Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/89

 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 343

II

The significance of psychoanalysis in the history of science may be best illustrated perhaps by pointing out the background, the historic setting of Freud's invaluable contributions.

The dominant conception in all the biologic sciences, during
 * the period immediately preceding Darwin's epoch-making discoveries

I and before Darwinism made itself felt, may be designated as

atomism.

The age of atomism in biology was preceded by, and to a large extent cotemporaneous with, atomism in politics, philosophy, •■ theology and education; for in every age the dominant idea spreads

Itself over the whole realm of its characteristic culture.

Political atomism culminated in the French Revolution and the i,. American Declaration of Independence.

The sense theory of knowledge carried to its logical extreme

by Hume with his denial of causality and true selfhood, by Leibniz

with his theory of monads, and by Kant's teacher, Wolff, with his

so-called Rational Psychology, illustrates the philosophical atomism

' of the period.

Theological atomism manifested itself in the crude theism of that period separating a kind of atomic divinity from the aggre- gate of units called the Universe, and representing that unit as standing in a sort of preferential relationship to the other atoms — an off-shoot, clearly, of the Leibniz-Wolffian doctrine.

Educational atomism blossomed forth in the theories of Rousseau, notably his 'Emile'.

Finally upon the sociologic-economic field we have, towards the end of the atomistic p«(iod, the materialistic conception of history culminating in the doctrine of the struggle between classes, a little earlier the laissez-faire doctrine and between the middle and the end of that period, again, the formulation of the philosophical anarchism of Godwin and Proudhon. Thus the various cultural movements manifested the same or a similar dominant note— indiv- idualism, atomism.

Closely upon the heels of this atomistic Weltanschauung, there followed the conception of energy. Indeed, the doctrine of energy was inherent in the standpoint of atomism. Just as atomism attempted to show us the constitution, 'energeticism' was to explain the dynamics of the universe and of human existence. Then followed