Leonardo Niro

Dr Leonardo Niro

Collaborative Fellow 2023

The forces of life and the energies of mind: The mobilization of concepts of force and energy in the life and psychological sciences in the 18th and 19th century

Inspired by the success of Newtonian analytical mechanics and thermodynamics, in the 18th and 19th centuries life scientists made use of concepts of force and energy to understand vital phenomena. When applied to the specificity of living beings, however, the concepts underwent important changes. With the establishment of scientific psychology in the 19th, we observe a similar movement in the treatment of psychic phenomena, especially considering the physiological training of most pioneer psychologists. The group intends to investigate the intricacies of this history, having as background the continuities and ruptures between the tortuous path of constitution of biology as an autonomous discipline and the positive approach to psychological processes.

More information

Research outcomes

Niro, L. (2026).

Energetics of the mind and the Parallelismusstreit: the mind-body problem and the assimilation of the law of energy conservation in German psychology, 1850-1915. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 117, 102155.

Niro, L. (2025).

‘Freedom within parameters’: Liberalism, (in)determinism, and the politics of instinct in Sigmund Exner and Sigmund Freud. History of the Human Sciences, 38(3-4), 82-108.

Niro, L. (2023).

The conservation of nervous energy: Neurophysiology and energy conservation in the work of Sigmund Exner and Josef Breuer. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 102, 1-11.

Areas of interest

Psychoanalysis Psychosocial Studies History of Psychoanalysis History Philosophy of Science Psychology

Cohort

CF1

Biography

Leonardo Niro studied Psychology in Brazil and the UK, obtaining his PhD at University College London in 2018 with a dissertation on the history of Sigmund Freud’s early engagement with physiology. He is a Lecturer at the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex (UK), where he runs the Research Group in the History of Psychoanalysis. For the ISRF, he is doing a Collaborative Fellowship in the History of Knowledge (co-funded and based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), in collaboration with Dr. Bruno Rates. The joint project explores the role played by concepts of force and energy in framing the objects of study of psychology and physiology in the 18th to the 20th century.

Biographical details correct as of 30.03.26