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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.’

This book offers the first overarching history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present. Unlike the sciences and the social sciences, the humanities lack a general history. There are already historical studies of musicology, logic, art history, linguistics, and historiography. This book pulls all these fields together, with many more, in a single coherent account. It takes as it main theme the way scholars throughout the ages and in virtually all civilizations have sought to identify patterns in texts, art, music, languages, literature, and the past. What rules can we apply if we wish to determine whether a tale about the past is really trustworthy? By what criteria are we to distinguish consonant from dissonant musical intervals? What rules jointly describe all possible grammatical sentences in a language? How can modern digital methods enhance pattern-seeking in the humanities? A New History of the Humanities amounts to a persuasive plea to give Panini, Valla, Bopp, and countless other often overlooked intellectual giants their rightful place next to the Galileos, Newtons, and Einsteins we celebrate so much more often.

This book reconstructs the emergence of the phenomenon of “lost time,” i.e. the interval between stimulus and response, with respect to the German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) and the French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922). It argues that the discovery and explanation of this phenomenon was closely tied to the functioning of laboratory technologies. In the winter of 1849/50, Helmholtz conducted pioneering measurements concerning the propagation speed of stimulations in the living nerve in Königsberg by using electromagnetic devices and graphical instruments. When presenting his findings in the Parisian Academy of Science, he coined the term “lost time” in order to illustrate the delays accompanying the functioning of nerves. In the 1910s, Proust adopted the same expression from the popular writings of the French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey.

This book examines the strategies that Caribbean people used to create authoritative knowledge about the natural world, and particularly the body, during the long seventeenth century. It reveals a hitherto untold history about the transformation of early modern natural and human landscapes, one that unfolds outside existent analytical frameworks for the study of the Atlantic world. The book introduces some of the earliest and richest known records carrying the voices of people of African descent, including African themselves, to change our understanding of the dynamics and intellectual spaces in which early modern people produced transformative ideas about the natural world. Caribbean cultures of bodies and healing appeared through a localized epistemological upheaval based on the experiential and articulated by ritual specialists of African origin. These changes resulted from multiple encounters between actors coming from all over the globe that occurred in a social, spiritual, and intellectual realm that, even though ubiquitous, does not appear in existent histories of science, medicine, and the African diaspora. The intellectual leaders of the mostly black and free communities of the seventeenth century Caribbean defined not only how to interpret nature, but also the very sensorial landscapes on which reality could be experienced. They invented a powerful and lasting way of imagining, defining and dealing with the world.

The early years of the twenty-first century have seen the rise to prominence of private-sector American spaceflight. The result is a new phase of space development—one where human spaceflight is no longer the exclusive domain of governments, but an activity increasingly driven by the interests and motivations of individuals and corporations. In order to understand this phenomenon, we need to examine the long-run economic history of American space exploration. This book examines three critical phases of that history. The first phase is the financing and construction of American astronomical observatories from Colonial America to the middle of the twentieth century. The second is the career of Robert Goddard, the American father of liquid-fuel rocketry, whose efforts constituted the world’s first spaceflight development program. The third is the American political history of the Cold War ‘Space Race’ and subsequent NASA human spaceflight initiatives in the twentieth century. Examining these episodes from an economic perspective results in a new view of American space exploration—one where personal initiative and private funding have been dominant long-run trends, where the demand for impressive public signals has funded large space exploration projects across two centuries, and where government leadership in the field is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Scientific realists claim we can justifiably believe that science is getting at the truth. But they have long faced historical challenges: various episodes across history appear to demonstrate that even strongly supported scientific theories can be overturned and left behind. In response, realists have developed new positions and arguments. Specific challenges from the history of science, and realist responses, have generated an ever increasing data set bearing on the (possible) relationship between science and truth. This book introduces new historical cases impacting the debate, and it advances the discussion of cases that have only very recently been introduced. At the same time, shifts in philosophical positions affect the very kind of case study that is relevant. Thus the historical work must proceed hand in hand with philosophical analysis of the different positions and arguments in play. It is with this in mind that the volume is divided into two sections, entitled “Historical Cases for the Debate” and “Contemporary Scientific Realism.” All sides agree that historical cases are informative with regard to how, or whether, science connects with truth. Defying proclamations as early as the 1980s announcing the death knell of the scientific realism debate, here is that rare thing: a philosophical debate making steady and definite progress. Moreover, the progress it is making concerns one of humanity’s most profound and important questions: the relationship between science and truth, or, put more boldly, the epistemic relation between humankind and the reality in which we find ourselves.

Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited, the long-awaited sequel to the influential volume, Representation in Scientific Practice, unites original editors Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar with colleagues Catelijne Coopmans and Janet Vertesi to present a new series of essays that sets the bar for the study of representation in science in the twenty-first century. Chapters span a range of topics, including molecular modeling, nano-imaging, mathematical formalisms, and digital imagery in neuroscience, planetary science, and biology - as well as business data visualization, economics diagrams and technology-mediated surgery. They draw on a widened range of disciplinary perspectives (on information, communication, and culture) and themes (embodiment, materiality, digitality) to elaborate original implications for the study of imaging and scientific visualization, broadly conceived. The book features work by an emerging generation of scholars who open up novel and important avenues for research, as well as commentaries by established scholars such as Lorraine Daston, Martin Kemp, Bruno Latour, and others from the original volume, to elaborate on continuities and changes in our approach to the important topic of representation in scientific practice.

This book places Biruni in his historical and cultural context within the long-term history of medieval Eurasia. It outlines the course of Biruni’s life, clarifying key questions about his associations, travels, and patrons. Following an overview of Biruni’s chief interests, it details his major works to illustrate the breadth of Biruni’s output and his intellectual approach, especially his attention to language, esteem for knowledge, and commitment to objective truth. An account of his institutional context and relationships elucidates his friendships and rivalries, notably with Avicenna. The book also shows how varied paths of transmission affected the legacy of Biruni and its reception in global scientific and literary traditions. Finally, a timeline, list of key works, and detailed bibliographic essay will guide readers into further study of Biruni and his thought. This comprehensive overview of Biruni is based on the Arabic and Persian primary sources in the original languages using the best editions. The author has consulted scholarship in French, German, and Russian to draw conclusions and present up-to-date bibliographic references in a manner accessible to specialists and the general reader alike.