William Benjamin Carpenter
Encyclopedia
William Benjamin Carpenter MD
CB FRS (29 October 1813 – November 19, 1885) was an English
physician
, invertebrate
zoologist and physiologist. He was instrumental in the early stages of the unified University of London
.
, the eldest son of Dr Lant Carpenter
and his wife, Anna Carpenter (née Penn). His father was an important Unitarian
preacher who influenced a "rising generation of Unitarian intellectuals, including James Martineau
and the Westminster Reviews John Bowring
." From his father, Carpenter inherited a belief in the essential lawfulness of the creation: this meant that natural causes were the explanation of the world as we find it. William embraced this "naturalistic cosmogeny" as his starting point.
Carpenter was apprenticed to the eye surgeon John Bishop Estlin
, who was also the son of a Unitarian minister, and accompanied him to the West Indies in 1833. He attended medical classes at University College London
(1834–35), and then went to the University of Edinburgh
(1835–39), where he received his MD
in 1839. Later, in 1861, he also received an LL.D.
from the University of Edinburgh.
On his resignation in 1879, Carpenter was appointed CB in recognition of his services to education. He died on 19 Nov 1885 in London
, from burn injuries occasioned by the accidental upsetting of the fire heating a vapour bath he was taking. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery
.
was recognized in 1844 by his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. His appointment as Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution
in 1845 enabled him to exhibit his powers as a teacher and lecturer. His gift of ready speech and luminous interpretation placing him in the front rank of exponents, at a time when the popularization of science was in its infancy.
He worked hard as investigator, author, editor, demonstrator and lecturer throughout his life; but it was his researches in marine zoology
, notably in the "lower" organisms, as Foraminifera
and Crinoid
s, that were most valuable. These researches gave an impetus to deep-sea exploration, an outcome of which was in 1868 the oceanographic survey with HMS Lightning
and later the more famous Challenger Expedition
. He took a keen and laborious interest in the evidence adduced by Canadian geologist
s as to the organic nature of the so-called Eozoon canadense, discovered in the Laurentian strata, also called the North American craton, and at the time of his death had nearly finished a monograph on the subject, defending the now discredited theory of its animal origin. He was an adept in the use of the microscope
, and his popular treatise on it stimulated many to explore this new aid. He was awarded the Royal Medal
in 1861.
Carpenter's most famous work is the 1853 Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors which was one of the first temperance books (Washingtonian Movement) to promote the fact that alcoholism is a disease.
In 1856 Carpenter became Registrar of the University of London
, and held the office for twenty-three years. Carpenter gave qualified support to Darwin
but he had reservations as to the application of evolution to man's intellectual and spiritual nature.
. Together with William Hamilton
and Thomas Laycock
they provided the foundations on which adaptive unconscious is based today. They observed that the human perceptual system almost completely operates outside of conscious awareness. These same observations have been made by Hermann Helmholtz. Because these views were in conflict with the theories of Descartes, they were largely neglected, until the cognitive revolution
of the 1950s. in 1874 Carpenter noticed that the more he studied the mechanism of thought, the more clear it became that it operates largely outside awareness. He noticed that the unconscious prejudices can be stronger than conscious thought and that they are more dangerous since they happen outside of conscious.
He also noticed that emotional reactions can occur outside of conscious until attention is drawn to them:
He also asserted both the freedom of the will and the existence of the Ego. See also Sigmund Freud
, William James
, Unconscious mind
.
. Louisa was born about 1815/1820 in England; she died in 1885.
Their marriage had the following issue:
via NAHSTE.
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
CB FRS (29 October 1813 – November 19, 1885) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
zoologist and physiologist. He was instrumental in the early stages of the unified University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
.
Life
Carpenter was born on 29 Oct 1813 in ExeterExeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
, the eldest son of Dr Lant Carpenter
Lant Carpenter
Lant Carpenter, Dr. was an English educator and Unitarian minister.Lant Carpenter was born in Kidderminster, the third son of George Carpenter and his wife Mary ....
and his wife, Anna Carpenter (née Penn). His father was an important Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
preacher who influenced a "rising generation of Unitarian intellectuals, including James Martineau
James Martineau
James Martineau was an English religious philosopher influential in the history of Unitarianism. For 45 years he was Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in Manchester New College, the principal training college for British Unitarianism.-Early life:He was born in Norwich,...
and the Westminster Reviews John Bowring
John Bowring
Sir John Bowring, KCB was an English political economist, traveller, miscellaneous writer, polyglot, and the 4th Governor of Hong Kong.- Early life :...
