Abstract

Whilst the origins of the words “neurology” and “neurologist” may be traced to the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, “neuroscience” and “neuroscientist” prove to have been of much more recent coinage, probably in the third quarter of the twentieth century. This article briefly explores those origins and then asks whether it is legitimate to fit the terms retrospectively to practice and practitioners investigating the nervous system in earlier times.

Introduction

“As the twentieth century drew to a close, a new empire of ideas emerged, based on the notion that adding the prefix ‘neuro’ to any noun made it immediately respectable and superior to every other noun [1].”

Having previously examined the origins of the words “neurology” and “neurologist” [2], this companion article seeks to do the same for “neuroscience” and “neuroscientist(s)”. Many neurologists are involved not only in clinical care but also in the investigation of neurological disorders in all their ramifications and may therefore regard themselves, or be regarded as, pursuing disciplines within the frame of neuroscience, hence acting as neuroscientists.

Neuroscience

The American neurophysiologist Ralph Waldo Gerard (1900-1974) is sometimes credited with coining the word “neuroscience” sometime in the mid-1950s [3,4]. As George Adelman pointed out in his editor’s preface to the first edition of the Encyclopedia of neuroscience, published in 1987, whilst the word was “probably first used in its present sense by Ralph W. Gerard in the late 1950s”, neuroscience “gained wider acceptance and use after the Neurosciences Research Program, organised at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Francis O. Schmitt [(1903-1995)] in 1962, began its meetings and publications programs” [3]. Indeed, the first Pubmed entry with “neuroscience” in the title is a paper by Ray Snider on the subject of “neuroscience training” published in 1967 [5]. Schmitt’s ambition for his Neurosciences Research Programme had apparently been to integrate the existing disciplines studying the brain and behaviour.

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) was founded in 1969 and held its first annual meeting in 1971. Gerard played a significant role in the foundation of SfN and its highest honour, the Ralph W. Gerard Award, is named for him, awarded annually for the recipient’s lifetime achievement.  SfN produced a volume to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2021 in which Schmitt was credited as using the term “neuroscience” for the first time in 1962.  A logo on the cover of the SfN anniversary volume read “Celebrating 50 years 1969-2019” [6].

The British Neuroscience Association had its origins in the Brain Research Association, founded in 1968 but it was not until 1996 that it was renamed (by member vote) as the British Neuroscience Association (http://www.bna.org.uk/about-us/our-history.html). The organisation chose to mark its 50th anniversary in 2015: in a celebratory article, Steven Rose also credited Schmitt with coining the word “neuroscience” [7]. The European Neuroscience Association dates to 1975 (https://uia.org/s/or/en/1100009375).

No discipline can be considered complete without a journal or journals dedicated to the communication and dissemination of its evolving subject matter. The journal Neuroscience was founded in 1976 as the official journal of the International Brain Research Organization. The Journal of Neuroscience, the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, was first published in 1981 [6]. The European Journal of Neuroscience first appeared in 1989.

Of course, the usage of vocabulary within the professional domain may not necessarily coincide with usage in society at large and linguistic novelty often moves faster in spoken than written forms. The earliest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for “neuroscience” dates to 1944, from the Austin (Texas) Statesman of 18th August: “The hospital has very fine specialists in the neuro-sciences; and has done remarkable work in nerve surgery and other treatment”. Also predating Schmitt, but possibly not Gerard, is the quotation from the Sydney Morning Herald of 25th August 1960: “A Melbourne man and his family will give £500,000 for a neuro-science institute at the Alfred Hospital in gratitude for treatment the man received at the hospital”. Perhaps the hyphenation in both these quotations was indicative of an awareness, at some level of consciousness, that these usages represented novel blend words.  The OED’s earliest journal quotation is from Nature on 5th September 1970: “During the past few years neuroscience, comprising the sciences of brain and behaviour, has been differentiating, integrating, regrouping”, this from a piece written by Schmitt [8].

