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Résumé (Français):La nature et la localisation de l’âme ont longtemps intrigué philosophes et médecin dans leur quête de la vérité. Depuis la nuit des temps, l’humanité plaça en son cœur l’âme du monde, le brasier de ses passions, les arcanes de sa raison et toutes les facultés qui font de nous ce qu’on est. L’effort des penseurs à travers les siècles et les civilisations a permis de remettre en question la domination du cardiocentrisme ancestrale. L’exploration de l’âme étant intimement lié à la découverte du cerveau, elle devait nécessairement traverser la plus décisif des évolutions, celle de l’encéphalocentrisme. Ce mémoire retracera les fondements civilisationnels du cardiocentrisme, les courants philosophiques clés et les révolutions majeurs qui menèrent à notre compréhension actuelle du cerveau. Nous voguerons doctrines, dogmes et paradigmes des origines aux Temps modernes sous le prisme de la médecine, de la philosophie et de la religieux puisque ainsi furent bâtit nos mondes et ainsi ils disparaitront. Title:Of the Soul or the cardiocentric drift of Brains. Abstract:The nature and location of the soul have long puzzled philosophers and physicians in their quest for the Truth. Since the dawn of time, humanity has lodged in its heart the soul of the world, the inferno of its passions, the arcane of its reason and all the faculties that make us who we are. The effort of thinkers through the centuries and civilizations has made it possible to question the domination of the ancestral cardiocentrism. The exploration of the soul being intimately linked to the discovery of the brain, necessarily had to go through the most crucial evolution, that of encephalocentrism. In this work, we will trace the civilizational foundations of cardiocentrism, the key philosophical currents and the major revolutions that led to our present understanding of the brain. We will navigate doctrines, dogmas, and paradigms from the earliest beginnings to Modern Times through the prism of medicine, philosophy, and religion, since this is how our worlds were built and how they will disappear.

Our current knowledge of the structure, function, and diseases of the brain comes from direct examination of its substance. In the last centuries, only a few elite had managed to retrieve, gather, and preserve the elusive brain for their own research. The resulting brain collections, stored in formalin-filled jars or dried up in cabinets, served anatomical, neuropathological, anthropometric, ideological, and diagnostic purposes. In the 1960s, the first modern brain banks actively collecting and strategically preserving both diseased and healthy brains to be consequently distributed to the scientific community were instituted. In an era where state-of-the-art biochemical "Omic" studies and advanced metabolic and molecular neuroimaging exist, it is now, more than ever, that postmortem brain investigations must be performed. Only through the comparison and integration of postmortem neuropathological and biochemical findings and antemortem data from clinical, neuropsychological neuroimaging, and other biomarker examinations can we truly understand neurological disease mechanisms. Brain banks supplying brain specimens, antemortem information, and postmortem diagnosis are a major benefactor of brain research.

Article, Herophilus of Chalcedon (c.330-250 BC) is famous as one of the leading figures in the development of medicine in Ptolemaic Alexandria around the first half of the third century BC. However, his medical science seems to have intrinsic continuity of thought with Hippocratic medicine. Herophilus followed the medical principle formulated in the Hippocratic treatise On the Nature of Man, when he made his methodological pronouncement to the effect that primary parts of the human body should be perceptible by the senses. Herophilus rejected cardiocentrism, introduced by his teacher Praxagoras into the medical school of Cos, and returned to Hippocratic encephalocentrism, as represented by the author of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease. Herophilus differentiated between the faculties of the soul and the ones attributed to the nature. In his differentiation between these two faculties, Herophilus probably had in mind the Hippocratic conception of nature as specifically applied to the domain of the human body, as distinct from the soul. Herophilus’ commitment to Hippocratic medicine is confirmed by his literary works on some of the Hippocratic texts. It is probable that Herophilus regarded himself as a more faithful successor than his teacher to the tradition of Hippocratic medicine. His anatomical researches on the structure and functions of the brain, motivated by his loyalty to the Hippocratic tradition, led him to innovative contributions to the development of medicine., Archaeology of Intellectual Aspects of European Culture, P.5-30