." From his father, Carpenter inherited a belief in the essential lawfulness of the creation: this meant that natural causes were the explanation of the world as we find it. William embraced this "naturalistic cosmogeny" as his starting point.
Carpenter was apprenticed to the eye surgeon John Bishop Estlin
John Bishop Estlin
John Bishop Estlin was an English ophthalmic surgeon.-Life:Estlin was the son of the Unitarian minister John Prior Estlin, who kept a well-known school in a large house at the top of St. Michael's Hill, Bristol, and was born there on 26 December 1785...
, who was also the son of a Unitarian minister, and accompanied him to the West Indies in 1833. He attended medical classes at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
(1834–35), and then went to the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
(1835–39), where he received his MD
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
in 1839. Later, in 1861, he also received an LL.D.
Legum Doctor
Legum Doctor is a doctorate-level academic degree in law, or an honorary doctorate, depending on the jurisdiction. The double L in the abbreviation refers to the early practice in the University of Cambridge to teach both Canon Law and Civil Law, the double L indicating the plural, Doctor of both...
from the University of Edinburgh.
On his resignation in 1879, Carpenter was appointed CB in recognition of his services to education. He died on 19 Nov 1885 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, from burn injuries occasioned by the accidental upsetting of the fire heating a vapour bath he was taking. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....
.
Career
His graduation thesis on the nervous system of invertebrates won a gold medal, and led to his first books. His work in comparative neurologyNeurology
Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...
was recognized in 1844 by his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. His appointment as Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
in 1845 enabled him to exhibit his powers as a teacher and lecturer. His gift of ready speech and luminous interpretation placing him in the front rank of exponents, at a time when the popularization of science was in its infancy.
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, notably in the "lower" organisms, as Foraminifera
Foraminifera
The Foraminifera , or forams for short, are a large group of amoeboid protists which are among the commonest plankton species. They have reticulating pseudopods, fine strands of cytoplasm that branch and merge to form a dynamic net...
and Crinoid
Crinoid
Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms . Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon, "a lily", and eidos, "form". They live both in shallow water and in depths as great as 6,000 meters. Sea lilies refer to the crinoids which, in their adult form, are...
s, that were most valuable. These researches gave an impetus to deep-sea exploration, an outcome of which was in 1868 the oceanographic survey with HMS Lightning
HMS Lightning
Ten ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Lightning.*The first Lightning was an 8-gun fire ship launched in 1691 and captured by the French in 1705....
and later the more famous Challenger Expedition
Challenger expedition
The Challenger expedition of 1872–76 was a scientific exercise that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. The expedition was named after the mother vessel, HMS Challenger....
. He took a keen and laborious interest in the evidence adduced by Canadian geologist
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
s as to the organic nature of the so-called Eozoon canadense, discovered in the Laurentian strata, also called the North American craton, and at the time of his death had nearly finished a monograph on the subject, defending the now discredited theory of its animal origin. He was an adept in the use of the microscope
Microscope
A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy...
, and his popular treatise on it stimulated many to explore this new aid. He was awarded the Royal Medal
Royal Medal
The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal, is a silver-gilt medal awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge" and one for "distinguished contributions in the applied sciences" made within the Commonwealth of...
in 1861.
Carpenter's most famous work is the 1853 Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors which was one of the first temperance books (Washingtonian Movement) to promote the fact that alcoholism is a disease.
In 1856 Carpenter became Registrar of the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
, and held the office for twenty-three years. Carpenter gave qualified support to Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
but he had reservations as to the application of evolution to man's intellectual and spiritual nature.
Adaptive unconscious
Carpenter is considered as one of the founders of the modern theory of the adaptive unconsciousAdaptive unconscious
The adaptive unconscious is a set of mental processes influencing judgment and decision making, in a way that is inaccessible to introspective awareness...
