The “locality assumption”: Lessons from history and neuroscience?

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan K. Foster
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Cognitive Neuropsychology ◽  
Target Article ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

This commentary seeks to place Farah's (1994) arguments in the historical context of ideas about mind-brain relationships. It further seeks to draw a conceptual parallel between the issues considered by Farah in her target article and questions which have concerned neuroscientists since the nineteenth century regarding the functional organization of the brain. Specific reference is made to the relationship between use of the concept of “locality” in cognitive neuropsychology and use of the concept of “localization” in neuroscience.

Narratives of Buddhist legislation: Textual authority and legal heterodoxy in seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burma

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Christian Lammerts
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Legal Ideology ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Textual Authority ◽  
The Status ◽  
Written Law ◽  
Asian History ◽  
The Relationship

For more than a century scholars of central and western mainland Southeast Asia have sought to characterise the status ofdhammasattha— the predominant genre of written law from the region before colonialism — and define its authority vis-à-vis Pali Buddhism. For some,dhammasatthatexts represent a predominantly ‘secular’ or ‘customary’ tradition, while for others they are seen as largely commensurate with, if not directly derived from, the religio-political ideas of a cosmopolitan and purportedly canonical ‘Theravāda’. However, scholarship has yet to investigate the way that regional authors during the late premodern period themselves understood the character and legitimacy of written law. The present article examines seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burmese narratives concerning the genealogy and status ofdhammasatthato advance a pluralist conception of the relationship between law and religion in Southeast Asian history. This analysis addresses a historical context where ideas concerning Buddhist textual authority were in the process of development, and where there were multiple and competing discourses of legal ideology in play. For elite monastic critics closely connected with royalty,dhammasatthastood in problematic relation to authoritative taxonomies of scripture, and its jurisprudence was seen to contradict authorised accounts of the origin and nature of Buddhist law; the genre thus required reform to be brought into alignment with what were construed as orthodox legal imaginaries. The principal hermeneutic move these monastic commentators performed to achieve this involved redescribingdhammasatthain light of such accounts as a variety of Buddhist royal legislation and written law as the prerogative of the Buddhist state.

scholarly journals Migration, Occupational Identity, and Societal Openness in Nineteenth-Century Belgium

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (S13) ◽  
pp. 179-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Van de Putte ◽  
Michel Oris ◽  
Muriel Neven ◽  
Koen Matthijs
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Partner Selection ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Occupational Identity ◽  
Social Origin ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sectoral Composition ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Selection Of

This article examines social heterogamy as an indicator of “societal openness”, by which is meant the extent to which social origin, as defined by the social position of one's parents, is used as the main criterion for selection of a marriage partner. We focus on two topics. The role first of migration and then of occupational identity in this selection of a partner according to social origin. And in order to evaluate the true social and economic context in which spouses lived, we do not use a nationwide sample but rather choose to examine marriage certificates from eleven cities and villages in Belgium, both Flemish and Walloon, during the nineteenth century. By observing different patterns of homogamy according to social origin we show in this article that partner selection was affected by the relationship between migration, occupational identity and class structure. It seems difficult to interpret all these divergent patterns in terms of modernization. In our opinion the historical context creates a complicated set of conditions reflected in differences in the type and strength of migration and in the sectoral composition and evolution of the local economy. The whole exerts an influence over partner selection.

scholarly journals Unconventional Views of Racial Brains in the 19th Century

Nuncius ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 602-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Pogliano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Over Time

Abstract In this article two protagonists of nineteenth-century anthropological culture, Samuel George Morton and Paul Broca, are presented as the embodiment of mainstream stances on the relationship between brain and race. More or less close to their successful raciological tenets, a host of other names might be recalled. However, the main purpose here is to point out some ‘deviant’ opinions that challenged the scientific common sense of an epoch, starting with the nigrophilie expressed by the abbé Grégoire early in the century, to then discuss the cautious ‘egalitarianism’ professed by James Cowles Prichard and William Hamilton or the more explicit view sustained, over time, by Friedrich Tiedemann and Luigi Calori. Their focus was the influence of the brain – its shape, volume, and weight – on intellectual and moral manifestations: a tormented issue that for decades was addressed in different ways and with outcomes that always proved inconclusive.

All in the Brain?

Neuro ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas Rose ◽  
Joelle M. Abi-Rached
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Clinical Work ◽  
Psychiatric Classification ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
The Way

This chapter focuses on the question of diagnosis of psychiatric disorders and examines the relationship between neuroscience and psychiatry from this perspective. Despite the penetrating gaze of neuroscience, which has opened up the brain to vision in so many ways, psychiatric classification remains superficial. This neuromolecular vision seems incapable of grounding the clinical work of psychiatry in the way that has become routine in other areas of medicine. Despite the conviction of most practitioners that they deal with conditions that have a corporeal seat in the brain of the afflicted individual, psychiatry has failed to establish the bridge that, from the nineteenth century on, underpinned the epistemology of modern clinical medicine—the capacity to link the troubles of the troubled and troubling individuals who are its subjects with the vital anomalies that underpin them.

scholarly journals Brains, genes, and language evolution: A new synthesis

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 537-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten H. Christiansen ◽  
Nick Chater
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Target Article ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Close Fit

AbstractOur target article argued that a genetically specified Universal Grammar (UG), capturing arbitrary properties of languages, is not tenable on evolutionary grounds, and that the close fit between language and language learners arises because language is shaped by the brain, rather than the reverse. Few commentaries defend a genetically specified UG. Some commentators argue that we underestimate the importance of processes of cultural transmission; some propose additional cognitive and brain mechanisms that may constrain language and perhaps differentiate humans from nonhuman primates; and others argue that we overstate or understate the case against co-evolution of language genes. In engaging with these issues, we suggest that a new synthesis concerning the relationship between brains, genes, and language may be emerging.

A sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North China

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-244
Author(s):  
South W. Coblin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Text ◽  
North China ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The Chinese dialogues in the Qīngwén qĭméng, a Manchu textbook for Chinese readers, provide an extended sample of spoken northern Guānhuà from the mid-eighteenth century. And one version of this text, to be examined here, adds Manchu transcriptional forms for the Chinese text. In the present paper certain phonological, lexical and syntactic features of the form of Chinese underlying the text are examined with specific reference to the development of northern Guānhuà as a koine and to the relationship of this koine to its more prestigious counterpart, the southern Guānhuà of the Nanking area. The paper ends with some thoughts about the route followed by northern Guānhuà as it became the dominant koiné variety during the nineteenth century.

The Relationship of Electroencephalography to Psychiatry

1945 ◽  
Vol 91 (384) ◽  
pp. 281-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Hill
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Manic Depression ◽  
Comprehensive Knowledge ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Clinical Problems

The technique of electroencephalography has become to neurophysiology what the microscope is to histology. It is probable that by this technique neurophysiologists will achieve a comprehensive knowledge of the functional organization of the brain. While the EEG has been used most successfully for this type of research, it has also been applied with no less enthusiasm to clinical problems of neurology and psychiatry. In certain cerebral disorders, for example epilepsy, where knowledge had already made considerable advance, the EEG technique was immediately found to have application. But in what may be called “the problems of function” provided by the main psychiatric reactions of schizophrenia and manic-depression, and in relation to individual differences of temperament, intelligence and personality, in all these the EEG has so far proved of little value.

scholarly journals Notes For Supporting An Epistemological Neuropsychology: Contributions From Three Perspectives

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Mauricio Barrera Valencia ◽  
Liliana Calderón Delgado
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cognitive Neuropsychology ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Dual Status ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Epistemological Basis

A review of the epistemological basis of neuropsychology is done in order to clarify its foundations and its dual status as a discipline rooted in biology and psychology. This work is justified from two fundamental issues that are faced by neuropsychology: from an external perspective based on the upswing of certain disciplines, which by definition seem to have similar subjects of study to neuropsychology; however, given the complexity of the study of the relationship between the behavior and the brain, it leads to a duplicity of efforts that do not add anything to the understanding of the subject matter. On the other hand, from an internal perspective, the main issue appears when diverse theoretical positions are presented within neuropsychology as schools that must stand as if they were the only perspective. To provide a tentative answer, this paper reviews three theoretical approaches within neuropsychology: Russian reflexology and the cultural-historical perspective, connectionism, and cognitive neuropsychology. The conclusion leads towards a set of principles that, as a proposal, should guide the discipline development.

scholarly journals The Limits of Orthodoxy in a Secular Age: The Strange Case of Marie Corelli

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Knight
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Marie Corelli ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
The Relationship

Mark Knight, “The Limits of Orthodoxy in a Secular Age: The Strange Case of Marie Corelli” (pp. 379–398) This essay explores the eclectic spirituality of the late-nineteenth-writer Marie Corelli, with specific reference to her fiction. I look to her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds (1886), as a case study with which to explore the relationship between Christian orthodoxy and heterodoxy in a secular age. In doing so, I draw on recent theoretical contributions to our understanding of the sacred and the secular in the late nineteenth century, and I question the tendency of many critics to presume that Corelli’s interest in spirituality has little or nothing to do with Christianity. Corelli wrote that her “creed has its foundation in Christ alone,” and although there are good reasons for investigating that claim more closely, these investigations do not have to result in a secular reading and/or an interpretation that breaks from Christianity. By situating Corelli’s fiction within the Christian tradition, I show how she helps us rethink the way in which we draw and redraw the boundaries of religious belief at the fin de siècle.

scholarly journals Phrenology and Autodiegetic Narration in Jane Eyre

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelby Elizabeth Haber
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Psychological Studies

This paper examines how Charlotte Brontë's belief in phrenology influences the narration of her novel Jane Eyre. Phrenology was a nineteenth-century belief that the shape of the skull could give information about a person's temperament. Phrenologists speculated that the brain was split into separate parts, or faculties, that defined the individual's ability to feel a particular emotion. A bump on the skull implied that the faculty underneath that part of the skull was bigger, so the individual was more inclined to feel that emotion. By placing Jane Eyre within the historical context of the rise of phrenology, I explore the ways in which Brontë's phrenological representation of Jane's mind informs and parallels the autodiegetic narration of Jane Eyre. My analysis focuses on moments when Jane draws attention to the fact that she is a first-person narrator telling the story of her own past experiences. I argue that these moments are comparable to those when Jane’s experiencing-self is fractured into phrenological faculties. Concomitantly, I seek to trace how Jane's narration changes as she moves between the locations of Thornfield, the Moor House, and Ferndean. I suggest that the shifts in narration draw attention to these locations as metaphors for varying degrees of restriction on Jane's faculties. Through an application of nineteenth-century psychological studies, I conclude that Brontë uses her narration style to criticize phrenologists who promote an unnaturally restrictive control of the faculties.

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