Table Of ContentTitle Pages
The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of
Neurophysiology
C.U.M. Smith, Eugenio Frixione, Stanley Finger, and William Clower
Print publication date: 2012
Print ISBN-13: 9780199766499
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199766499.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology (p.ii)
(p.iii) The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology
(p.1) The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology (p.2)
(p.iv)
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Title Pages
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The animal spirit doctrine and the origins of neurophysiology /
C.U.M. Smith…[et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-976649-9 (alk. paper)
1. Neurophysiology—History. 2. Neuroscience—History. I. Smith, C.
U. M. (Christopher Upham Murray)
QP355.2.A55 2012
128’.109—dc23
2011037109
___________________________________
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Printed in USA
on acid-free paper
Page 2 of 2
Dedication
The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of
Neurophysiology
C.U.M. Smith, Eugenio Frixione, Stanley Finger, and William Clower
Print publication date: 2012
Print ISBN-13: 9780199766499
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199766499.001.0001
Dedication
(p.v) To our wives—Jenny, Ana María, Wendy, and Dottie—and families,
from whose sight we have sometimes disappeared for days at a time
while working on this tome, and to lasting friendships among colleagues
(p.vi)
Page 1 of 1
Preface
The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of
Neurophysiology
C.U.M. Smith, Eugenio Frixione, Stanley Finger, and William Clower
Print publication date: 2012
Print ISBN-13: 9780199766499
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199766499.001.0001
(p.ix) Preface
What is the physical basis of mind? How does the brain work? How are the
commands of our will transmitted to the body’s muscles? How do we become
aware of our surroundings? These are questions that have puzzled thinkers from
the earliest times. For at least two millennia the answers to these questions
made use of the concept of “animal spirit”; only in the past 200 hundred years
have the answers been formulated in terms of electricity.
This book follows this millennial history from earliest times. It shows how the
idea of an intrinsic “animal spirit” emerged in classical antiquity and was refined
in late classical and medieval times, only to encounter observations in the
Renaissance and experiments in the Early Modern period showing that some of
the fundamental assumptions of this earlier way of thinking could not be
verified. It was during the second half of the 1700s that what would become
known as a “paradigm shift” began to occur. The concept of animal spirit was
replaced, not all at once, but ultimately completely, by the experimentally
validated theory of animal electricity, which has grown into the neurophysiology
we have today.
The story is a fascinating one. It traces the history and foundations of our
present-day understanding of the nervous system. Yet it has seldom, if ever, been
told from start to finish, and for this reason is little understood or rarely taught,
even by historians of the life sciences.1 Indeed, most histories of the discipline
we would now define as neurophysiology are restricted to the modern era and
devote just a few paragraphs, if any, to the great narrative of what went before.
Page 1 of 4
Preface
We hope that our book will help to rectify this historical omission and some of
the distortions spawned by the absence of a good source on this subject matter.
Nevertheless, a disclaimer is in order right from the outset. The idea that anyone
or even a team of historians could write a complete history of the doctrine of
animal spirit has to be dispelled. The primary literature is simply too vast, since
at its root this concept permeates so many different fields, of which we could
mention philosophy, physiology, medicine, and theology, to name just four.
Moreover, each of these fields is itself vast, each has many representatives
saying the same or slightly different things, and each can be approached in more
than one way. As a result, choices have to be made and the end product must, of
necessity, be a construction based on subjective decisions.
Our book is no exception. Our focus is not on every facet of the animal spirit
doctrine, but on how it formed the basis of early neurophysiologies, allowing
philosophers and physicians to “understand” how, for example, we might
perceive a visual image, flex a muscle, or perhaps even recall a memory. In
addition, knowing it would be futile to try to cover the views of hundreds of early
thinkers, we restricted our account to those individuals whose works and names
are generally better known, for the most part people regarded as leading figures
in the history of philosophy, and then in medicine, and more specifically
physiology. Such an approach has made our subject matter more manageable,
and it allows us to tell this story in a book of reasonable size. It also leaves the
door open for deeper scholarly studies on various facets of what we are
covering, as well as for alternative approaches to our subject matter, which we
certainly hope this initial but modest attempt at a synopsis will stimulate.
This book, a long time in coming, integrates the work of four authors from three
countries on two continents. It would not have been possible without modern
electronic means of communication. Our email inboxes have been filled week
after week with questions and comments, drafts and revisions. It is, therefore,
useful to say a few words about how we came together to research and write on
this topic.
