Stephen T. Casper
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719091926
- eISBN:
- 9781781706992
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091926.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Since the 1990s, the English-speaking world has seen the rise of a neuroculture derived from neurology and neuroscience. The Neurologists is a book that asks how did we arrive at this moment? What is ...
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Since the 1990s, the English-speaking world has seen the rise of a neuroculture derived from neurology and neuroscience. The Neurologists is a book that asks how did we arrive at this moment? What is it about neurology and neuroscience that makes neuroculture seem self-evident? To tell this story The Neurologists charts a chronological course from the time of the French Revolution to after the ‘Decade of the Brain’ that outlines the rise of medical and scientific neurology and the emergence of neuroculture. With its focus chiefly on Great Britain, arguably the place where it all began, The Neurologists describes how Victorian physicians located in a medical culture that privileged general knowledge over narrow specialism came to be transformed into the specialized physicians now called neurologists. The Neurologists therefore recasts the received history of neurology and the history of professions and specialties. It provides new insights into the social, cultural, and institutional practices of British medical and scientific culture in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Delving into how and why physicians and scientists were interested in nerves, the nervous system, the brain, and the psyche, The Neurologists explores how Renaissance-styled men and women of medicine and science made neurology the medical field seemingly most concerned by the ‘philosophical status of man.’Less
Since the 1990s, the English-speaking world has seen the rise of a neuroculture derived from neurology and neuroscience. The Neurologists is a book that asks how did we arrive at this moment? What is it about neurology and neuroscience that makes neuroculture seem self-evident? To tell this story The Neurologists charts a chronological course from the time of the French Revolution to after the ‘Decade of the Brain’ that outlines the rise of medical and scientific neurology and the emergence of neuroculture. With its focus chiefly on Great Britain, arguably the place where it all began, The Neurologists describes how Victorian physicians located in a medical culture that privileged general knowledge over narrow specialism came to be transformed into the specialized physicians now called neurologists. The Neurologists therefore recasts the received history of neurology and the history of professions and specialties. It provides new insights into the social, cultural, and institutional practices of British medical and scientific culture in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Delving into how and why physicians and scientists were interested in nerves, the nervous system, the brain, and the psyche, The Neurologists explores how Renaissance-styled men and women of medicine and science made neurology the medical field seemingly most concerned by the ‘philosophical status of man.’
Alistair Sponsel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226523118
- eISBN:
- 9780226523255
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226523255.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This book offers a new explanation for Charles Darwin’s apparent caution in publishing On the Origin of Species, which appeared more than two decades after he privately developed his first theories ...
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This book offers a new explanation for Charles Darwin’s apparent caution in publishing On the Origin of Species, which appeared more than two decades after he privately developed his first theories of evolution by natural selection. Whereas this restraint is often attributed to Darwin’s fear of admitting that he was an evolutionist, Sponsel argues that what concerned him most was not the topic, evolution, but the transgression of publishing a theoretical book. The one other time he had tried to do so, as a young man using his theory of coral reef formation to offer an ambitious account of the history of the earth and its inhabitants, the public criticism of his “speculations” distressed him and destroyed his geological publishing strategy. Meanwhile he viewed his private speculations on species as an exhilarating distraction from the challenge of fulfilling his publishing obligations to the geological community. He plotted a conservative course for finishing his geological publications and privately bolstering the species theory that was designed to insulate him (and eventually his species theory itself) from charges of rash speculation. Sponsel’s book is a study of scientific authorship, of theorizing in natural history, and of the importance of mentorship in science. It transforms our understanding of Darwin’s first major theory, on the origin of coral reefs and atolls, as well as his evolutionary theory, and it reveals the important roles played by Darwin’s Beagle shipmates and by the geologist Charles Lyell in shaping his methods of fieldwork, theorizing, and publishing.Less
This book offers a new explanation for Charles Darwin’s apparent caution in publishing On the Origin of Species, which appeared more than two decades after he privately developed his first theories of evolution by natural selection. Whereas this restraint is often attributed to Darwin’s fear of admitting that he was an evolutionist, Sponsel argues that what concerned him most was not the topic, evolution, but the transgression of publishing a theoretical book. The one other time he had tried to do so, as a young man using his theory of coral reef formation to offer an ambitious account of the history of the earth and its inhabitants, the public criticism of his “speculations” distressed him and destroyed his geological publishing strategy. Meanwhile he viewed his private speculations on species as an exhilarating distraction from the challenge of fulfilling his publishing obligations to the geological community. He plotted a conservative course for finishing his geological publications and privately bolstering the species theory that was designed to insulate him (and eventually his species theory itself) from charges of rash speculation. Sponsel’s book is a study of scientific authorship, of theorizing in natural history, and of the importance of mentorship in science. It transforms our understanding of Darwin’s first major theory, on the origin of coral reefs and atolls, as well as his evolutionary theory, and it reveals the important roles played by Darwin’s Beagle shipmates and by the geologist Charles Lyell in shaping his methods of fieldwork, theorizing, and publishing.
