A Rightful Place in History (2024)

Franz Joseph Gall: Naturalist of the Mind, Visionary of the Brain

Stanley Finger andPaul Eling

Published:

2019

Online ISBN:

9780190464646

Print ISBN:

9780190464622

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Franz Joseph Gall: Naturalist of the Mind, Visionary of the Brain

Stanley Finger andPaul Eling

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Stanley Finger

Stanley Finger

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Pages

479–505

  • Published:

    May 2019

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Finger, Stanley, 'A Rightful Place in History', Franz Joseph Gall: Naturalist of the Mind, Visionary of the Brain (New York, 2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 May 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190464622.003.0020, accessed 25 May 2024.

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Abstract

Gall’s craniology would not withstand the test of time, and how he accepted confirmatory cases and dismissed contradictory evidence would increasingly be regarded as poor science. As a consequence, his cranium-based doctrine began to be branded as a “pseudoscience” in 1834 by physiologist Pierre Magendie, with others following suit. Nonetheless, many of Gall’s ideas have endured, even though he is rarely remembered today for many changes he elicited or helped to elicit. His concepts of numerous independent organs of mind, different kinds of memories, and cortical localization of function are now widely accepted in the neurosciences. He was also extremely influential in drawing attention to individual differences, and he played a major role in making psychiatry a brain-based science and introducing brain pathology into the courtroom. He also deserves to be remembered for purging the soul from the life sciences and positioning us with other animals. And he made significant discoveries in neuroanatomy. In retrospect, Gall was neither a charlatan nor a fraud, though he had too much faith in cranioscopy. His ideas merit a fresh look and, without question, he deserves more credit than he has been given for his insights and how they have changed many fields.

Keywords: Franz Joseph Gall, Johann Spurzheim, craniology, Pierre Magendie, pseudoscience, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., cortical localization of function, Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud, Paul Broca, converging operations

Subject

Cognitive Psychology

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Franz Joseph Gall: Naturalist of the Mind, Visionary of the Brain. Stanley Finger and Paul Eling, Oxford University Press (2019). © Stanley Finger and Paul Eling. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190464622.003.0020

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