Anatomies of the Mind in Enlightenment Britain

Anatomy is a widespread metaphor among eighteenth-century British authors. Besides its proper meaning in medical contexts, ‘anatomy’ is frequently put into phrases such as ‘anatomy of nature’, ‘of the mind’, ‘of human nature’, or ‘of the light’. The common core of these different uses refers to some methodized study of the realm or phenomenon to which it is attached. In the present paper I try to reconstruct the meanings attached to ‘anatomy’ in moral contexts, i.e. in the context of the study of the mind and human nature. As this anatomical enterprise meant different things to various key actors from Locke to Reid, I will try to offer a typology by showing that various projects can be characterized as predominantly descriptive anatomies aiming at the delineation of the mind’s part (as in e.g. Locke’s case), and as predominantly functional anatomies aiming at the excavation of explanatory principles of the mind’s functioning (as e.g. in Hume’s case). I will explore the features of various attempts, thereby 1) locating them on the methodological map of eighteenth-century natural and moral inquiry with a sensitivity to how they are related to dominant methodological influences springing from Baconian and Newtonian legacies; 2) reconstructing how conceptual connections, or the lack thereof, between anatomies of the mind and anatomy proper is reflected in various stances taken on the mind-body problem in this context; 3) and exploring how anatomies of mind reflect attitudes towards religious values ranging form providential naturalism to methodological atheism.