PubMed · 11620937
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T H Leahey, G E Leahey. 1986. Occult muddles.. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6696(198607)22%3A3%3C220%3A%3Aaid-jhbs2300220304%3E3.0.co%3B2-e
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This introduction precedes the four papers given in October 2000 in Copenhagen on analysing problems in the history of the neurosciences. The term historiography can be defined in different ways but means the study, and not simply the writing, of history. Although it goes back two millennia, it is a rapidly developing field as illustrated by the subsequent contributions.
The purpose of this paper is to suggest that subtle and essential uncertainties in language determine the limits of science and history, and thereby define the boundaries of research in the history of science. Historical research, in the strict sense of history as opposed to prehistory, begins with the examination of written records. There is a host of problems in the interpretation of the historical record, but underlying all of these is the simply stated yet complex question of the meaning of words in historical documents. Since this is where the practice of history begins, this problem delimits the boundaries of historical knowledge. In this paper, I will examine structural ambiguities in the meaning of words, explain how they arise, and provide independent evidence for the validity of the analysis.
The paper focuses on historiographical questions relevant to the historical study of the neurosciences. I attempt to illuminate these questions by looking at them from the perspective of general historiography of science. In the first section, I consider the disciplinary structure of the modern neurosciences and discuss some of the historiographical problems that are involved in the historical description of a highly multidisciplinary field. For example, how far back in time can one trace brain research as part of the construction that we call the neurosciences? The main part of the paper deals with recent trends in contextualist historiography in relation to the neurosciences. I suggest that one important source for the trend, as it emerged in the 1970s, was a renewed interest in the history of phrenology and its reception in Britain. By looking at the historiography of phrenology, some of the rival positions in modern historiography of science can be illuminated. In the last part of the paper, I comment on the advantages and disadvantages of contextualist historiography of science, including its relation to the producers of science, the scientists.