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George Henry Lewes (1817–1878): Embodied Cognition, Vitalism, and the Evolution of Symbolic Perception

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Brain, Mind and Consciousness in the History of Neuroscience

Part of the book series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ((HPTL,volume 6))

Abstract

To date, George Henry Lewes’ contributions to the intellectual culture of Victorian Britain have been overshadowed by the literary success of his partner, Marian Evans (better known by her pen name, George Eliot). In this chapter I draw attention to both the sophistication and continued relevance of Lewes’ writings on the mind-body problem, and particularly his five volume Problems of Life and Mind. I focus on three key arguments made by Lewes that remain relevant today: firstly, his rejection of extreme cerebrocentrism in favour of a view of the mind as embodied, i.e. that the somatic substrate of mind extends to regions of the body beyond the brain; secondly, that there is a qualitative difference between the ‘incalculable’ mechanisms of living creatures, and those of machines; and, thirdly, that our capacity for Ideation (or symbolic thought) and our concomitant immersion in the ‘Social Medium’ (or culture) are defining and characteristic features of humankind.

The history of science is the science itself: the history of the individual, the individual

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Mineralogie und Geologie (‘Die Geschichte der Wissenschaft ist die Wissenschaft selbst, die Geschichte des Individuums das Individuum’, Goethe 1833, 130)

Our world of Thought is a strange mixture of truth and fiction,—of Experience condensed in symbols, and of inferences deduced from symbols, and taken for reals; but the advance of Humanity tends more and more to enlarge the fund of truths, and to disclose the pitfalls on its path. The history of the race is but that of the individual “writ large.”

George Henry Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind (Lewes 1875, 119)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Shuttleworth 1984; A Ryan 2011; V Ryan 2012.

  2. 2.

    There are a few notable exceptions, particularly Kaminsky 1952; Rylance 2000, 2004; and Tjoa 1977.

  3. 3.

    Lewes 1874, vi.

  4. 4.

    Stichweh 2001. Lewes was among the first to use the term ‘discipline’ in English in this context. Lewes 1874, p. 71. Lewes was not shy of introducing and promoting new terms and understandings. He has been credited with being the first Englishman to employ the terms ‘psychodynamic’ (Hearnshaw 1964), ‘personality’ (Rylance 2000) ‘and ‘stream of consciousness’ (Holland 1986) in ways comparable to the present day use.

  5. 5.

    Lewes 1873, 1876a, b, c, 1877a, 1878.

  6. 6.

    Tansey 1990, 1992.

  7. 7.

    Ballantyne 1994.

  8. 8.

    E.g., ‘All germinal conceptions are the product of their age rather than of any individual mind’, Lewes 1874, 84.

  9. 9.

    Lewes 1845, 1853. Lewes corresponded with Comte, and helped to bring his works to the attention of the English speaking public—including the first anglicized use of Comte’s neologism, ‘altruisme’.

  10. 10.

    Lewes 1874, viii.

  11. 11.

    Rylance 2004; Edelman 1994.

  12. 12.

    Fields 2009; Koob 2009. In the 1870s, at a time when his contemporaries were locked in debate over whether glia were neurons or connective tissue, Lewes disparaged this question as one that had been elevated to ‘undue importance because it is supposed to carry with it physiological consequences which would deprive the neuroglia of active cooperation in neural processes, reducing it to the insignificant position of a mechanical support. I cannot but regard this as due to the mistaken tendency of analytical interpretation, which somewhat arbitrarily fastens on one element in a complex of elements, and assigns that one as the sole agent’ Lewes 1877b, 246.

  13. 13.

    Lewes 1879a, ix.

  14. 14.

    Lewes 1879b, v.

  15. 15.

    Prinz 2009.

  16. 16.

    E.g. See Wilson 2002; Clark 2009; Robbins and Aydede 2009.

  17. 17.

    As paraphrased in The Times ‘Law Report’, for the 25 and 27 March, 1822. For more on the Lawrence-Abernethy controversy, see Temkin 1963; Goodfield-Toulmin 1969; Butler 1993; and Price 2012.

  18. 18.

    Yolton 1984; Price 2012.

  19. 19.

    For theories of the nerves, see Rousseau 1991a, b.

  20. 20.

    Shapin 1975; Cooter 1984.

  21. 21.

    Lewes 1877b, 188.

  22. 22.

    This tradition was pioneered at the start of the century by the London surgeon, William Lawrence and the followers of Franz Josef Gall, whose system of Organology (now better known as phrenology) held that not only intellect, but also emotions, mental illness, and will to be consubstantial with the brain. Price 2012.