Harry Collins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226052298
- eISBN:
- 9780226052328
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226052328.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Based in the sociology of scientific knowledge the book describes, in real time, two potential discoveries of gravitational waves, known as the Equinox Event and Big Dog. These were made by the LIGO ...
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Based in the sociology of scientific knowledge the book describes, in real time, two potential discoveries of gravitational waves, known as the Equinox Event and Big Dog. These were made by the LIGO and Virgo detectors. There is additional tension because the signals might have been deliberately injected into the detectors – so called ‘blind injections’. Scientific discovery is shown to depend on many kinds of decisions not normally thought of as belonging to science. The role and nature of statistics is also examined. Wider conclusions are drawn about the moral nature of science and about the methodology of the social sciences, particularly participant observation.Less
Based in the sociology of scientific knowledge the book describes, in real time, two potential discoveries of gravitational waves, known as the Equinox Event and Big Dog. These were made by the LIGO and Virgo detectors. There is additional tension because the signals might have been deliberately injected into the detectors – so called ‘blind injections’. Scientific discovery is shown to depend on many kinds of decisions not normally thought of as belonging to science. The role and nature of statistics is also examined. Wider conclusions are drawn about the moral nature of science and about the methodology of the social sciences, particularly participant observation.
Alistair Sponsel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226523118
- eISBN:
- 9780226523255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226523255.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter reveals the dazzling strategy underlying the content and presentation of Darwin’s 1837 Geological Society paper on the formation of coral reefs. While the paper might appear in ...
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This chapter reveals the dazzling strategy underlying the content and presentation of Darwin’s 1837 Geological Society paper on the formation of coral reefs. While the paper might appear in retrospect to have been a mere precursor to Darwin’s 1842 book on the same topic, its arguments were distinct from earlier and later renditions of Darwin’s coral reef theory. This paper was remarkably ambitious: in it Darwin not only explained the formation of barrier reefs and atolls and argued that such reefs in turn were the key to interpreting the geological history of vast regions of the earth’s crust, he also forecasted that his new theory of reef formation might reveal the internal composition of the globe and explain the origin of species. The paper was also a sustained tribute to Lyell’s geological system. Nevertheless, attendees were shocked when Lyell responded by immediately disavowing his own published theory of reef formation in favor of Darwin’s new one. Sponsel demonstrates that Lyell and Darwin had planned this strategic retreat beforehand, and he argues that both men stood to benefit from Darwin’s emergence as a theoretical author who used Lyell’s general approach to supersede him on the topic of coral reefs.Less
This chapter reveals the dazzling strategy underlying the content and presentation of Darwin’s 1837 Geological Society paper on the formation of coral reefs. While the paper might appear in retrospect to have been a mere precursor to Darwin’s 1842 book on the same topic, its arguments were distinct from earlier and later renditions of Darwin’s coral reef theory. This paper was remarkably ambitious: in it Darwin not only explained the formation of barrier reefs and atolls and argued that such reefs in turn were the key to interpreting the geological history of vast regions of the earth’s crust, he also forecasted that his new theory of reef formation might reveal the internal composition of the globe and explain the origin of species. The paper was also a sustained tribute to Lyell’s geological system. Nevertheless, attendees were shocked when Lyell responded by immediately disavowing his own published theory of reef formation in favor of Darwin’s new one. Sponsel demonstrates that Lyell and Darwin had planned this strategic retreat beforehand, and he argues that both men stood to benefit from Darwin’s emergence as a theoretical author who used Lyell’s general approach to supersede him on the topic of coral reefs.
