Article ID: CBB525306925

Georg Büchner: Anatomist of the Animal Brain and the Human Mind (2020)

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The writer Georg Büchner (1813–1837) is considered one of the giants of German literature. Comparatively less well known, however, is the fact that Büchner was also a gifted neuroanatomist who completed his medical studies with a dissertation on the nervous system of the barbel (a freshwater fish with a high incidence in the River Rhine) and gave a lecture on cranial nerves shortly afterward, hoping to secure a position at the University of Zurich. In the copious secondary literature on Büchner, it has often been discussed whether and how his poetic and scientific writings were interrelated. In this article, I compare Büchner’s anatomical and literary views of the brain and argue that two distinct perspectives on the organ were developed here. In the literary works, human behavior was linked to the brain in a manner that betrays the influence of Franz Joseph Gall’s organology. In the anatomical writing, the brain appeared as an exemplar of natural harmony and beauty. In the one case, the brain appeared as an aristocrat, in the other as a pariah. I take this stark contrast to mean that Büchner understood the brain as an epistemically slippery, contradictory object that could only be approached from different angles.

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Article Paul Eling; Stanley Finger (2020) Gall and Phrenology: New perspectives. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences (pp. 1-4). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Finger, Stanley
Eling, Paul
Jang, Kevin
Beierholm, Simon
Thomassen, Jacob Lauge
Hauser, Markus
Concepts
Brain
Neuroanatomy
Human anatomy
Neurosciences
Comparative anatomy
Animal anatomy
Time Periods
19th century
17th century
18th century
20th century
Early modern
Renaissance
Places
Germany
Copenhagen (Denmark)
Russia
Denmark
Paris (France)
Great Britain
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