Piers Hale

The EURIAS Fellowship will allow me to extend my historical investigation into the moral significance of evolution during the 19th century by focusing upon the debates about the metaphysical questions of mind, free will, and the existence (or not) of the soul. In my earlier work I have focused primarily upon the politics of 19th century evolutionary ideas; here, however, I will focus upon the history of the science of mind and morals. While my past and current projects establish a foundation from which to engage this topic, here I shall expand my research to include earlier conceptions of the natural history of mind and morals and take adequate account of the ways in which the work of German men of science and philosophers influenced subsequent debate in Britain.

My research will draw upon the work of established men of science as well as science popularisers and advocates of the popular and marginal sciences of phrenology, mesmerism and spiritualism. My initial findings indicate that this investigation will reveal not only that there were persistent attempts to find a place for accounts of the soul in the debates about mind, free will, and moral actions and sentiments, but that we need to take greater account of the influence of Germanic idealism and transcendental Naturphilosophie in the development of Victorian Science (and of physiology and psychology in particular) than we have done to date. This is clearly not a simple story of science displacing religion, but a story in which there was significant debate about scientific epistemology and the extent to which empiricist and experimental or idealist and intuitive accounts of scientific method might best account for the most human aspects of ourselves. The concept of soul, which was often expressive of religious sentiment in the context of mid-late 19th century British debate, was frequently grounded in conceptions that were indebted to both the earlier German Naturphilosophie and persistent vitalist traditions in biology.