Writing the History of the Mind (Science, Technology and Culture, 1700-1945)

220 Pages·2008·1.31 MB·English

by  Cristina Chimisso

WRITING THE HISTORY OF THE MIND
Science, Technology and Culture,
1700–1945
Series Editors
David M. Knight
University of Durham
and
Trevor Levere
University of Toronto
Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945 focuses on the social, cultural, industrial
and economic contexts of science and technology from the ‘scientific revolution’ up
to the Second world War. It explores the agricultural and industrial revolutions of
the eighteenth century, the coffee-house culture of the Enlightenment, the spread of
museums, botanic gardens and expositions in the nineteenth century, to the Franco-
Prussian war of 1870, seen as a victory for German science. It also addresses the
dependence of society on science and technology in the twentieth century.
Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945 addresses issues of the interaction of
science, technology and culture in the period from 1700 to 1945, at the same time as
including new research within the field of the history of science.
Also in the series
Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment
Edited by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Christine Blondel
Entropic Creation
Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology
Helge S. Kragh
British University Observatories 1772–1939
Roger Hutchins
William Crookes (1832–1919) and the Commercialization of Science
William H. Brock
Writing the History of the Mind
Philosophy and Science in France, 1900 to 1960s
CRISTINA CHIMISSO
The Open University, UK
Research for this book supported by the
© Cristina Chimisso 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cristina Chimisso has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
Gower House Suite 420
Croft Road 101 Cherry Street
Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405
Hampshire GU11 3HR USA
England
Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Chimisso, Cristina
Writing the history of the mind : philosophy and science in France, 1900 to 1960s. –
(Science, technology and culture, 1700–1945)
1. Philosophy of mind – History – 20th century 2. Philosophy – History – 20th century
3. Philosophy, French – 20th century 4. Philosophy and science – France – History – 20th
century
I. Title
194
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chimisso, Cristina.
Writing the history of the mind : philosophy and science in France, 1900 to 1960s / Cristina
Chimisso.
p. cm. — (Science, technology and culture, 1700–1945)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7546-5705-7 (alk. paper)
1. Philosophy of mind–History–20th century. 2. Philosophy–History–20th century.
3. Philosophy, French–20th century. 4. Philosophy and science–France–History–20th century.
I. Title.
BD418.3.C46 2008
194–dc22
2007044797
ISBN 978 0 7546 5705 7
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd. Bodmin, Cornwall.
Contents
Series Editor’s Introduction vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Historical Reconstructions and Disciplinary Boundaries 1
Writing the History of the Mind: A Set of Projects across Disciplines 3
From the History of Philosophy to the History and
Philosophy of Science 5
Academic and Intellectual Spaces 6
Scholars’ Social Positions and their Philosophical and Political Ideas 7
Plan of the Work 8
1 The History of Philosophy in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century:
The Spaces and the Students 11
The Identity of the History of Philosophy 11
Studying the History of Philosophy in Paris 14
How to Become a Leading Professor of Philosophy:
Education and Early Career 18
Professors of the History of Philosophy and their Social Backgrounds 22
Personal Strategies and Institutional Success 27
2 The History of Philosophy in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century:
Theory and Objectives 33
Introduction 33
Academic Journals and the Historiography of Philosophy 34
Debates about the Notion of the History of Philosophy 43
The History of Philosophy as Heritage and Genre 53
3 The Meaning and Uses of History: Challenges to the History of Philosophy 59
History as Heritage versus History as Evolution:
The Challenge of the Social Sciences 59
The Mind and Mentalities: Lucien Lévy-Bruhl 62
Léon Brunschvicg’s History of the Mind 70
Social and Disciplinary Mobility 80
4 Approaches to the History of the Mind: The History of Science between
Philosophy and History 85
The Diffuse Presence of the History of Science 85
The Centre international de synthèse 87
vi Writing the History of the Mind
Abel Rey between ‘Scientism’ and Mentalities, and between the
Sorbonne and the Centre international de synthèse 93
Aldo Mieli and the Creation of National and International Spaces
for the History of Science 100
5 Approaches to the History of the Mind: The History of Science and the
History of Thought 109
Hélène Metzger and the History of the Mind 109
Alexandre Koyré and the History of Intellectual Revolutions 123
6 From the Laboratory to the Tribunal: Historical Epistemology 139
Gaston Bachelard and the History of the Scientific Mind 139
Georges Canguilhem between Concepts and the Living Being 152
Conclusion 167
Philosophical Questions across Fluid Disciplinary Boundaries 167
Social and Disciplinary Marginality and Personal Strategies 170
The Writers of History and the Objects of Knowledge 172
Bibliography 175
Index 203
Series Editor’s Introduction
There is a general perception that philosophy in general, and with it the history
and philosophy of science and technology in particular, took a very different course
in twentieth-century France compared to what happened in the English-speaking
world. Alexandre Koyré, a giant in the Anglophone world, occupied, as Cristina
Chimisso shows in this fascinating study, an equivocal and ambiguous place in the
French establishment, neither an historian nor a philosopher. Writing with beautiful
clarity, she examines through biographical and institutional history the particular
developments that characterized French thinking in the first sixty years or so of the
twentieth century. These years began with the Dreyfus affair and the polarization of
society between the secular and the Catholic; and then came two World Wars, Nazi
occupation and the loss of a progressive optimism in which evil was no more than
the absence of good.
Indicating how philosophy, seen as intimately linked to science, was taught in
France through its history, Cristina Chimisso illustrates the tensions between the
history of philosophy and of science: the latter generally seen as progressive, the
former timeless in the sense that ‘classics’ are never superseded. Some saw history
as the laboratory of the philosopher; others argued about how far intellectual history
depended upon historical and social situations. She contrasts the smooth careers
and firm social position of those philosophers who moved from a Parisian lycée to
the Ecole normale and on to prominent posts in academe, with the often Jewish or
provincial background of many breaking into Parisian intellectual life through the
new discipline of the history and philosophy of science, medicine and technology,
and Helene Metzger’s marginal place as a woman.
Her vivid biographical sketches, closely linked to reflections on the nature of the
history of science, medicine and technology, bring to life a work demonstrating how
personality, education, institutions and patronage have steered a particular national
tradition in the history and philosophy of science. This stimulating study will be
an example to any of us writing and thinking about intellectual history; and will
make Anglophones look to French examples, not only for information but also for
inspiration.
David Knight
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Arts and Humanities Research Council for awarding me a
research leave grant, which enabled me to finish writing this book. The AHRC funds
postgraduate training and research in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and
English literature to design and dance. The quality and range of research supported
not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic
success of the UK. For further information on the AHRC, please see their website
www.ahrc.ac.uk.
Many colleagues generously helped me at different stages of this project; I
would like to thank in particular Nick Jardine, Martin Kusch, Warren Schmaus, Gad
Freudenthal and Brian Alleyne. My gratitude also goes to the participants of the 2007
HOPOS conference in Paris and the 2006 BSHP conference in Cambridge (UK),
both for their stimulating comments on my papers, which were to become part of the
present book, for their own illuminating papers, and for the informal discussions we
had about French history of philosophy and the history and philosophy of science.