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"There probably is in the whole range of science no problem the solution of which is more difficult than that of the relation of mental faculties to particular parts of the nervous system" ([6], p. 251). When the English surgeon, Benjamin Collins Brodie, wrote those words in 1854, the systematic attempt of the German physician and anatomist, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), to relate discrete mental faculties to particular parts of the brain had largely been discredited. Gall first elaborated his system in the 1790's, though it was not called phrenology until 1815 [25]. Although waning in influence by the time Brodie was writing almost thirty years after Gall's death, Gall's work represented a serious attempt to elucidate the problem which Brodie saw as soluble but as yet unsolved. I should like today to enquire into one important origin of the confidence shared by Gall and Brodie: that mental functions are located in different parts of the nervous system. That confidence stemmed in part from their mutual belief that the universe we inhabit is designed. One manifestation of this design is the fact that, in living organisms, structures and functions are perfectly adapted. This perfect coordination of structure and function could be found with equal ease in higher organisms such as man and in lower organisms such as insects. It could be found equally in the nervous system and the digestive system.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-1473-1_2

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