Cabanis and the Contemporary Neurohumanities: The Embedded Brain

This article explores the thinking of the doctor-philosopher Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757–1808) on the subject of the brain's relationship to its body and surroundings. Taking as its point of departure the neuroscientific concept of the brain's 'embedment', the article explores Cabanis's exposition of the idea that the brain is profoundly embedded in the physiological and wider physical and social context with which it interacts. The article shows that ideas about the inseparability of brain, body, and milieu were current around the time of the French Revolution, just as they are in recent thinking in the neurohumanities.