The Brain Takes Shape

Using historical and anthropological perspectives to examine mind-body relationships in western thought, this book interweaves topics that are usually disconnected to tell a big, important story in the histories of medicine, science, philosophy, religion, and political rhetoric. Beginning with early debates during the Scientific Revolution about representation and reality, Martensen demonstrates how investigators such as Vesalius and Harvey sought to transform long-standing notions of the body as dominated by spirit-like humors into portrayals that emphasized its solid tissues. Subsequently, Descartes and Willis and their followers amended this 'new' philosophy to argue for the primacy of the cerebral hemispheres and cranial nerves as they downplayed the role of the spirit, passion, and the heart in human thought and behaviour. None of this occurred in a social vacuum, and the book places these medical and philosophical innovations in the context of the religious and political crises of the Reformation and English Civil War and its aftermath. Patrons and their interests are part of the story, as are patients and new formulations of gender. John Locke's psychology and the emergence in England of a constitutional monarchy figure prominently, as do opponents of the new doctrines of brain and nerves and the emergent social order. The book's concluding chapter discusses how debates over investigative methods and models of body order that first raged over 300 years ago continue to influence biomedicine and the broader culture today. No other book on western mind-body relationships has attempted this.

ISBN 0195151720   Pages 278 ISBN13 9780195151725 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press Inc   Weight (grammes) 613 Imprint Oxford University Press Inc   Published in New York Format Hardback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 20 May 2004   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress R723   Spine width (mm) 22 DEWEY 610.1   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

		Selected events and historical actors
1		Bodies, words, and images		1
2		Matter, spirit, and the heart		23
3		The human mind and "gland H" : cartesian models of mind, brain, and nerves		47
4		When the brain came out of the skull		75
5		Body of witnesses		95
6		Toward a new physiology of human conduct		129
7		The transformation of eve		153
8		Mind without brain : John Locke, Thomas Sydenham, and the constitutional body of the British enlightenment		175
9		On the persistence of the cerebral body and its alternatives		199
		Index		219

"This is a well-researched book about an important topic that is underrepresented in the history of science: the transformation, mainly during the 17th century, of the widespread belief that the heart is the primary locus of personhood to the belief that, in fact, the brain serves this function." --The New England Journal of Medicine"While fascinating as a textbook of medical intellectual history, the greatest thrill comes when the reader connects the historical material to his or her 21st century experience...Any psychiatrist, physician, healer or therapist who seeks to increase his or her perspective beyond the constraints of current schools of thought will cherish this book." --Ole J. Thienhaus, M.D., University of Nevada Journal of Clinical Psychiatry"Matensen has provided a rich and fascinating account of the origins of our modern understanding of the relations of mind and brain."--Bulletin of the History of Medicine..".this is an excellent book that integrates Mar

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