Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 384.
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        Date: 2025-03-04 11:45:35+00:00
        From: Coughlin, Margie <m.coughlin@UCL.AC.UK>
        Subject: New open access book: William Lawrence and the Organ of Mind: The theology, medicine and politics of the brain (UCL Press)

UCL Press is delighted to announce the publication of a new open access
book that may be of interest to list subscribers: /William Lawrence and
the Organ of Mind: The theology, medicine and politics of the brain /by
Elfed Huw Price.
Download it free: https://bit.ly/3QFXuPl


William Lawrence and the Organ of Mind
The theology, medicine and politics of the brain
Elfed Huw Price
Free download: https://bit.ly/3QFXuPl

/William Lawrence and the Organ of Mind explores the historical origins
and ideological valence of the conceptualisation of thought and mind as
functions of the brain in early nineteenth-century Britain.

Taking as its starting point the controversy provoked by Lawrence’s
/Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man/, the
book draws on archival and published texts, as well as images, to reveal
overlooked parallels and connections with the concurrent rise of
phrenology and the longstanding Christian mortalist tradition. It shows
how the sentient brain served as a radical icon, marking a break with
ancient Galenic medical models and Athanasian religious dogma, and
charts how – in part through Lawrence’s contributions – it was united
with a biological vision that identified human exceptionality more
directly with the structure and function of our brains.

Elfed Huw Price’s work indicates that, although Lawrence was silenced,
his /Lectures/ lived on, a contributor to the rising tide of Victorian
naturalism, and part of a wider transformation of beliefs and values
that swept aside the ancient politico-religious structures of the
Confessional State, leaving the cerebral organ standing alongside the
soul as the source of human reason and a distinguishing feature of humanity.

Free download: https://bit.ly/3QFXuPl
uclpress.co.uk | @uclpress




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