Neuroscientist(s)

The OED’s earliest recorded usage of the word “neuroscientist” – meaning “An expert or specialist in neuroscience” – is from 1964, followed by its appearance in the abstract of a 1976 paper in the American Journal of Roentgenology: “Computed tomography (CT) has led to extensive reassessment of and alterations in the practices of neuroscientists”[9]. However, “Neuroscientists” had featured in the titles of two papers published in 1975 [10,11].

Retrospectivism

Based on the datings outlined here, it is established that the now pervasive terms “neuroscience” and “neuroscientist” originated around the midpoint of the twentieth century, sometime between the mid-1940s and early 1960s, hence somewhat earlier than Brendan Kelly’s suggested formulation, “As the twentieth century drew to a close”, for the emergence of “neuro” words [1].

One school of historicism would argue, based on these dates, that no one could have studied or researched in the field of neuroscience prior to the mid-1950s, and no one could have been a neuroscientist before 1964, since such a claim would be anachronism. Thus Willis, Hughlings Jackson, Cajal, and a host of other pioneers could not, according to this line of argument, legitimately be described as studying neuroscience or to have been practising as neuroscientists. Similar arguments are sometimes targeted at attempts at retrospective diagnosis: for example, no one could be diagnosed with cholera before Koch identified the cholera vibrio (or should that be Filippo Pacini, who had seen the organism thirty years before Koch?).

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Many may see this standpoint as perverse, perhaps wilfully so. Certainly there are counterarguments, of which the following, developed from previous cogitations on retrospective diagnosis [12], is my preferred position. As has been shown, the categories of “neuroscience” and “neuroscientist” are historically contingent human constructs, essentially linguistic inventions.  However, the biological workings of neural systems may be viewed as transhistorical, pre-existent entities awaiting discovery, not invention.  Neurobiological mechanisms long predate the nomenclature of “neuroscience” and “neuroscientist”. This has indeed been acknowledged: a seminal work of 1987 delineated the “origins of neuroscientific concepts” in the nineteenth century (and indeed earlier in some cases, e.g. Robert Whytt’s eighteenth century work on reflexes) [13]. A perusal of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, first published in 1992 with a scope “that explores the historical development of neuroscience, covering key figures, concepts, and methodologies in the field”, discloses many papers addressing events occurring before the 1950s/1960s.

There would thus appear to be two (apparently) mutually contradictory states – arbitrary linguistic creation versus natural facticity.  This situation may be reminiscent of Schrödinger’s famous (feline) thought experiment wherein indeterminacy prevails until an observer makes an observation or a measurement. In light of this, one may argue for the content of sciences as both pre-existent of their historical description, and capable of retroactive effects after their historical description. Science may then, in some manner, escape temporal specificity.

Thus, I would argue that Willis/Jackson/Cajal etc. simultaneously were students of neuroscience (meaning the biological entity) and were not students of neuroscience (meaning the historical category). From our historical vantage point of observation, there is therefore no absolute impediment to regarding these individuals as having studied neuroscience and as having been neuroscientists.

References

  1. Kelly B. In search of madness. A psychiatrist’s travels through the history of mental illness. Dublin: Gill Books, 2022:235.
  2. Larner AJ. The origins of “neurology” and “neurologist”. Adv Clin Neurosci Rehabil 2025;23(3):22-23. https://doi.org/10.47795/MTRH2044
  3. Adelman G (ed.). Encyclopedia of neuroscience. Boston: Birkhauser, 1987:xi.
  4. Triarhou LC. Ralph W. Gerard (1900-1974). J Neurol 2025;272:42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-024-12760-z
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  12. Larner AJ. Retrodiagnosis: the ontological, the epistemic, and the ethical. In: Larner AJ. Neuroliterature 3. Biography, Semiology, Miscellany. More perspectives on the nervous system and its disorders. Gloucester: Choir Press, 2025:9-18.
  13. Clarke E, Jacyna LS. Nineteenth-century origins of neuroscientific concepts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520352087