![](https://assets.cambridge.org/97811080/05289/cover/9781108005289.jpg)
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Online publication date:
- August 2010
- Print publication year:
- 2009
- First published in:
- 1874
- Online ISBN:
- 9780511694226
Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
William Carpenter (1813–85) was trained as a doctor; he was apprenticed to an eye surgeon, and later attended University College London and the University of Edinburgh, obtaining his M. D. in 1839. Rather than practising medicine, he became a teacher, specialising in neurology, and it was his work as a zoologist on marine invertebrates that brought him wide scientific recognition. His Principles of Mental Physiology, published in 1874, developed the ideas he had first expounded in the 1850s, and expounds the arguments for and against the two models of psychology then current – automatism, which assumed that the mind operates under the control of the physiology of the body for all human activity, and free will, 'an independent power, controlling and directing that activity.' Drawing on animal as well as human examples, his arguments, especially on the acquisition of mental traits in the individual, are much influenced by Darwin.
* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.
Usage data cannot currently be displayed.