Cited by T. Quick, 'Disciplining Physiological Psychology: Cinematographs as Epistemic Devices, 1897-1922', Science in Context 30 (4), pp. 423-474.
Description:

'The first part thus examines Bergson’s cinematographic characterization of mechanism, along with the ‘vital’ evolution to which he opposed it. It considers the relevance of this opposition to Sherrington’s physiological science, thereby examining the interaction between mechanical, vital, and physical modes of explanation in physiological psychology at this time (Young [1970] 1990; Smith 1973; Daston 1978; Jacyna 1981).'

 

'Despite Sherrington's physicalist sympathies, he (like most late-nineteenth-century physiologists) remained firmly within a natural philosophic discourse in which philosophers, psychologists and physiologists shared conceptual terminologies and objects of explanation.  Roger Smith has shown for example how the concept of  'inhibition'  served as a place-holder for debates regarding mental hierarchies at this time. Able to denote both the suppression of nervous response and the control of bodily impulse, inhibition constituted a site at which physiological and psychological claims came together to address a common object. At stake in discussions of it was not only the possibility that nerve activity might depend on the autonomous actions of psychologically individual cells, but the relation between mind, the brain, and the nervous system more generally (Smith 1993, 16-19; see also Smith 1973).'