations of

Animal

Electricity

and

devoted

the introduction to an

attack on vitalism.

Nor had he changedhis mind twenty-four years later when he announced that physiology

consists in the

'analysis

of the

processes

of

nature

into the mechanics

of

the atom

.26

But

his was a

dogmatism

rooted

in

humility.

Ever hostile towards

Kant

he refused

always

the

use of the

term

'things

in

themselves'

preferring

nstead

'things

as

they

are'. But it came

out the same:

things

as

they

are

are

unknowable.

Du

Bois-Reymond

was

a Kantian

despite

himself.

And he was

a

hesitant mechanist at best.

In his 1848 introduction he wrote

that 'matter'

and 'force' are

abstractions.

It

is

absurd,

he

said,

to think of

force as

pushing

matter into

motion,

'matter is not a

wagon

with force as horses

...

'27 Du

Bois-Reymond

believed that

scientists,

as

such, are limited to dealing with matter

in

motion. Scientists can aspire only

to

the

'astronomical

knowledge'

he

ascribed

to the

Laplacian

Geist.

The fact that such

knowledge

is

forever

beyond

our

grasp

was not the source

of

du

Bois-Reymond's humility

23

Helmholtz,

op.

cit.

(16), p.

49.

24

Helmholtz,

op.

cit.

(22), p. 495.

25

Quoted in Jones, op. cit.

(2), p. 45.

26

du

Bois-Reymond, op. cit.

(11), p.

55.

27 du

Bois-Reymond, op. cit. (12), p.

xliii.



9/25

28

S. P. Fullinwider

before nature.

In his

famous

1872 'On

the

Limits of the

Knowledge

of Nature'

he shocked

the scientific world by denying the Laplacian Geist access to things as they are.28

Du Bois-Reymond

contended that so

long

as science is satisfied

with

prediction

the

fiction of matter

in

motion

is a

supremely

workable one. In so far as we insist

upon

questioning

our basic

premises

we

fall foul

of

logic.

For

instance,

following

Helmholtz and

Kant we

must

adopt

the central forces

theory

of matter

(there

exist forces of attraction and

repulsion between material points), but logic baulks at the notion of

action at a distance.

Yet unless we adopt the central forces theory we have no

explanation for the atom's

impenetrability nor of the fact that it has effects.29

Thus, as du Bois-Reymond believed, the Laplacian world differential equation requires

that we

adopt

an

incomprehensible

fiction. What

hope

is there in our

crossing

the

divide

separating

us from

'things as they are'? None,

he

answered. 'Ignorabimus'

was his

plaintive

cry.

To make

matters even worse,

du

Bois-Reymond argued that neither we nor the

Laplacian

Geist are in the

position

of

ever solving the problem of

consciousness.

'Astronomical knowledge',

which he

limited to the fiction of matter in

motion, will some

day

describe the brain. But the lesson of the

Erhaltung

is

that motion can cause

only

motion, that

mechanical

cause is limited to mechanical effect. If, he said,

we follow Leibniz

and believe we are

dealing

with two substances

-

conscious mind and

unconscious

matter

-

we

have

no

explanation

other than his

miraculous

one

as to how the

two

find

themselves in harmony. Here again the Erhaltungsets absolute limits.30

From

time

to time du

Bois-Reymond

turned to Darwin

in

hopes

of

finding

in

natural

selection

some surcease

from

nature's

forbidding

riddles.

Along

with Helmholtz and

Briicke,

he had discovered Darwin's natural selection at an

early

date.

