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251 The Functions of the Brain: Gall to Ferrier (1808-1886) By Robert M. Young* THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES and particularly psychology have been made the wastebasket of the scientific revolution. In his classical discussion of The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, E. A. Burtt referred to the concept of mind as a convenient receptacle for the refuse, the chips and whittlings of science, rather than a possible object of scientific knowledge.l A. G. A. Balz made the same point in his Cartesian Studies, where he noted that psychology had to be whatever the new physics and the related metaphysics permitted it to be.2 A diagnosis of the limitations of the explanatory model of the scientific revolution has been made many times. The writings of Burtt and of A. N. Whitehead are but two examples of penetrating discussions of the difficulties involved in attempting to include biology, psychology, and the social sciences in the explanatory paradigm of the physical sciences.3 The prescriptions provided by these same authors show just how far we are from providing an alternative. It is arguable that a pre requisite to useful reconstructive work to repair what Burtt called a rather radical piece of cosmic surgery4 is at least a generation of careful historical research.5 In spite of Edwin G. Borings admirable pioneer studies, this work has not yet begun.6 Speaking of the seventeenth-century metaphysician-scientists, Burtt asks, Did it never cross their minds that sooner or later people would appear who craved verifiable knowledge about mind in the same way they craved it about physical events, and who might reasonably curse their elder scientific brethren for buying easier success in their own enterprise by throwing extra handicaps in the way of their successors in social science?7 Cartesian dualism and the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities enabled the physical sciences to develop, but this was achieved at the expense of the biological and behavioral