In Quest of the Thinker of Science

Abstract

The relationships among mind, self, conscious thought, discursive reasoning, and social context became central issues in nineteenth- and twentieth-century psychology, linguistics, sociology, and epistemology, with direct implications for the nature of scientific knowledge. Minds and selves can be conceptualized as expressions of interactions between an individual’s nervous system and their physical and social environment. Is conscious thought, and in particular discursive reasoning, under the control of the individual thinker, or does it reflect societal influences? Nineteenth-century experimental neurophysiology and psychology began to reveal the role that systemic features of the nervous system and the brain play in producing consciousness. Concurrently, sociologists, psychologists, and linguists were proposing roles for the unconscious, language, society, and innate gestalten in shaping and limiting conscious thought. These ideas converged in the theories of individual scientists.