IsisCB Explore-S!!

Article ID: CBB525306925

Georg Büchner: Anatomist of the Animal Brain and the Human Mind (2020)

Hagner, Michael (Author)

Journal of the History of the Neurosciences
Volume: 29
Issue: 1
Pages: 90-100
Publication date: 2020
Language: English

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0964704X.2019.1690386

DOI: 10.1080/0964704X.2019.1690386

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Brain Human anatomy Animal anatomy Comparative anatomy Historiography Neuroanatomy Science and culture 19th century Gall, Franz Joseph Büchner, Georg

The writer Georg Büchner (1813–1837) is considered one of the giants of German literature. Comparatively less well known, however, is the fact that Büchner was also a gifted neuroanatomist who completed his medical studies with a dissertation on the nervous system of the barbel (a freshwater fish with a high incidence in the River Rhine) and gave a lecture on cranial nerves shortly afterward, hoping to secure a position at the University of Zurich. In the copious secondary literature on Büchner, it has often been discussed whether and how his poetic and scientific writings were interrelated. In this article, I compare Büchner’s anatomical and literary views of the brain and argue that two distinct perspectives on the organ were developed here. In the literary works, human behavior was linked to the brain in a manner that betrays the influence of Franz Joseph Gall’s organology. In the anatomical writing, the brain appeared as an exemplar of natural harmony and beauty. In the one case, the brain appeared as an aristocrat, in the other as a pariah. I take this stark contrast to mean that Büchner understood the brain as an epistemically slippery, contradictory object that could only be approached from different angles.

...More

Included in

Article Paul Eling; Stanley Finger (2020) Gall and Phrenology: New perspectives. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences (pp. 1-4). unapi

Citation URI

stagingisis.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB525306925

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Chapter Domenico Bertoloni Meli; (2017)
Diseases of the Brain Seen through Giovanni Battista Morgagni’s Eyes

Chapter Claire Crignon; (2017)
How Animals May Help Us Understand Men: Thomas Willis’s Anatomy of the Brain (1664) & Two Discourses Concerning the Soules of Brutes (1672)

Article Eglė Sakalauskaitė-Juodeikienė; Paul Eling; Stanley Finger; (2020)
Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776–1827) on Gall’s Craniognomic System, Zoology, and Comparative Anatomy

Thesis Bassiri, Nima Rad; (2010)
Dislocations of the Brain: Subjectivity and Cerebral Topology from Descartes to Nineteenth-Century Neuroscience

Book Paul Eling; Stanley Finger; (2021)
Gall, Spurzheim, and the Phrenological Movement: Insights and Perspectives

Article Kruger, Lawrence; (2004)
An Early Illustrated Comparative Anatomy of the Brain: Samuel Collins' A Systeme of Anatomy (1685) and the Emergence of Comparative Neurology in Seventeenth Century England

Article Klaus F. Steinsiepe; Markus Hauser; (2022)
Leonardo da Vinci, the Ventricles of the Brain, and the Foramen of Monro

Chapter Charles T. Wolfe; (2017)
Boundary Crossings: The Blurring of the Human/Animal Divide as Naturalization of the Soul in Early Modern Philosophy

Article Catherine E. Storey; (2022)
Then there were 12: The illustrated cranial nerves from Vesalius to Soemmerring

Article Kevin Jang; (2021)
Nicolaus Steno and the Cartesian Brain

Chapter Schwarte, Ludger; (2008)
The Anatomy of the Brain as Instrumentalization of Reason

Article Jacob Lauge Thomassen; Simon Beierholm; (2020)
Franz Joseph Gall Came to Copenhagen, and for a Brief Moment the Brain Was the Talk of the Town

Article Paul Eling; Stanley Finger; (2022)
Franz Joseph Gall on God and religion: “Dieu et Cerveau, rien que Dieu et cerveau!”

Article Kruger, Lawrence; (2003)
Edward Tyson's 1680 Account of the “Porpess” Brain and its Place in the History of Comparative Neurology

Article Patton, Paul; (2014)
Ludwig Edinger: The Vertebrate Series and Comparative Neuroanatomy

Article Koehler, Peter J.; (2012)
Eduard Hitzig's Experiences in the Franco-Prussian War (1870--1871): The Case of Joseph Masseau

Article Josef Hlade; (2021)
Reconsidering “Brain mythology”

Article Droz Mendelzweig, Marion; (2010)
La plasticité cérébrale de Cajal à Kandel: cheminement d'une notion constitutive du sujet cérébral

Article Hakosalo, Heini; (2006)
The Brain under the Knife: Serial Sectioning and the Development of Late Nineteenth-Century Neuroanatomy

Book Burrell, Brian; (2004)
Postcards from the Brain Museum: The Improbable Search for Meaning in the Matter of Famous Minds