By

1869

Helmholtz

was

hailing

Darwin as a

major ally

in the

fight against

vitalism: the

'transmission of

individual

characteristics

from

parents

to

offspring'

as

evidenced

in

animal

breeding

revealed to Helmholtz

a

law

of

nature

according

to

which

'adaptation

in

the structure of

organisms'

takes

place 'blindly'

without the intervention

of

intelligence.31

In

1883, calling

Darwin the

'Copernicus

of the

organic world',

du

Bois-Reymond agreed

with his friend: because of Darwin we can now talk about the stages of organic evolution

in

terms of

'moving

matter'

(bewegte Materie);

natural

selection

gives

us

a

new kind

of

mechanics with which to deal with

organic appropriateness.32

ut du Bois-Reymond's

deep

scepticism stepped

in to

weaken

his confidence.

Addressing

the

riddle

of

organic

nature's

seeming pre-arrangedharmony

with the

inorganic

world and the

inability

of

the

Laplacian

'

astronomical

knowledge'

to deal with that

harmony,

du

Bois-Reymond

turned to his own

hope

that

the

theory

of

natural

selection

had introduced a 'new

kind

of mechanics' with

the

power

to settle the issue and

suggested

that

we

adopt

the

hope

as a

drowning

man

might grab

a

plank.33

But du

Bois-Reymond

saw the

possibility

of even further uses for natural selection.

In

28 du

Bois-Reymond,

op.

cit.

(11), pp.

54-76.

29 Ibid., pp. 61-2.

30 Ibid., pp.

65-73.

31

Hermann von Helmholtz,

'The aim and

progress of physical

science' (1869),

op.

cit.

(16), p. 237.

32

Emil

du Bois-Reymond,

'Darwin und

Copernicus: Ein Nachruf'

(1883), op.

cit. (11), p. 206.

33 Emil

du Bois-Reymond, 'Die

sieben Weltratsel'

(1880), in ibid., p.

169.



10/25

Darwin faces

Kant 29

a

talk of 1870 centred on

Leibniz,

he

suggested

that the

apparent

pre-established

mind-body harmonydemonstratedby Helmholtz's work on sound might be explained by

natural selection in such a

way

as to establish common

ground

between

what,

following

Helmholtz, he

was

pleased to call the

empiricists (time and

space

representations and the

categories of the

understanding are

acquired)

and the nativists

(for

whom

they

were

'inborn').

Specifically, he

ability

through

use of the

unconscious

inference to

complete

the

melodic effect of a musical

composition

where certain

overtones are

missing

would

be seen

as inborn but

only latent

in

the nervous

system

until a certain

maturation has taken

place.34

Thus, by

turning

to

Darwin,

du

Bois-Reymond

was

able,

at

least between

bouts of

scepticism, to bring

himself to

adopt Helmholtz's means of

carrying

forward the

Leibniz-Kant

tradition,

the notion of the

unconscious inference.

If

it can

be

said that he and

Helmholtz

merely toyed

with

natural

selection in their

ruminations

about its relevance for

their science it should

not be

thought

that

they

did

not

take Darwin

seriously.

Nor

should the fact that

they

tended to

take Darwin in

a

Lamarckian

way distract

us.

This

was,

after

all,

the

way

Darwin was taken

by

those

who

followed

in

their

footsteps,

men like

Sigmund

Exner and

Sigmund

Freud.35

The

difference

between the

generation of Helmholtz and the

generation

of

Exner and Freud in

the

way

they

approached Darwin was

not one of

esteem

but a reflection

of the fact

that the ideas

of

Helmholtz's

generation

were

formed before

the 1859

publication

of the Origin

of

Species.

Exner's and

Freud's deas

were

importantly

formed by the

notions set forth in

that

book.

We have

seen that du

Bois-Reymond

suggested

natural

selection as a

way

of

mediating

between

'nativism'

(the

Kant

tradition)

and

empiricism. His

lifelong friend

Ernest Wilhelm

von

Brucke took

up

the task

of

making that

mediation effective.

2

Brucke

passed most of his

professional life

at the

University

of

Vienna, a

significantpart

of it

devoted to

exploring

what

he

called

the

Young-Helmholtz

theory

of

colour

and what

he considered its consequences for the science of physiology.

He described

the

Young-Helmholtz

theory

of colour in

the

following way.

