Item #14963 The Philosophy of Human Nature. PSYCHOLOGY PHILOSOPHY, Joseph Buchanan.

The Philosophy of Human Nature

Richmond, K[Y]: John A. Grimes, 1812.

First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. 8 vo, pp vi, 336. Recent quarter leather and marbled boards; spine with red label, gilt decoration, raised bands. Fine. Buchanan (1785-1829) was an inventor and lecturer on medicine. This work, written as a series of lectures for a yet-to-be-founded medical school, made an important contribution to the development of American psychology and materialist philosophy. Buchanan denied that the soul had an independent and immaterial existence, asserting that mind is merely an organic state of matter. Riley (American Philosophy) praises both the novelty and the value of Buchanan's work, concluding "With his emphasis on the laws of association, his ingenious experiments to prove the early formation of habit, and his final conjectures on the physiology of the brain, he fulfilled the prophecy of the editor of the first American edition of the Zoonomia, who was disposed to search for the future Darwin of America in some secondary town or even village of the country."

Item #14963

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