Page 2 of 4
Preface
The idea originally came from Will Clower, who was particularly interested in
17th- and 18th-century neuromuscular physiology, and what led to the paradigm
shift whereby the older animal spirit doctrine was replaced by electrical ideas.
Several years after Will had produced a preliminary draft, and now being
engaged in a non-academic career, he met with Stan Finger and asked him
whether it might be possible to make what he had started into a publishable
book. Stan agreed but immediately recognized the need to greatly expand Will’s
converage. He wanted to include a number of chapters on the origin of the
concept of animal spirit in the ancient world, its role during medieval times, and
much more information on how electricity emerged as a potent force in
physiological thought. With these thoughts in mind, he persuaded Chris Smith
and Eugenio Frixione, who had different areas of historical expertise, to join in
the enterprise and help produce a more encompassing history that would have
even broader appeal. We thank Will for his generosity in allowing us to take
what he had written and then to modify, expand, and frame it in broader
contextual ways.
A greatly expanded outline followed, and it was decided that each of the authors
would write and take final responsibility for different chapters, which would
then be circulated for comments and approval. The work was accordingly (p.x)
divided as follows: Chris Smith was the lead author on the Prologue and on
Chapters 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 as well as on the introductions to Sections 3 and 4
and the chronologies; Eugenio Frixione took charge of Chapters 1, 3, 10, 11, and
12, plus the introductions to Sections 1 and 2; Stan Finger was responsible for
Chapters 13, 14, and 15 and the introduction to Section 5, while also assuming
the invaluable role of general critic and copy-editor; and Will Clower took on the
initial drafts of the epilogue. Chapter 5 was a particular instance that involved
close cooperation of Chris, Eugenio, and Stan. But as it turned out, all chapters
and the prologue and epilogue involved considerable cross-fertilization, with
different authors contributing different perspectives, interests, and expertise.
Hence, as we worked through the book, the chapters came increasingly to
reflect the combined thoughts and expertise of the group as a whole.
Looking back, we feel that the strategy we adopted in bringing the book to
fruition was advantageous. The different approaches, perspectives, and
questions of the four authors combined to illuminate different aspects of a
complex topic, and allowed us to present a better understanding of the
individuals who played key roles in our history and of the changing times in
which they found themselves.
Page 3 of 4
Preface
We hope this book will appeal to both general readers and neuroscientists
interested in the history of their subject. To this end, we have attempted to keep
the style accessible to all, while providing many quotations (or translations of
such) from original or early sources. Further, we have provided bibliographies
and in some instances reasonably detailed references, so that historians will be
able to find the sources and some of the vast scholarly literature that followed
these seminal writings.
Finally, a preface provides an opportunity to acknowledge the many people—
fellow workers, teachers, colleagues, librarians, editors, friends, and, far from
least, family—who have helped with advice, knowledge, and patience as our
book has taken shape. Without them this work could not have been completed,
and we thank them all.
With all of this in mind, we hope that this book will be read by all who wish to
follow the intriguing story of how, over the millennia, we have come to
understand the workings of that most important of our possessions, our nervous
system.
Notes:
(1) See Rothschuh, 1958, and Glynn, 1999, for two rare monographs in compact
form.
Page 4 of 4
Prologue
The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of
Neurophysiology
C.U.M. Smith, Eugenio Frixione, Stanley Finger, and William Clower
Print publication date: 2012
Print ISBN-13: 9780199766499
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199766499.001.0001
(p.xi) Prologue
C. U. M. Smith
Eugenio Frixione
Stanley Finger
William Clower
We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants.
John of Salisbury, 1159: Metalogion; afterwards used by Isaac Newton and
others
This book follows the rise and fall of an ancient and powerful idea: the notion
that something external is incorporated into the human frame and acts as a
messenger between mind and body. This imagined and mysterious courier
travels along nerves to and from the brain. Being invisible and coming from
outside, like a breath, as well as being incredibly fast, it was ranked in the
category of spirits—in the special class known as “animal spirit” (i.e., that
intimately related to the soul [anima]). This construct, with roots deep in
antiquity, remained pre-eminent for nearly two millennia in Western science and
medicine.
Over time, it would be challenged: first with the call for new learning during the
Renaissance and then with the experimentation and scientific rigor that marked
the Early Modern era, a period of time that included the transformational 17th
and 18th centuries. Gradually, the older notions of an animal spirit coursing
through hollow nerve canals melded with newer anatomical, chemical, and
mechanical ideas, and ultimately a new physiology based on animal electricity
emerged and slowly took hold. If looked upon from the opposite end of the
bridge, we could state that this book is about how electricity replaced a long line
of fascinating but speculative thinking about the functioning of nerve and brain.
