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cause him to act . . ., should know, that it is indispensable, that the study of the organization of the brain should march side by side with that of its functions.''115   
        Before concluding, one might recall Gall's influence and suggest that there is still more to be learned from him. As G. H. Lewes said, "Gall rescued the problem of mental functions from Metaphysics and made it one of Biology.''116 "In his vision of Psychology as a branch of Biology, subject therefore to all biological laws, and to be pursued by biological methods, he may be said to have given the science its basis.''117 His influence on Bain and Spencer was most significant, and lesser figures such as Laycock and Carpenter also derived much from Gall's approach. However, neither they nor their modern heirs — the behaviorists — have transcended the categories which Gall opposed in the name of biology. The functional psychology of William James and John Dewey advocated the study of mental functions as adaptations, but they also failed to provide new and significant categories.
        In 1940, Sherrington pointed out that the new phrenology was as far as the old had been from understanding the role of the nervous system in integrated behavior and that there were not even names for the categories which are ultimately needed.118 Modern brain and behavior research is still attempting to find ways of asking and answering the question, What are the functions of the brain? It appears that the answers to this question will, in the first instance, owe more to the field studies of the ethologist than to physiological experiments. It was Gall who made the point that we must first know the functions before we can ask intelligent questions about the organization and physiology of the brain. A century and a half later, one finds a recent reviewer of the concept of cerebral localization turning to Gall in support of the thesis that "in exploring the functions of the brain, I am convinced that we must limit ourselves to the study of biologically significant behavior patterns, no matter how complex their underlying physiology may be.''119 This, it seems to me, is the scientific lesson of the foregoing account.   
        Turning to the philosophical issues, if anyone believes that the problems set by Descartes no longer plague biological psychology, he should consider the fact that modern research is not dealing only with the two languages of extended substances and thinking substances. Though Descartes might well recognize the activities and concepts of the physiologist, he would be puzzled by the coexistence of the categories of function in the Passions of the Soul and the Treatise on Man (that is, memory, reason, intelligence) with the atomistic units of the association psychology. These last have in turn been made objective in a third language—the stimuli and responses of the behaviorist which, their claims not withstanding, have defied reduction to matter and motion. Thus, we have one language of brain, two of mind, and a fourth of behavior. Add to these the concepts of the evolutionary biologist, and we find five sets of variables.
        The problem for the future can be approached by two paths. The first involves transcending these several languages with a new ontology. The second — which is at present in vogue — is to find translation rules among them. Whichever approach is taken, it seems clear that careful historical studies can help to provide the per
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115 Gall, On the Functions of the Brain, Vol. II, pp. 45-46   
116 George H. Lewes, The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte, 2 vols. (3rd  .ed. London: Longmans, 1867-1871), Vol. II, p. 425
117 Ibid., p. 423.
118 C, S. Sherrington, Man on His Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1940), p. 228
119 Zangwill, "Cerebral Localisation," p. 338.

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spective on the current confusion which is necessary for increased communication among the physiologist, the layman, the behaviorist, and the ethologist. As a final remark, one might suggest that no set of translation rules will transcend the problems which Descartes has bequeathed to us. The best that can be hoped for from compiling a dictionary of translation rules is better communication, not a coherent ontology for interpreting nature—including human nature.


This article first appeared in Isis  Vol. 59, Part 3, No. 198, 1968, pp. 251-68. It is a summary, stressing philosophical implications, of the argument of my Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century: Cerebral Localization and Its Biological Context from Gall to Ferrier (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970; reprinted N. Y.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990).

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