Until

the

turn-of-the-century

advent of

Thomas

Young's

theory

it was

generallybelieved

both that

the

nuances of colour

are caused

by

interference

between

rays

of

three

fundamental

colours

and that the

eye

has

receptors

for

every

nuance between

red and

violet.

Young

argued that,

on

the

contrary,

the

eye

has

receptors

that

show three colour

qualities

only: red,

green and

violet. He held

that the

mixing

of

colours is done

physiologically.

If,

for

example,

the

left

eye

is

exposed

to red

and the

right

to

green

the

person will

'see' gold.

This fact can

not

be

explained

by

the

interference

heory because no

interferencehas

occurred, nor have

any

34

du

Bois-Reymond, op. cit. (11),

pp.

40-2.

35 See Sulloway, op. cit.

(1); LucilleRitvo, 'Darwin

as the source of Freud's

neo-Lamarckianism',

Journal of

the

American

Psychoanalytic Association, (1965), 13,

pp. 499-517 and 'The impact

of Darwin on Freud',

PsychoanalyticQuarterly, (1973), 43,

pp. 177-92, for

assessments of the importance

and nature of Darwin's

influence on Freud,

especially as it

came to him through his friend

Wilhelm Fliess and his professor of

biology,

Carl

Claus.



11/25

30 S. P. Fullinwider

'gold receptors' been involved. The Young-Helmholtz theory,36 at least as Brucke

interpreted t, held that the red rays excited red and green receptors n the left eye rendering

a gold dominated by red,

that the

green rays excited green and red receptors n the right eye

rendering a gold dominated by green, so that the brain's unconscious processes pulled the

alike from each side, yielding pure gold.37

Brucke considered this pure gold

a

deception.

He had

spent

hours in his

laboratory

working

on

the

illusions

of the

senses, asking himself,

for

example, why parallel

lines

at

times

appear

to

diverge

and

why

at

times lines of

equal length

seem

unequal.38

He learned

to describe these sensory deceptions as unconscious processes,

in

fact the unconscious

inferences of Helmholtz.

But Brucke

carried

this

line of reasoning much

further than

did

his friend. In Brucke'shands the perception

of colour

and sound turned out to be the results

of the same processes that generatedthe illusions he had discovered. In a sense they were

illusions also.

As with Helmholtz and

du

Bois-Reymond,

Brucke's

starting point

was Muller's

specific

nerve energies, somewhat altered. Defining sight

as

the 'coming to consciousness

[Zumbewusstsein]

of the condition of excitation of the

N[ervus] opticus',

he noted that

all

optical

nerve conditions

of

sensation,

whether

the

pressure

of one's

finger

on the

sclera,

a sudden

cough

in

the

darkness,

or

perhaps

an

electrical

shock

deliveredto

the

retina,

come

to consciousness as light.

He noted

further

that should the

stimulus originate

from

the

'central organ' because of fever

or

mental

illness the

result

is called an hallucination.

Brucke described experimentsof his own and of Helmholtz wherein colours were made

to

seem

other than

they were,

and

experiments

in which the same

degree

of

brightness

was

at different times

judged bright

and

dark.

He

pointed

out

deceptions involving judgments

of

time

and

space

and motion.

In

his

hands the

distinction between valid and invalid

perception

dissolved. Valid or

invalid,

the

experienced

sensation

was

to be seen

as a

construct of

the

cognitive

constitution. 'The

brain',

he

wrote

in an

anticipation

of Gestalt

psychology,

'undertakes

to

complete

the

inadequacy

of the immediate

sense

perception

39

Brucke appropriated

Helmholtz's

unconscious inference to

explain

his results. But he

broadened and

also

adulterated

he

theory.

In

Helmholtz's

hands the


involved the

projection

of a

very

real lawlikeness. Bruckebroadened

it

to the

projection

of

all

the details

of

perception,

for

example

to the

perception

of

gold.

