Conceptual Mediation: Philosophy between the History of Physiology and Contemporary Neuroscience
2013; Routledge; Volume: 40; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01916599.2013.826432
ISSN1873-541X
Autores Tópico(s)Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies
ResumoSummaryIn the 1780s the anatomist Vincenzo Malacarne discussed the possibility of testing experimentally whether experience can induce significant changes in the brain. Malacarne imagined taking two littermate animals and giving intensive training to one while the other received none, then dissecting their brains to see whether the trained animal had more folds in the cerebellum than the untrained one. This experimental design somewhat anticipated one used 180 years later by Mark R. Rosenzweig at the University of California, Berkeley. This paper explores some methodological aspects of the case study just outlined by pointing out that our grounds for being interested in it are neither merely neuroscientific (for, strictly speaking, Malacarne's proposal was false) nor narrowly historical (for there is no causal chain linking Malacarne's ideas to Rosenzweig's experiment). Rather, the really interesting point here is to what extent Malacarne's ideas are similar to Rosenzweig's, a point that we can better investigate by employing certain conceptual tools borrowed typically (but not exclusively) from (a certain kind of) philosophy. If we do not handle the analogy with care, we run the risk of ‘discovering’ nothing but void platitudes or anachronistically misleading common features.Keywords: Conceptual mediationhistory of physiologyneurosciencephilosophy AcknowledgementsI wish to thank Piergiorgio Strata for introducing me to the Malacarne-Rosenzweig case, and Enrico Pasini for stimulating me to reflect on these issues. Thanks also to Manuela Albertone, Pietro Adamo, and Enrico Pasini for commenting on an earlier version of this paper at the 2012 GISI Methodological Conference in Turin.Notes1 Compare Paolo Tripodi, Dimenticare Wittgenstein. Una vicenda della filosofia analitica (Bologna, 2009).2 Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne (1744–1816) studied surgery and anatomy in Turin, where he was the student of Ambrogio Bertrandi. After having travelled the Po Valley investigating the phenomenon of ‘cretinism’, he worked as a surgeon and professor of surgery, first in Acqui Terme (where he also had the job of directing the hospital), then in Turin and finally in Pavia. In 1776 he published the Nuova esposizione della vera struttura del cervelletto umano, a work that he considered to be his most important contribution to anatomy, though he only obtained his first real success in 1780, with the debut in three volumes of Encefalotomia nuova universale; finally, Malacarne was admitted to various European academies and scientific societies, and personally met and had epistolary exchanges with the most important scholars of the time. The main sources on Malacarne relate to filial love. The eldest son, Claro Giuseppe, compiled his father's scientific bibliography, and published it in the Catalogo delle opere stampate e de’ discorsi accademici inediti di Vincenzo Malacarne compilato dal di lui figlio Claro-Giuseppe Malacarne (Brescia, 1811). The second born, Gaetano, was his father's biographer, who left behind the Memorie storiche intorno alla vita ed alle opere di Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne da Saluzzo anatomico e chirurgo raccolte da suo figlio Vincenzo Gaetano da Aqui medico e chirurgo (Padua, 1819).3 Mark Richard Rosenzweig (1922–2009), an American neurophysiologist and professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, was a pioneer in the study of neuroplasticity. At the end of the 1950s, the team lead by Rosenzweig gave new impetus to research on learning and memory by demonstrating that, in response to experience, considerable chemical and anatomical changes take place in the brain of an adult animal, which up until that point was considered to be completely developed and equipped with a non-modifiable structure.4 Compare Roberto Casati, Prima lezione di filosofia (Bari, 2010).5 Compare Paolo Tripodi, ‘Wittgenstein: Necessity, Imagination, and Meta-philosophy’, Philosophical Inquiries, 2 (2013), 55–78.6 Compare Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, edited by Raymund Schmidt (Hamburg, 1954, first published in 1787).7 Compare Gottlob Frege, Grundlagen der Arithmetik: eine logisch-mathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl (Breslau, 1884).8 John MacFarlane, ‘Frege, Kant, and the Logic in Logicism’, The Philosophical Review, 111 (2002), 25–65.9 Both Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (1802–1872) and Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) were German philosophers.10 Compare Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre. Versuch einer ausführlichen und grösstentheils neuen Darstellung der Logik mit steter Rücksicht auf deren bisherige Bearbeiter (Sulzbach, 1837); Wolfgang Künne, ‘Propositions in Bolzano and Frege’, in Bolzano and Analytic Philosophy, edited by Wolfgang Künne, Mark Siebel and Mark Textor (Amsterdam, 1998).11 Compare Mark R. Rosenzweig, ‘Aspects of the Search of Neural Mechanisms of Memory’, The Annual Review of Psychology, 47 (1996), 