William Carpenter and the Debate on Human

Automatism in mid-Victorian England

C.U.M (Chris) Smith,Vision Sciences, Aston University,

Birmingham B4 7ET, UK

Email: c.u.m.smith@aston.ac.uk

Jacques de Vaucanson’smechanicalduck with over a thousand moving parts driven by a weight(1739)

Victorian physiology and human automatism

Marshall Hall (1790-1857)Hall, M. (1833) On the reflex functions of the medulla oblongata and the medulla spinalis. Phil.Trans.Roy.Soc.B, 123: 635-665

Thomas Laycock (1812-1876)Laycock, T. (1845): On the reflex function of the brain. British and Foreign Medical Journal 19: 298-311

The Debate on Human Automatism in Mid-Victorian England

• Cardinal Manning (1808-1892)• William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1886)• John Tyndall (1820-1893)• Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)• Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)• Henry Maudsley (1835-1918)• William Kingdom Clifford (1845-1875)

Victorian Physiology and Human Automatism

‘Since the first issue of the following Treatise, the question of ‘Human Automatism’ has largely engaged the attention of that increasing portion of the public mind which interests itself in scientific enquiry’

W.B. Carpenter (1876), Preface to Principles of Mental Physiology (4th edition)

William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1886)

• Exeter, October 19 1813• Son of Unitarian Pastor Dr Lant Carpenter• London MRCS 1835• Edinburgh MD 1839

Thesis: ‘The physiological inferences to be deduced from the structure of the nervous system of invertebrated animals’

‘Just as sedulously as the trader in knowledge severs his particular science from all the others, does the lover of wisdom strive to extend its dominion and restore its connection with them….What the empiric separates, the philosopher unites…’

Schiller: Universal History (1789)

(Quoted in Carpenter: Nature and Man, p.16)

W.B.Carpenter

The Principles of General and Comparative Physiology (1st edition: 1839)

Principles of Human Physiology (1st edition, 1842)

Principles of Mental Physiology (1st edition, 1874)

(and some 300 other publications)

‘Our knowledge of Physiology has come to a point where the old idea of Man’s constitution must be thrown aside. To struggle against the overwhelming force of science under the notion of shielding religion is mere folly’

Charles Buxton (1873) quoted in Carpenter:Mental Physiology, 1874, p.xii

W.B.Carpenter

About 1870

The quantity of organisation lost centrally is equal to the quantity of organisation gained at the periphery…… ‘the nervous system (gives) up its characteristic organisation whilst developing nerve force, and that nerve force being transmitted to a distant part, (is) applied there in producing or modifying organisation..’

Carpenter, Nature and Man (1888): p.179

‘But there is another aspect under which we have to view nerve force: its relation to mental phenomena. The nerve force in a certain part of the nervous system produces a change in our state of consciousness’

Carpenter: Nature and Man (1888): p.181

‘The state of mental activity we term “Will”can so excite the nerve-force of the centralorgans as to occasion its transmission tothe muscular apparatus…..(causing)voluntary motion. The exertion ofmuscular force can only be sustained….at the expense of the death anddisintegration of nervous substance’

Carpenter, Nature and Man (1888): p.182

’..in the control which the Will can exert over the direction of our thoughts, and over the motive force exerted by our feelings, we have evidence of a new and independent Power…(which) tends to render the Ego a free agent…It is, in fact, in virtue of the Will that we are not mere thinking Automata, mere puppets to be pulled by leading strings….’

Carpenter: Mental Physiology, p.27

‘ Man is but a thinking machine, his conduct entirely determined by his original constitution, modified by subsequent conditions over which he has no control, and his fancied power of self-direction being altogether a delusion; - and hence the notions of duty or responsibility have no real foundation; man’s character being formed for him and not by him and his mode of action in each individual case being simply the reaction of his brain upon impressions which called it into play. This creed, which is commonly called Criminality is but one form of insanity, and ought to be treated as such’

Carpenter: Mental Physiology, p.3

Huxley, T.H. (1874): On Animal AutomatismAnimals are ‘more or less

conscious, sensitive, automata…they feel as we do but their actions are the results of their physical organisation …they are machines one part of which (the nervous system) … is provided with a special apparatus, the function of which is the calling into existence of those states of consciousness which hare termed sensations, emotions and ideas……We are conscious automata.’

Huxley (1874): Animal Automatism

‘The doctrine of continuity is too well-established for it to be permissable to me to suppose that any complex natural phenomenon comes into existence suddenly, and without being precededbysimpler modifications; and very strong arguments would be needed to prove that such complex phenomena as those of consciousness, first make their appearance in Man’ (p.236)

‘

Huxley: Physical Basis of Life (1868)

‘The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls…they are alarmed lest man’s moral nature be debased by the increase in his wisdom’ and, he continues, ‘I confess their fears seem to me to be well founded’ (p.160).

Carpenter, Nature and Man (1888)‘the plan was all perfect from the beginning’(p.408)

‘…the doctrine of evolution …. leads Man ever onwards and upwards…’ (p.404)

‘The highest sciences are completely in accord with the highest religion, in directing us to recognise the omnipresence and constantly sustaining energy of a personal Deity’ (p.183)

Carpenter (November 1874) Metaphysical Society

‘A baseline which commands common consent….what is ascertained by a comparison of experiences to be the common consciousness of mankind: automatism does not pass this test’

Cardinal Manning, Contemporary Review (1871)

‘…we have just as much evidence for the existence of a material world outside ourselves as we have of a self-determining power within ourselves. Both are the universal experience of all men’.

Libet’s neurochronology(from Giorgio Marchetti, 2005)

W.B.Carpenter, November 1874, Lecture to London Metaphysical

Society

‘I fail to perceive on what ground a distinct volitional effort….can be regarded as other than the cause (of a voluntary movement)’

The End

Human Automatism• ‘Victorian physiology and human automatism’

C.U.M.Smith

• ‘Contemporary automatism: the reification of willing’Holly Andersen

• ‘How emergence might overcome epiphenomenalism’Samuel Thomsen