Helmholtz's

unconscious

inference turned

on

the

logic

that like effects

imply

like

causes.

Brucke

altered

the logic

to the identification

and

abstracting-out

of

alikeness;

in

short to the

process

of

generalization.

Thus the

'N.

opticus' separates

out

the

gold response

in

the

left

eye

of

the

above

example,

adds that to

the

gold responses

in the

right eye.

The

gold

alikeness

dominates

and

in

so

doing

inhibits the red

and the

green,

and because of the

domination

and the inhibition the

gold

rises to consciousness.

36 Paul Sherman,

Colour Vision

in the Nineteenth Century:

The Young-Helmholtz-Maxwell Theory,

Bristol,

1981,

p.

90, holds that Helmholtz's

rejection of the

equivalence

of mixing light with

mixing colours was a

revolutionin the areaof colour theory on a par with the rejectionof the fixed earththeory in astronomy.Sherman,

who points out that

Helmholtz found five

fundamental

colours,does not discuss

Helmholtz'sphysiological

theory

regarding

colour reception.

37 Ernst Brucke,

Vorlesungenueber

Physiologie,

Vol. II, Vienna, 1885, pp.

167-71.

38 Ibid., p. 156.

39 Ibid., pp. 155-6, 224. 'Das

Gehirn ubernimmt

es, das, was

an dem unmittelbaren

Sinneseindruckmangelhaft

ist, zu

erganzen.'



12/25


Here,

at least in

rudimentary form,

were the

notions

of

inhibition and

facilitation

working

in harness

to

form

at least

a quasi-logical (and unconscious) inference.

We build

our own

worlds,

but we

do it

unconsciously:

'We

draw

unconscious

inferences

from all our possible

impressions and the whole world of our

representations organizes

itself out of such inferences.'40And as Brucke drew

sensory impressions

into the

domain

of the

unconscious

inference

he

blurred the distinction Helmholtz had made between

the

(private)experience of

substantiality and the (public) experience of lawlikeness in the form

of

harmony

and

wholeness.

Helmholtz

had

transformed

Kant's

category

of

causality

from a

transcendentalform of

the

understanding into a physiological process by which

the

world's real

lawlikeness

reveals itself through the unconscious inference. In Brucke's

hands the unconscious

inference became a series of self-deceptions that together form the totality of an

individual's

experience

and that at the same time lost the

ingredient

of

necessity (necessary

cause) which to Kant and Helmholtz had made for

trans-subjective

or

public experience.

It

was left to Sigmund Exner to attempt to rescue experience from

the idiosyncratic and

get

it

safely

back into the

public

domain.

How is it that

two

people

share the same

experience

of a

thing

in

roughly

the

same

way?

We are

brought

back to the

problem

Leibniz tried to solve with his notion of

pre-establishedharmony.

Exner

turned

to

Darwin.

In 1891

Sigmund Exner von Ewarten (1846-1926)

succeeded

Ernst

Brucke as the

University

of

Vienna's professor of physiology,

the station

in life that

representedSigmund

Freud's loftiest dreams. Exner had risen under Brucke's sheltering wing. Brucke sent him

as

an undergraduate to

study

under Helmholtz. After

graduation

Brucke made him

a

lecturer and an assistant in

his

laboratory.

Exner followed Brucke

(and Helmholtz)

in

making

the

physiology

of the senses his

specialty.

In

quick

succession he wrote treatises

on

the

regeneration

of

the

retina,

the effects of excitation on the

optic nerves,

the influence

of

fatigue

on the

retina,

and

finally

in

1891

a

study

of faceted

eyes.

Meanwhile

he

became a

master of the

subject

of cerebral

localization,

an area

opened

in

1869

by Hitzig

and

Fritsch

in Berlin.

In

1879 he wrote a classic chapter on the subject of

Ludimar Hermann's

Handbuch der

Physiologie,

and

followed

in 1891

with a

treatise,

Untersuchungen

ueber die

Localisation der Functionen in der Grosshirnrinde des Menschen.