Page 1 of 9
Prologue
Thus, the chapters that follow will trace the growth of the idea of animal spirit
from its misty beginnings in preliterate societies to its emergence as the
dominant theme in ancient and medieval medical lore. We then examine its slow
demise over centuries, as natural philosophers fought to modify it in response to
new discoveries, and then to weigh these conceptions against alternative
concepts. This history, involving some of the greatest intellects the world has
known—including Plato, Aristotle, Avicenna, Albertus Magnus, Andreas Vesalius,
René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and even Benjamin Franklin—presents one of the
greatest of all philosophical and scientific journeys. It has both characterized
and transformed Western civilization. It provides, moreover, a clear example of a
paradigm change:2 the replacement of millennial medical teaching about how
the nervous system operates, in which keen observations were blended with
supernatural notions, with a naturalistic physiology based solely on physics and
chemistry.
But let us start at the beginning. That breath and life are associated must have
been as obvious in Paleolithic times as it is to us in our electronic age. This is
confirmed in the earliest written records that have come down to us. In Genesis
we read of how the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. An analogous concept was
widespread throughout the ancient world. At the root of Indo-European
language, Sanskrit, we find the word prana meaning “breath” or “life force.”3 In
the Indian folk tales collected as the Upanishads, the earliest dating from about
800 BCE, prana is conceived to be part of the environment, suffusing all things
and providing the energy that sustains both the physical body and the mind. In
traditional Chinese culture the term qi has a rather similar connotation, meaning
something like “energy”—the active principle in living creatures—and the
etymology shows that qi, too, was originally related to “air,” or “breath.”4 It is, of
course, difficult for us in our 21st-century scientific culture to fully grasp the
meanings of these ancient terms; they relate to thought-worlds very different
from our own. It does seem clear, however, that the notion of some external
energy entering and vivifying the body in the process of breathing, and then
leaving it permanently when the body dies, had been widespread in ancient
times.
Page 2 of 9
Prologue
In this book it is the Western tradition that we intend to follow, so we shall leave
the Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese worldviews and instead open with the
somewhat similar ideas current some two and half millennia ago at the
beginning of Western science and philosophy, in Greek antiquity. Here we
immediately meet the notion encapsulated in the term Greek term pneuma
(πνευμα), intimately associated with psyche (ψυχή or soul), “the sign of life, or
the (p.xii) life spirit.”5 These terms all originally had to do with air, breath,
breathing, and movement. They confirm, once again, that rather similar notions
pervaded the ancient world, both east and west and that in all probability they
originated in the age-old recognition in preliterate societies that breath and life,
from first to last, come and go together.
Very early in this tradition, a fragment from Anaximenes tells us that the
environmental pneuma is also involved both in holding the body together and in
controlling its activity.6 We shall see that this notion recurs in a more elaborate
form in the “psychophysiology” developed by Herophilus and Erasistratus at the
Alexandrian Museum several hundred years later, during the second century
BCE. Pneuma, or its Latin translation, “spiritus,” continues, moreover, through
Galen into the medical theories of medieval times and on into the emerging
physiology of the 17th and 18th centuries of our era.
As already mentioned, the connotation of pneuma is closely related to that of the
term psyche, which also originally meant “breath.” Psyche is translated into
Latin as anima and is cognate with the English word “soul.” These words have,
of course, vast and imprecise connotations. Throughout the millennia they have
energized wide areas of Western thought. As Alfred Crawley points out, “Few
conceptions can show the universality and permanence, the creative power and
morphological influence, which have characterized throughout history the Idea
of the Soul.”7
At the beginning of the Western tradition, we can trace them at work in the
Homeric poems. In the Iliad, there is much talk of the soul. Hector dies and “the
soul went forth from his limbs and flew toward the House of Hades, wailing her
doom, leaving youth and manhood behind her.”8 Earlier in the Iliad, Achilles
affirms the relationship between psyche and breath by vivid imagery: “For by
harrying may cattle be had and goodly sheep. And tripods by the winning and
chestnut horses withal; but that the spirit of man (ψυχή) should come again once
it has passed the barrier of his teeth, neither harrying availeth, nor winning.”9
Once the psyche escapes, there is no coming back.
Page 3 of 9
