2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
discussions surrounding the conceptual foundations of biology, questions of
development were at the core of all theoretical systems proposed in those decades.
In this paper I will discuss the importance of development in the formulation of
theoretical biology and the central role of developmental processes in the
rhetorical arguments for the independence of biology from physics and chemistry.
I will analyze how the increased popularity of neo-vitalistic arguments in the
wake of Driesch’s popularization of these ideas led to the emergence of theoretical
biology as a search for alternatives to the age old mechanist-vitalist divide.
Specifically, I will show how certain key concepts that emerged in the context
of experimental research programs, such as Hans Spemann’s organizer, Alexander
Gurwitsch’s morphogenetic field, Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s organismal systems,
or Oskar Vogt’s eunomic series were incorporated into conceptual systems about
the foundations of biology. I will also show how these conceptual developments
were enabled by the organizational efforts of a small number of people (Julius
Schaxel, Wilhelm Roux, Vladislav Ruzicka, Adolf Meyer-Abich among others)
who controlled and established various series of monographs and scientific
journals and actively promoted the idea of theoretical biology.
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André␣ R. LeBlanc CIRST, Université du Québec à Montréal
On Negative Hallucinations and the Origins of the Unconscious
This paper examines a little-known debate over the nature of negative hallucinations
in the late 1880s France. Negative hallucination is the phenomenon by which an
object is rendered invisible to a hypnotic subject. The study of negative hallucination
produced one of the earliest arguments for the existence of the unconscious. Through
a series of intricate experiments, investigators like the philosopher Pierre Janet
(1859-1947), the psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911) and the physician
Hippolyte Bernheim (1840-1919) showed that subjects were somehow still able
to see the invisible objects that they could not presumably see. Janet seemed to
solve this mystery by demonstrating, in 1887, that a dissociated consciousness
saw the invisible objects without the subject’s main consciousness knowing it.
This was the first experimental application of the concept of dissociation, which
was introduced the preceding year, in 1886, and which has become so prominent
in recent years with the epidemic of multiple personality disorder, renamed
dissociative identity disorder in 1994. Dissociation (then as now) seemed the only
way of explaining the phenomenon. In 1889, however, the Belgian philosopher
and psychologist Joseph Delboeuf (1831-1896) began arguing in favour of a
sophisticated form of simulation and against state theories of hypnosis. His work
undermined the then burgeoning theory of the unconscious and, as this paper will
show, is still relevant to current debates over the nature of hypnosis and allied
mental disorders. More specifically, I believe Delboeuf indirectly demonstrated
that the concept of dissociation could never be proven and I will give a book prize
to the first person who shows that I am wrong.