ABSTRACT
Writing in March 1870, shortly before the publication of De l'Intelligence, Ribot discussed the effect of the detachment from metaphysical issues of individual disciplines, such as ethics, psychology, physiology and linguistics. Classically, an epistemology investigates the nature, origin, scope, structures, types, method and validity of knowledge. In De l'Intelligence, Taine observes this tradition, but detaches it from its original home in the canon of philosophy. His strategy for dealing with cultural crisis was more complex than merely expressing himself in scientific language. The language of thermodynamics and of evolution was as much a part of intellectual currency in the Second Empire as is that of computers, genetics or astrophysics in the second half of the twentieth century. What people can observe, though, in De l'Intelligence is the surprising exploitation of 'scientific' results which fail to prove Taine's theory satisfactorily, in order to please his readership.