This interest and

expertise brought

him into the

sphere

of the

University's

world-renowned

psychiatrist

and

brain-anatomist Theodor

Meynert.

In

attaching

himself to

Brucke

and

Meynert

he

made

the same career

choices

as Freud. Besides

working

side

by

side with Exner in

Bruicke's

laboratory,

Freud took three

university

courses

from

Exner.

In 1894

Exner

published

his

major

theoretical

work,

Outline to a

Physiological

Explanation of Psychical

Phenomena.

A

year

later

Freud wrote

but

did not

publish

his

'Project

for a Scientific

Psychology'.

Exner's work has been

forgotten

by history;

Freud's

has become famous. Both works set out to do the same

thing,

and

it

has not

gone

unnoticed

that the two share

many assumptions

and

many

conclusions.4'

In effect Exner's Outline was an attempt to complete Brucke'swork on the physiology

of

the senses.

He

built on Muller's

specific

nerve

energy

theory

and on Helmholtz's

40

Ibid., p.

226.

'Wir gehen eben unbewusste

Schlusse aus allen Sinneseindrucken,

aus welchen sie gezogen

werden konnen, and die ganz Welt unserer Vorstellungen

setz sich

aus solchen Schlussen

zusammen.'

41 Amacher, op.

cit. (2).



13/25

32

S. P.

Fullinwider

unconscious

inference

theory,

both as modified

by

Brucke.

And he

used Darwin to

solve

the problem we have seen set

forth

by

du

Bois-Reymond,

that of

pre-established

harmony.

In his

notion of

primary

and

secondary

sensations Exner

thought

he

had

discovered

the

key to the

workings of the

unconscious

inference.

As

he described

t, the primary

sensation

is

the sensation

while it is still

unconscious. The

sensory nerve,

he said, ends

in a

subcortical

ganglion;

it is

there,

at

a

point

short of

the

'organ

of

consciousness',

that

the

primary

sensation

findsits

unconscious expression.

The unconscious

process that

generates

the

experienced (or

'secondary')

sensation takes place

between the

subcortical centre

and

that

organ of

consciousness, the

cortex.

Exner took his

secondary

sensation to be an

unconscious

inference, but

followed Brucke

in

his description

of the

logic involved. In

the unconscious

inferencethe alike

aspects of the

primarysensations arerecognized and mademanifest as secondary sensations. This is done

by

the

physiological processes

of

facilitation

of the

alike and inhibition of

the

disparate.

The facilitation

follows from

the

addition of

the alike

excitations. The

inhibition is

then

the

negative of that

same

process.

Exner

called the

primary sensations

premises of

the

logical

inferences. He

called this

process analytic

logic, a logic

in which the

conclusion is

embodied

in the

premise.42

Exner's

description

of

the unconscious

inference of

space

followed

Brucke's and

left no

doubt that it was to

be considered a

learned

response.

Brucke

found from

stereoscopic

evidence that under

normal conditions

each

eye records a flat

image.

Here the

process

of

abstractingout alikeness would not account for the experienceof depth and distance we

have when

both

eyes are trained on an

object, so

Brucke,

following

Helmholtz,

turned for

help

to the

shifting

tensions of

the

eye

muscles.43 n

so

doing

both

men

skated

on

thin ice

over

empiricist

waters. But the

long arm of Kant

reached out across

the

years

and

pulled

their

disciple

Exner

back to

safety.

The


is

learned,

but he found

the

tendency to

make that inference to

be innate. It is

innate

because

it

is a

transmitted

characteristic

acquired

in the

struggle

for existence.

Perhaps

unwittingly,

Exner

grabbed

the plank du

Bois-Reymond said

might save

a

drowning

man.

As two

instances of the

working

of the transmission of

acquired

characteristics

Exner

pointed

to the

disposition

to form

connections between

certain ideas

and

certain

feelings.