  23. 23.

    Lewes 1874, 160–163. Gould 1981 presented a fascinating treatment of the history of craniometry and racism in Mismeasure of Man, although he does not consider the possibility raised here by Lewes—that not only was craniometry used to lend support to racism, but similarly racist prejudices conversely lent support to the adoption of the belief that that brain is the organ of mind.

  24. 24.

    Lewes 1879a, 19–27. For a historical treatment of the reflex (although not Lewes’ critique of it) see Clarke and Jacyna 1987, 101–156.

  25. 25.

    Lewes 1879a, 23.

  26. 26.

    Lewes 1879b, 150.

  27. 27.

    Lewes 1879a, 20.

  28. 28.

    Lewes 1874, 112: italics in original.

  29. 29.

    Lewes 1874, 96.

  30. 30.

    Lewes 1874, 110–111. Like his notion of sensibility, Lewes’ materialist vitalism echoes theories expressed in the eighteenth century, most prominently by French physiologists such as Bordeu, La Mettrie and Bichat. See Haigh 1976 and Kaitaro 2008.

  31. 31.

    Lewes 1874, 46.

  32. 32.

    Lewes 1877b, 324.

  33. 33.

    Lewes 1877b, 307–310. I have adopted the phrase ‘psycho-physiologists’ from Danziger 1982.

  34. 34.

    Daston 1978; Gray 1968; Greenwood 2010; Smith 2007.

  35. 35.

    Lewes 1877b, 188.

  36. 36.

    Lewes 1877b, 324–325.

  37. 37.

    Menke 2000.

  38. 38.

    Lewes 1874, v.

  39. 39.

    Lewes 1879b, 484.

  40. 40.

    Lewes 1879a, 119–121. Lewes was quite possibly the first to use ‘anthropomorphic’ in this modern sense, in his Sea-side Studies of 1858: c.f., Ashton 1991, 187.

  41. 41.

    Lewes 1879b, 489–490.

  42. 42.

    Vignoli 1885, 135–154.

  43. 43.

    Lewes was an early supporter of Darwin’s theory of natural selection – cf. Ashton 1991, 243–245.

  44. 44.

    Lewes 1874, 109.

  45. 45.

    Lewes 1874, 124.

  46. 46.

    Read 1881, 498.

  47. 47.

    James 1890, 5.

  48. 48.

    Lewes 1874, 120–121.

  49. 49.

    See Huw Price (no relation) 1996 and Zeh 2007. Contrary to popular belief, temporal symmetry can also be argued for second law of thermodynamics, which is often taken to be archetypal directional law—see Jos Uffink 2001. Temporal asymmetry has been reported at the subatomic level in k-mesons (Angelopoulos et al. 1998) and b-mesons (Lees et al. 2012) yet it remains to be seen how or whether this relates to the macroscopic/subjective arrow of time.

  50. 50.

    Fleck 1979.

  51. 51.

    See Christiansen and Kirby 2003, especially the chapters by Bickerton (who refers to Irene Pepperberg’s famous research on the capacities of parrots) and Davidson. Study of the evolutionary origins of language, as an academic discipline, is a relatively young field. However, as a subject of study, it is older than its advocates appear to realize. In recent works on the subject it has repeatedly been asserted that speculation on the evolutionary origins of language was brought to a halt (for 100 years) in 1866 by a proclamation of the Parisian Linguistic Society (e.g. Deacon 1997; Christiansen and Kirby 2003). Gregory Radick’s historical account of research on primate language very effectively (if unintentionally) overturns this assertion: Radick 2007.

  52. 52.

    Chalmers 1996, vii. See also Chalmers 1995.

  53. 53.

    Lewes 1874, 101.

  54. 54.

    Lewes 1874, 100.

  55. 55.

    Libet et al. 1983, 2004; Tallis 2011.

  56. 56.

    Lewes 1879b, 111.

  57. 57.

    Wozniak 1992, 12.

  58. 58.

    Lewes 1879b, 149.

  59. 59.

    Lewes 1874, 3.

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    Elfed Huw Price

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  1. Department of Vision Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    C.U.M. Smith

  2. Department of Psychology, Northern Michigan University, Marquette, Michigan, USA

    Harry Whitaker

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Price, E.H. (2014). George Henry Lewes (1817–1878): Embodied Cognition, Vitalism, and the Evolution of Symbolic Perception. In: Smith, C., Whitaker, H. (eds) Brain, Mind and Consciousness in the History of Neuroscience. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8774-1_7

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