Editing Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis

{{Short description|French philosopher}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2020}}
{{Infobox scientist
|name              = Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis
|image             = Pierre-Jean-George Cabanis by Blondel (19 c., priv. coll).jpg
|image_size        = 220px
|caption           = Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis
|birth_date        = {{birth date|df=yes|1757|06|5}}
|birth_place       = [[Cosnac]], [[Corrèze]], France
|death_date        = {{death date and age|1808|5|5|1757|6|5|df=y}}
|death_place       = [[Seraincourt, Val-d'Oise]], France
|residence         =
|citizenship       =
|nationality       = French
|ethnicity         =
|field             = [[Physiology]]
|work_institutions =
|alma_mater        =
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|doctoral_students =
|known_for         =
|influences        =
|influenced        =
|prizes            =
|religion          =
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}}
'''Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis''' ({{IPA|fr|kabanis|lang}}; 5 June 1757 – 5 May 1808) was a French [[physiologist]], [[freemason]]<ref>Dictionnaire de la franc-maçonnerie et des francs-maçons (Alec MELLOR, Belfond ed., 1974)</ref><ref>Dictionnaire universel de la Franc-Maçonnerie (Monique Cara, Jean-Marc Cara and Marc de Jode, Larousse ed., 2011)</ref><ref>La Franc Maçonnerie dans l'Etat - page 59 (Goemaere, 1859)</ref> and [[French materialism|materialist]] philosopher.<ref>{{cite book|chapter=Cabanis, Pierre-Jean-Georges|title=Biographie universelle|volume=Tome premier, AAGE-CORN|year=1833|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T7I_AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA419|page=419}}</ref>

{{anchor|Biography|History}}

==Life==
Cabanis was born at [[Cosnac]] ([[Corrèze]]), the son of Jean Baptiste Cabanis (1723–1786), a [[lawyer]] and agronomist.  At the age of ten, he attended the college of [[Brive-la-Gaillarde|Brives]], where he showed great aptitude for study, but his independence of spirit was so great that he was almost constantly in a state of rebellion against his teachers and was finally expelled. He was then taken to [[Paris, France|Paris]] by his father and left to carry on his studies at his own discretion for two years. From 1773 to 1775 he travelled in [[Poland]] and Germany, and on his return to Paris he devoted himself mainly to [[poetry]]. About this time he sent to the [[Académie française]] a translation of the passage from [[Homer]] proposed for their prize, and, though he did not win, he received so much encouragement from his friends that he contemplated translating the whole of the [[Iliad]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=913}}

At his father's wish, he gave up writing and decided to engage in a more settled profession,  selecting [[medicine]]. In 1789 his ''Observations sur les hôpitaux'' (''Observations on hospitals'', 1790) procured him an appointment as administrator of [[hospital]]s in Paris, and in 1795 he became professor of [[hygiene]] at the medical school of Paris, a post which he exchanged for the chair of legal medicine and the history of medicine in 1799.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=914}}

Partly because of his poor health, he tended not to practise as a physician, his interests lying in the deeper problems of medical and physiological science. During the last two years of [[Honoré Mirabeau]]'s life, Cabanis was intimately connected with him; Cabanis wrote the four papers on public education which were found among Mirabeau's papers at his death (and Cabanis edited them soon afterwards in 1791). During the illness which terminated his life Mirabeau trusted entirely to Cabanis' professional skills. Of the death of Mirabeau, Cabanis drew up a detailed narrative, intended as a justification of his treatment of the case. He was enthusiastic about the [[French Revolution]] and became a member of the [[Council of Five Hundred]] and then of the [[Senate (France)|Senate]], and the dissolution of the Directory was the result of a motion which he made to that effect. His political career was brief. Hostile to the policy of [[Napoleon Bonaparte]], he rejected every offer of a place under his government. He died at [[Meulan]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=914}}

