The Mind's Not-So-New Science: Thinking About Thinking in the Modern World

Catalog description

What is a mind? Who has one? How can you know? This course investigates how psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, statisticians, test-makers, medical practitioners, linguists, economists, and others wrestled with these questions from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries all across the globe. Through analyses of treatises, letters, newspapers, tests, illustrations, diagrams, instruments, and videos, we follow how theorists of the mind, thinking, rationality, madness, and more were attuned to one another and to the societal developments around them. "The mind" and its associated ideas have their own, particular history - pinning down what it is has been thought consistently important yet never at all obvious. Through this course, we will see how knowledge of minds was crucial for defining good thoughts, for arbitrating who counted in society, and for arguing over what makes us human.