. Together with William Hamilton
Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet was a Scottish metaphysician.-Early life:He was born in Glasgow. He was from an academic family, including Robert Hamilton, the economist...
and Thomas Laycock
Thomas Laycock (physiologist)
Thomas Laycock was an English neurophysiologist who was a native of York.Among medical historians, he is best known for his influence on the young John Hughlings Jackson and the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne....
they provided the foundations on which adaptive unconscious is based today. They observed that the human perceptual system almost completely operates outside of conscious awareness. These same observations have been made by Hermann Helmholtz. Because these views were in conflict with the theories of Descartes, they were largely neglected, until the cognitive revolution
Cognitive revolution
The cognitive revolution is the name for an intellectual movement in the 1950s that began what are known collectively as the cognitive sciences. It began in the modern context of greater interdisciplinary communication and research...
of the 1950s. in 1874 Carpenter noticed that the more he studied the mechanism of thought, the more clear it became that it operates largely outside awareness. He noticed that the unconscious prejudices can be stronger than conscious thought and that they are more dangerous since they happen outside of conscious.
He also noticed that emotional reactions can occur outside of conscious until attention is drawn to them:
- "Our feelings towards persons and objects may undergo most important changes, without our being in the least degree aware, until we have our attention directed to our own mental state, of the alteration which has taken place in them."
He also asserted both the freedom of the will and the existence of the Ego. See also Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
, Unconscious mind
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
.
Family Information
Carpenter married Louisa Powell in 1840 in BristolBristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
. Louisa was born about 1815/1820 in England; she died in 1885.
Their marriage had the following issue:
- Philip Herbert CarpenterPhilip Herbert CarpenterPhilip Herbert Carpenter, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S., born in February 1852 in London, fourth son of Dr. William Benjamin Carpenter, died October 21, 1891, at Eton College, England, in at age 39. He took his own life, by self-administration of chloroform during a bout of temporary insanity caused by...
(1852–1891). A master at Eton CollegeEton CollegeEton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
, he was a zoologist who assisted his father and wrote extensively on fossils. - William Lant Carpenter was born about 1845/1850 in Bristol, Somerset, England. William married Annie Viret about 1870/1871 in England. Annie was born about 1850 in England. Her mother was the daughter of Henry CortHenry CortHenry Cort was an English ironmaster. During the Industrial Revolution in England, Cort began refining iron from pig iron to wrought iron using innovative production systems. In 1783 he patented the puddling process for refining iron ore...
, who invented the puddling processPuddling (metallurgy)Puddling was an Industrial Revolution means of making iron and steel. In the original puddling technique, molten iron in a reverberatory furnace was stirred with rods, which were consumed in the process...
for iron. - Joseph Estlin Carpenter was born 5 October 1844 in Bristol and died 2 June 1927. He was a UnitarianUnitarianismUnitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
and theologian. - Unknown male Carpenter was born about 1842/1855 in Bristol.
See also
Records of William Benjamin Carpenter at the University of EdinburghUniversity of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
via NAHSTE.
- Student Records (1839)
- Letter to Sir Charles Lyell from William Benjamin Carpenter (1850)
- Correspondence to Sir Archibald Geikie: Thomas Lauder Brunton to William Sweetland Dallas (1857-1913)
- Letter to Sir Charles Lyell from William Benjamin Carpenter (1863)
- Letter to Sir Charles Lyell from William Benjamin Carpenter (1864)
- Letter to Sir Charles Lyell from William Benjamin Carpenter (1865)
- Letter to Sir Charles Lyell from William Benjamin Carpenter (1865)
- Letter to Sir Charles Lyell from William Benjamin Carpenter (1866)
- Mary CarpenterMary CarpenterMary Carpenter was an English educational and social reformer. The daughter of a Unitarian minister, she founded a ragged school and reformatories, bringing previously unavailable educational opportunities to poor children and young offenders in Bristol.She published articles and books on her work...
, his sister - Phillip Pearsall CarpenterPhillip Pearsall CarpenterPhilip Pearsall Carpenter Rev. Dr. , who in 1841, was ordained Presbyterian minister in England, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in 1860, and whose field work as a malacologist or conchologist in North America is still well regarded today...
, his brother - Dr Lant CarpenterLant CarpenterLant Carpenter, Dr. was an English educator and Unitarian minister.Lant Carpenter was born in Kidderminster, the third son of George Carpenter and his wife Mary ....
, his father - European and American voyages of scientific explorationEuropean and American voyages of scientific explorationThe era of European and American voyages of scientific exploration followed the Age of Discovery and were inspired by a new confidence in science and reason that arose in the Age of Enlightenment...
External links
- Fullerian Professorships
- Works of William Benjamin Carpenter at the Biodiversity Heritage LibraryBiodiversity Heritage LibraryThe Biodiversity Heritage Library is a project for the digitization of literature on biodiversity. It was founded in 2005 and was initially formed by ten United States and British libraries....