Fear of wild animals

was an

example he liked. He

pointed also to the

disposition to infer

a

relation of

necessity

between cause and effect

(particularly

when

wild animals

are

about)

or,

as

he

put it,

the

'firmness'

(Festigkeit)

of the

association

between

change

and

changer.

That

firmness,

he

argued,

can not

have been

grounded

in the

experience

of the

individual.44

Referring

to that

which has been

found to be useful

in the

struggle

for existence

he said:

I

see no

obstacleagainst

he assumption

hatthe

association

etween he sensation

f changeand

its

cause

rests

on essentially he

same

conditions. t is thus

understandablehat the

described

relationshipsf cortical

paths n the

animal

kingdomwhichhave

provenuseful

goingback

o the

struggle

or

existence

pass over

into

inherited

orticalnervous

ystem

tructure.45

42 SigmundExner,Entwurf zu einerphysiologischenErklarungderpsychischenErscheinungen,Vienna, 1894,

p. 322.

43

Brucke, op. cit.

(37),

pp.

225-6. 44

Exner, op.

cit.

(42), pp. 334-5,

367.

45 Ibid., p. 368. 'Ich

sehe kein

Hinherniss fur die

Annahme,das

auch beim

Menschen

die Association

swischen

der

Empfindungder

Veranderung

und deren

Ursache auf

wissentlich

denzelben

Verhaltnissen

beruht:

es

wird so

erklarlich,dass die

geschilderten

Verwandtschaftender

Rinderbahnen,da sie

bis

in

das

Thierreich

zurriickgreifen,

sich

auch im

Kampfeums

Dassien stets als

nutzlich

erwiesen

haben...'



14/25

Darwin faces

Kant

33

Thus, he said,

'the law

of causality as

an a

priori law of thought' is a probable fact

of

our cognitive

constitution,

not as an

impulsion

to an association

but

as an 'inborn

inclination

46

Thus was

Darwin used

in

the

effort to save

Kant for physiology.47

3

To this point my

aim has been to

suggest

that in German

physiological

thought

the

Kantian

tradition was

made to survive

with the help

of

what

was

considered to be Darwin's

theory

of evolution.

It remains

to show that

the Kantian tradition

in its turn shaped

Darwinian

evolution

as it was received by

German physiology

and

to indicate where this process

may

have influencedSigmundFreud.

Kant held

that each

person's

experience

is structured by

his cognitive constitution.

He

held

that the

cognitive

constitution

imposes the

intuitions of

time and

space and the

categories of the

understanding,

most centrally

necessary cause,

to make experience

possible.

Natural selection imposed

something

like the following

difficulty

for

Kant's

successors:

if

the

world

as we

experience

it is

shaped

by

the

cognitive

constitution

is it

this

experienced

world

that

is the selecting agent

?

This is the issue of conflation

raised in

its

biological

form.

Is the lawlikeness

envisioned

by

evolutionary

theory

the same as

that

imposed

by

the

cognitive

constitution

to make

experiencepossible?

A second strand of

the

Kantian

tradition, originating

with Arthur

Schopenhauer,

supplied

the answer.

In On

the

Fourfold

Roots

of

the Principleof SufficientReason (1813), and again in The

World

as Will

and Idea

(1819),

Schopenhauer

argued

that Kant's transcendental

category

of

necessary

cause, placed

where

it

belongs

in the

sensibility,

embodies the

principle

of

sufficient

reason..48

Leibniz

believed

the hand

of God

guided

by

the

principle

of

sufficient

reason

was the

selecting

agency.

Pre-established

harmony

kept

the

individual's

representations

n

correspondence

with the external

events

thus selected.

