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Leviathan and the Soft Animal: Medical Humanism and the Invertebrate Models for Higher Nervous Functions, 1950s–90s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Fabio De Sio
Fabio De Sio
Affiliation:
Fabio De Sio, Research Fellow, School of History, Queen Mary, University of London, temporary address: 6th floor, Wellcome Building, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK. Email: fabiodesio@gmail.com
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Sometime between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, a ‘Monsieur Jourdain syndrome’ seems to have spread among basic researchers and clinicians in fields as diverse as neurology, psychology, psychiatry, behavioural studies, physiology, biochemistry and pharmacology. Almost overnight, they realised that they were but neuroscientists.

Keywords

History of NeuroscienceModel AnimalsOctopusMedical Humanism
Type
Articles
Information
Medical History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 369 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2011. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 See, for instance, the earnest admission of J.Z. Young, ‘Sources of Discovery in Neuroscience’, in F. Worden, J.P. Swazey, and G. Adelman (eds), The Neurosciences: Paths of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1975), 15–46: 40.

2 See Stanley Finger, Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations into Brain Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); George Adelman, ‘The Neurosciences Research Program at MIT and the Beginning of the Modern Field of Neuroscience’, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences: Basic and Clinical Perspectives, 19, 1 (2010), 15–23. See also Francis O. Schmitt, ‘Preface’ to Gardner C. Quarton, Theodore Melnechuk and Francis O. Schmitt, The Neurosciences: A Study Program (New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1967). On a critical note, see Carl F. Craver, ‘The Making of a Memory Mechanism’, Journal of the History of Biology, 36, 1 (2003), 153–95; and especially Max Stadler, ‘The Neuromance of Cerebral History’, in Surparna Choudhury and Jan Slaby (eds), Critical Neuroscience: Between Lifeworld and Laboratory (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming).

3 Cf. Pietro Corsi, The Enchanted Loom: Chapters in the History of Neuroscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Joelle M. Abi-Rached and Nikolas Rose, ‘The Birth of the Neuromolecular Gaze’, History of the Human Sciences, 23, 1 (2010), 1–26; Roger Smith, Being Human: Historical Knowledge and the Creation of Human Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), a meaningful attempt to cope with the last question.

4 See D’Arcy W. Thompson, ‘How to Catch Cuttlefish’, The Classical Review, 42, 1 (1928), 14–18.

5 Henry Lee, Aquarium Notes: The Octopus or the ‘Devil-Fish’ of Fiction and of Fact (London: Chapman and Hall, 1875).

6 Frank W. Lane, Kingdom of the Octopus: The Life History of the Cephalopoda (London: Jarrolds, 1957).

7 G. Grimpe, ’Pflege, Behandlung und Zucht der Cephalopoden für zoologische und physiologische Zwecke’, in E. Abderhalden (Hrg.) Handbuch der biologischen Arbeitsmethoden (Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1928), 331–402: 332.

8 J.A. Bierens de Haan, Animal Psychology: Its Nature and its Problems (London: Hutchinson, 1949), 119; F.J.J. Buytendijk, ‘Das Verhalten von Octopus nach teilweiser Zerstörung des “Gehirns”’, Archives Néerlandaises de Physiologie de l’Homme et des Animaux, 18 (1933), 24–65.

9 B.B. Boycott and J.Z. Young, ‘The Comparative Study of Learning’, in J. F. Danielli and R. Brown (eds), The Comparative Study of Learning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 432–53: 432–4.

10 B.B. Boycott and J.Z. Young, ‘A Memory System in Octopus vulgaris Lamarck’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, 143 (1955), 449–80.

11 R.L. Buckner, ‘Memory Systems: An Incentive, Not an End Point’, in Henry L. Roediger, Yadin Dudai and Susan M. Fitzpatrick (eds), Science of Memory: Concepts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 359–64.

12 Boycott and Young, op. cit. (note 10).

13 J.Z. Young, unpublished autobiographical sketch (1992). I thank Dr Antony Boycott for sharing the typescript with me.

14 Boycott and Young, op. cit. (note 9); J.Z. Young, ‘Growth and Plasticity in the Nervous System: Ferrier Lecture, Delivered on June 28th, 1950’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, 139 (1951), 18–37; Boycott and Young, op. cit. (note 10).

15 J.Z. Young, ‘Learning and Discrimination in the Octopus’, Biological Reviews, 36 (1961), 32–96: 33–4.

16 J.Z. Young, A Model of the Brain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).

17 J.Z. Young, The Memory System of the Brain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 7.

18 Young, op. cit. (note 16), 299–323.

19 B.B. Boycott, et al., ‘Octopus Optic Responses’, Experimental Neurology, 12, 3 (1965), 247–56.

20 M.E. Bittermann, ‘Toward a Comparative Psychology of Learning’, American Psychologist, 15, 11 (1960), 704–12: 705.

21 T.H. Bullock, ‘Comparative Neuroscience Holds Promise for Quiet Revolutions’, Science, 225, 4661 (1984), 473–8: 474.