His body is buried in the Pantheon and his heart in Auteuil Cemetery in Paris.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Laffitte |first1=Pierre |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xKhTZ3JW3-gC&pg=RA2-PA103 |title=La Revue occidentale philosophique, sociale et politique |last2=Jeannolle |first2=Charles |date=1890 |publisher=Aux bureau de la Revue |volume=2 |pages=103 |language=fr}}</ref>

==Works==
A complete edition of Cabanis's works was begun in 1825, and five volumes were published. His principal work, ''Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme'' (''On the relations between the physical and moral aspects of man'', 1802), consists in part of memoirs, read in 1796 and 1797 to the institute, and is a sketch of physiological [[psychology]]. Psychology is with Cabanis directly linked on to [[biology]], for sensibility, the fundamental fact, is the highest grade of life and the lowest of intelligence. All the intellectual processes are evolved from sensibility, and sensibility itself is a property of the [[nervous system]]. The [[Soul (spirit)|soul]] is not an entity, but a faculty; thought is the function of the [[brain]]. Just as the [[stomach]] and [[intestines]] receive food and digest it, so the brain receives impressions, digests them, and has as its organic secretion, thought.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=914}}

Alongside this [[materialism]], Cabanis held another principle. He belonged in biology to the vitalistic school of [[Georg Ernst Stahl|G.E. Stahl]], and in the posthumous work, ''Lettre sur les causes premières'' (1824), the consequences of this opinion became clear. Life is something added to the organism: over and above the universally diffused sensibility there is some living and productive power to which we give the name of Nature. It is impossible to avoid ascribing both intelligence and will to this power. This living power constitutes the ego, which is truly immaterial and immortal. Cabanis did not think that these results were out of harmony with his earlier theory.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=914}}

His work was highly appreciated by the philosopher [[Arthur Schopenhauer]], who called his work "excellent".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung|last=Schopenhauer|first=Arthur|volume=2|at=Chapter 22}}</ref>

He was a member of the masonic lodge [[Les Neuf Sœurs]] from 1778.{{citation needed|date=February 2017}} In 1786, Cabanis was elected an international member of the [[American Philosophical Society]] in Philadelphia.<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Pierre+Cabanis&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2020-12-16|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>

==Evolution==

Cabanis was an early proponent of [[History of evolutionary thought|evolution]].<ref name="Staum">Staum, Martin S. (1980). ''Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical Philosophy in the French Revolution''. Princeton University Press. pp. 188-189. {{ISBN|0-691-05301-4}}</ref><ref name="Richards">Richards. Robert J. (1987). ''Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior''. University of Chicago Press. pp. 37-47. {{ISBN|0-226-71200-1}}</ref> In the ''[[Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]'' it is stated that he "believed in spontaneous generation. Species have evolved through chance mutations ("fortuitous changes") and planned mutation ("man's experimental attempts") which change the structures of heredity."<ref>Borchert, Donald M. (2006). ''[[Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]: Volume 2''. Macmillan. p. 3. {{ISBN|0-02-865782-9}}</ref>

He influenced the work of [[Jean-Baptiste Lamarck]], who referred to Cabanis in his ''[[Philosophie Zoologique]]''.<ref name="Richards"/><ref>Ruse, Michael. (1996). ''Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology''. Harvard University Press. pp. 53-54. {{ISBN|978-0-674-03248-4}}</ref> Cabanis was an advocate of the [[inheritance of acquired characteristics]]; he also developed his own theory of [[instinct]].<ref name="Richards"/>

Cabanis made a statement that recognized a basic understanding of [[natural selection]]. Historian Martin S. Staum has written that:

<blockquote>In a simple statement of adaptation and selection theory, Cabanis argued that species that have escaped extinction "have had successively to bend and conform to sequences of circumstances, from which apparently were born, in each particular circumstance, other entirely new species, better adjusted to the new order of things."<ref name="Staum"/></blockquote>