Kant's

subsequent

location

of

sufficient

reason

in the transcendentalcategory

of

necessary

cause

again

raised

the problem

that

du

Bois-Reymond

called

the miracle

of

pre-established

harmony

but

which

is better

defined

as the

question

of conflation:

is transcendental

lawlikeness

conflatedwith the lawlikeness sciencepresupposesin nature

?49

Schopenhauerrestructured

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 C. D. Broad, Leibniz:

An Introduction (ed. C.

Lewy), London, 1975,

pp.

10-12.

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'suse 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 FourfoldRoots

of the Principleof

Sufficient

Reason (tr. E. F. J.Payne),LaSalle,

Ill.: [1813,

2nd rev. edn

1847], 1974. 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 Uber

eine Entdeckung,

nach der alle neue

Kritik der reinen Vernuft

durch eine altere entberlich

gemacht

werden soll

(1790), 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

P. M. Heimann,

'Helmholtz and

Kant: The Metaphysical

Foundations

of Ueber

die

Erhaltung

der

Kraft',

Studies

in

History and Philosophy

of Science, (1974), 5,

pp. 221-3,

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

2

BHS 24



15/25

34 S. P.

Fullinwider

the situation

by holding

that the cognitive

apparatus

(operatingaccording

to transcendental

forms and categoriesof the sensibility)translatesthe Will's blind strivingsinto the several

levels

of organization, from

the

relatively low level

of organizationof

matter to

the higher

levels

of organic forms.

In his Metaphysical

Foundations of

Natural Science (1786),

Kant introduced

his central

forces

theory that Schopenhauer

was to

adopt: a central

force

of

attraction acting

in a

straight

line between

two points

of matter holds

them together (otherwise

all material

points

would

be

randomly

distributed

throughout

the universe);but

to

keep

all

points

of

matter from being

drawn together

into

a single point

an

opposing

force

of

repulsion

(also

acting

in a straight line between

points)

is

to

be

presumed.

Repulsion

accounts

for

the

extension and impenetrability of matter. Schopenhauer argued that central forces

constitute a first step

in the Will's

'blind

striving'. 5

Though

Kant

was furnishing grounds

for the apparent

stability

of the material

world

Schopenhauer

believed

the

central

forces

to be

entirely

unstable:

just as

the Will

is

constantly struggling

for

organization

through

self-objectification

there

is the

equally powerful

tendency

towards disorganization.5'

The

blind

striving Schopenhauer

envisioned

was not unlike the unlimited

variations

Darwin

described as the

stage preliminary

to

natural selection.

Nature selects

from the

near-infinity of possibilities

the variations

provide.52

Nor

are the

blind

strivings

and the

variations

of those respective

theories

very different

from

the

realm

of infinite

possibility

Leibniz

describedas

the range of

potential events

from which the

divine selectsout worldly

order.

In

fact,

Leibniz's

principle

of sufficient

reason had

approximately

the same selecting

function as

Darwin's

principle

of natural selection.

In

Schopenhauer's

hands sufficient

reason

provided

the logic by

which the

Will is

objectified.

The Will's blind

strivings

are

outside human experience.

They

become manifest

in

objective

form

only

because

the

cognitive

constitution imposes

time, space,

and necessary cause;

that

is,

organization.

These

a

priori

forms and categories

taken

together

can

be

described

as sufficient

reason

because

their

objects

are

necessarily

what

they

are. No other

objects

are thinkable,

for the

reason

that the

existent

objects

are the

objects

of

thought.

Schopenhauer

held that the

Will

(the

thing

in

itself)

finds various levels of

objectification,

from the lowest (e.g. chemical and physical laws and forces) to higher (e.g. life forces and

laws).