1–32; Mark R. Rosenzweig, Edward L. Bennet and Marian C. Diamond, ‘Brain Changes in Response to Experience’, Scientific American, 226(2) (1972), 22–29.12 Compare Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne, Sulla neuro-encefalotomia. Lettere anatomico-fisiologiche (Pavia, 1791).13 Compare Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen, 1922).14 Compare Luigi Belloni, ‘Charles Bonnet e Vincenzo Malacarne sul cervelletto quale sede dell'anima e sulla impressione basilare del cranio nel cretinismo’, Physis. Rivista internazionale di storia della scienza, 19 (1977), 111–60; Claudio Pogliano, ‘Vincenzo Malacarne “geografo del cerebro”’, in Passioni della mente e della storia, edited by Filippo Maria Ferro (Milan, 1990); The Human Brain and Spinal Cord: A Historical Study Illustrated by Writings from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, edited by Edwin Clarke and Charles Donald O'Malley (Berkeley, CA, 1968); Céline Cherici, ‘Vincenzo Malacarne (1744–1816): A researcher in neurophysiology between anatomophysiology and electrical physiology of the human brain’, Comptes Rendus Biologies, 329 (2006), 319–29.15 Compare, for example, Observations sur la physique, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts, avec des planches en taille-douce, edited by l'Abbé Rozier, M. J. A. Mongez, Jr. and Jean-Claude Delamétherie (Paris, 1793), chapter XLIII, 73.16 This is the impression I was given while reading a sort of diary written by Malacarne dating back to 1793. I found the diary in the library of the Accademia delle Scienze, Turin.17 Compare Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York, NY, 1990), 536–37.18 In my view, another way to avoid being misled by false analogies is to use our imagination—but I have neither the way nor the time to take on this topic here. Compare, for example, Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy (Oxford, 2007).19 Compare Plato, Theaetetus, translated by Benjamin Jowett, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/theatu.html (accessed 10 July 2013).20 Dante Alighieri, Vita nuova (Milan, 1992, first published in 1292/3), 1, translated as New Life by Charles Eliot Norton (Boston, MA, 1896), 187.21 Daniel Crafft was a German alchemist (1624–1697). Compare The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, edited by Richard Waller, second edition (London, 1971); Douwe Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas about the Mind (Cambridge, 2000), 52.22 Compare Henry L. Roediger, III, ‘Memory Metaphors in Cognitive Psychology’, Memory & Cognition, 8 (1980), 231–46 (234).23 Compare Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne, ‘Le scoperte del celebre Dott. Gio. Francesco Gall med. e fil. di Vienna in Austria sul sistema nerveo della spinal midolla e del cervello esposte dal Signor Dottor Bischoff ridotte al giusto valore da Vincenzo Malacarne’, Società Italiana delle Scienze (Verona, 1808), xiv.24 Compare Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne, Encefalotomia nuova universale (Turin, 1780), iii.25 Compare Mitchell Glickstein and Piergiorgio Strata, ‘Cervelletto’, in Psiche. Dizionario storico di psicologia, psiciatria, psicoanalisi, neuroscienze, edited by Francesco Barale, Vittorio Gallese, Stefano Mistura, Mauro Bertani and Adriano Zamperini (Turin, 2006), 205.26 Compare Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne, Sui gozzi e sulla stupidità che in alcuni paesi gli accompagna. Tentativi (Turin, 1789); Paul F. Cranefield, ‘The Discovery of Cretinism’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 36 (1962), 489–511.27 Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne, Lettera seconda, in Sulla neuro-encefalotomia. Lettere anatomico-fisiologiche (Pavia, 1791), 21.28 ‘Âme’, in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d'Alembert (Paris, 1993, first published in 1751).29 Compare Luigi Rolando, Saggio sopra la vera struttura del cervello dell'uomo e degl'animali e sopra le funzioni del sistema nervoso (Sassari, 1809); Pierre Flourens, Rechérche expérimentales sur les propriétés et les fonctions du système dans les animaux vertébrés (Paris, 1824); Luigi Luciani, Il cervelletto (Firenze, 1891).30 Moreover, Alessandro Volta's discovery of the production of electricity from bimetallic contact had led some scholars, such as Reil and Malacarne himself, to assume that alternate white and grey layers of the cerebellum constituted a sort of voltaic pile. Compare Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne, ‘Se il cervello, il cervelletto, la spinal midolla, fors'anche le cartilagini e le ossa della spina formano qualche cosa di simile alla colonna Galvanica del Volta’, Giornale della società di incoraggiamento, 4 (1808), 122–30; Michele Vincenzo Giacinto Malacarne, ‘Lettera all'abate Denina’ (Pavia, 29 agosto 1792), Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Archivi Malacarne n. 19129/19130.31 Compare Larry R. Squire and Erik R. Kandel, Memory: From Mind to Molecules (New York, NY, 1999).32 Compare Erik R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz and Thomas M. Jessell, Principles of Neural Science (New York, NY, 2000), chapter 42.33 Samuel Thomas von Sömmering, Vom Baue des menschlichen Körpers (1791), vol., 1, 91.
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