==Notes==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==References==
* {{EB1911 |mode=cs2 |wstitle=Pierre Jean George Cabanis |volume=4 |pages=913–914 }} (This article has the mistake "Pierre Jean George Cabanis" instead of "Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis".<ref>{{cite book|title=Oeuvres complètes de Cabanis|year=1823|volume=Tome 5|page=451|publisher=Bossange frères|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89094650744;view=1up;seq=457}}</ref>)

==Further reading==
* {{cite EB9 |mode=cs2 |wstitle=Pierre Jean George Cabanis |volume=4 |page=616 }} (This article has the mistake "Pierre Jean George Cabanis" instead of "Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis".)
* {{citation |contribution-url=http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9018429/Pierre-Jean-Georges-Cabanis |title=Encyclopædia Britannica Online |contribution=Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis |ref={{harvid|''EBO''}} }}
* {{Citation|pmid=16898212|last=Baertschi|first=Bernard|year=2005|title=Diderot, Cabanis and Lamarck on psycho-physical causality.|volume=27|issue=3–4|periodical=History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences|pages=451–63}}
* {{Citation|pmid=11625280|last=Chazaud|first=J|year=1998|title=Cabanis before the guillotine|volume=32|issue=1|periodical=Histoire des sciences médicales|pages=69–73}}
* {{Citation|pmid=10857737|last1=Turgeon|first1=Y|last2=Whitaker|first2=H A|year=2000|title=Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757–1808): an early nineteenth century source for the concept of nervous energy in European behavioral neurosciences|volume=43|issue=1–3|periodical=Brain and Cognition|pages=412–417}}
* {{Citation|pmid=11615982|last=Levin|first=A|year=1984|title=Venel, Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Cabanis and the idea of scientific revolution: the French political context and the general patterns of conceptualization of scientific change|volume=22|issue=57 pt 3
|periodical=History of Science; an Annual Review of Literature, Research and Teaching|pages=303–20|doi=10.1177/007327538402200304|bibcode=1984HisSc..22..303L|s2cid=9093588}}
* {{Citation|pmid=11610770|last=Mitchell|first=H|year=1979|title=The passions according to Adam Smith and Pierre-Jean-Georges-Cabanis. Two sciences of man(1)|volume=25|periodical=The Society for the Social History of Medicine Bulletin|pages=20–7}}
* {{Citation|pmid=11609281|last=Staum|first=M S|year=1974|title=Cabanis and the science of man. J|volume=10|issue=2|periodical=Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences|pages=135–143|doi=10.1002/1520-6696(197404)10:2<135::AID-JHBS2300100202>3.0.CO;2-Z}}
* {{Citation|pmid=11610408|last=Staum|first=M S|year=1978|title=Medical components in Cabanis's science of man|volume=2|periodical=Studies in History of Biology|pages=1–31}}
* {{Citation|pmid=13603942|last=Rabinovich|first=M Kh|year=1958|title=Cabanis, Pierre Jean George on the 150th anniversary of his death|volume=13|issue=8|periodical=Vestn. Akad. Med. Nauk SSSR|pages=87–9}} (This article has the mistake "Pierre Jean George Cabanis" instead of "Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis".)
* {{Citation|pmid=14872720|last=Broussais|first=F I V|year=1951|title=[Extracts from medical doctrines and the system of nosology (1721); chapter XII from works of Cabanis.]|volume=23|issue=54|periodical=El Día médico|pages=2373–4}}
* {{DSB|first=Georges|last=Canguilhem|authorlink=Georges Canguilhem|title=Cabanis, Pierre-Jean-Georges|volume=3|pages=1–3}}

{{Académie française Seat 40}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cabanis, Pierre Jean George}}
[[Category:1757 births]]
[[Category:1808 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Corrèze]]
[[Category:French materialists]]
[[Category:Members of the Académie Française]]
[[Category:Members of the Council of Five Hundred]]
[[Category:Burials at the Panthéon, Paris]]
[[Category:Les Neuf Sœurs]]
[[Category:French physiologists]]
[[Category:French Freemasons]]
[[Category:Proto-evolutionary biologists]]
[[Category:International members of the American Philosophical Society]]