These several levels

are so

to

speak

in

perpetual

struggle

with each

other,

the

higher

expending

its

energies

battling

the

lower

only, finally,

to succumb to the

lower and fall

to

it

in

death:

The permanent

mattermust constantly

hange

ts

form;

for under he

guidance

of

causality,

mechanical, hysical,

chemical,

and

organic

phenomena,

agerly

triving

o

appear,

wrest the

matter romeach other,and each

desires o

reveal ts own idea.53

in

Kant's

Philosophy

of Science', Synthese,

(1971),

23,

pp. 24-6, and

'The Kantian

Dynamic

of

Reason,

with

SpecialReference to the Placeof Causalityin Kant'sSystem', Kant Studies Today (ed. LewisBeck), LaSalle,Ill.,

1969, p.

355) and

P. F. Strawson,

The Bounds

of Sense:

An Essay

on Kant's Critique of PureReason,

London,

1966.

50 Arthur

Schopenhauer,

The

World as Will

and Idea,

Vol. I (tr. R. B. Haldane

and J. Kemp), London,

1883,

p. 195.

51

Ibid., kpp.

190-2.

52

Ernst Mayr,

The Growth of Biological Thought,

Cambridge,Mass., 1982, pp.

681ff.

53 Schopenhauer,

op.

cit.

(50),

p.

191.



16/25

Darwin faces

Kant

35

Thus,

nature is

in

continuous

strife,

with every

form of

life

and each level

of

organization

preying

on the others.54

We

might

say,

in

anticipation,

that in

Schopenhauer's

thought

nature

is in

pursuit

of

its own goals.

Schopenhauer's

notion

of struggle

did

not,

however, lead

him

beyond

the idea

of

struggle

for existence

to that of the

evolution of species.

He described species

as the

objectified

forms through

which the Will advances

on its way

towards

self-knowledge.

Individuals come

into existence

and

die,

leaving

their corpses

behind in lower

levels of

organization,

but species

are eternal: the individual struggles

that they may

remain

that

way.55

On

its

positive

side,

as Schopenhauer

defined it, the struggle

for existence is a

struggle

to preserve

the species;

on its negative

side it is

a

battle

against decay.

This

definition

became importantto Germanphysiology when the pathologicalanatomist CarlRokitansky

succumbed

to

Schopenhauer's

philosophy.

Rokitansky

(1804-79),56

founder

of the

Second

Vienna

Medical School, president

of

Vienna's Academy

of

Sciences

(1869-78),

and the

first

freely

elected

president

of

the

University of

Vienna (1852-53),

developed

Schopenhauer'sphilosophy

and its

implications

in

talks

in

1867 and 1869

to the Academy

of Sciences.

In

the

first, 'The

Independent

Value

of Knowledge',

he

suggested

that had

Kant followed

through

with his own

arguments

he

would

have arrived

at Schopenhauer's epistemology.

Our

experience,

he

said,

is

the

consequence of the projection

of subjective

representations,

... die

Verlegung

der

Dinge in

der Raum, demgemass wir sie ausser Dinge vorstellen'.

7

In his 1869 'Solidarity

of

All Animal

Life'

Rokitansky

tackled

the

struggle

for existence

and

developed

a

Kant-Schopenhauer

stand-in

for social Darwinism.

He

presented

his

notion

of

'protoplasmic

hunger'

as

the

physiological

embodiment

of

Schopenhauer's

notion

of the

struggle

between different stages

of the

will.

Rokitansky

found the tendency

in all

'organized

matter' (organic)

to

decay

back into

the

unorganized.

The will

to resist

decay

is

expressed

as

hunger, 'protoplasmic

hunger'.

The

actual

struggle against

decay

is

expressed

as the

aggression

that

is

at

the

core

of the

struggle

for existence.

All

animal

activity

is

aggression

because it

is

rooted

in resistance

to

decay.58

The

next

logical

step,

that of

putting

Rokitansky's

two notions

together

to

make

the

projection

of Kant's transcendental

orms

an act of

aggression

in

the

struggle

for

existence

was

undertaken

by

Rokitansky's disciple

Theodor

Meynert

(1833-92).

Following

Meynert's

1865 Structure

and Function

of

the Brain and

Spinal

Cord

with

Regard

to

Diseases

of

these

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