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abstract |
This article deals with some aspects of the study of the mind between the 1920s and
1940s at the University of Paris. Traditionally the domain of philosophy, the study
of the mind was encroached upon by other disciplines such as history of science, ethnology,
sociology and psychology. These disciplines all had weak institutional status and
were struggling to constitute themselves as autonomous. History of science did not
as a rule reject its relationship with philosophy, whereas ethnology, sociology and
psychology were constructing their identities by breaking away from philosophy. A
discussion about Lévy-Bruhl’s <i>La mentalité primitive</i>, hosted by the Société
Française de Philosophie in 1923, showed that the positions of philosophers, sociologists
and psychologists about the questions posed by the book, namely the fixity and universality
of the mind, were strictly linked with their views about the ‘scientificity’ of ethnology.
A compromise between fixity and historical transformation of the mind was put forward
by Gaston Bachelard, who institutionally represented the discipline of history and
philosophy of science. This discipline was institutionally linked to ethnology, psychology
and sociology, but, unlike them, had no claim to ‘scientificity’. Bachelard realized
this compromise by breaking the unity of the mind and by employing an extra-institutional
discipline: psychoanalysis. His freedom of choice corresponded with an increasingly
weak institutional position for the discipline of history and philosophy of science. |