Charles Bonnet's neurophilosophy

Abstract

Isaac Newton's concept that auditory and visual images were transmitted by vibrations and that these vibrations were transduced to vibrations in nerves, built upon earlier ideas of vibrations in nerves by Pierre Gassendi and Thomas Willis, likely in contrast to Cartesian hydraulic models of mechanical pressure (Wallace, 2003). Newtonian vibrations strongly influenced David Hartley's neuropsychology (Glassman & Buckingham, 2007; Smith, 1987); less often discussed is the movement or vibration model of Charles Bonnet, a rather more elaborated mid-eighteenth century model of the internal representation of ideas. Bonnet, a Swiss naturalist and philosopher, proposed in an original fashion that an understanding of animal and human behavior requires, first, knowledge of how the nervous system functions.