Argument

The life of the pioneer electroencephalographer, William Grey Walter, initially appears to be a paradigmatic example of the process of network building and delegation identified by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour. In his professional career, Walter continually repositioned himself, moving from an unhappy beginning as an expert in the apparently useless and suspect technology of the EEG, to become a self-styled crucial mediator in subjects as diverse as medical diagnosis, forensic detection, marriage counseling, and international diplomacy. This position was achieved moreover through the construction and co-option of human and mechanical accomplices – laboratory assistants, electrical tortoises, and mechanical analyzers – which sustained his research and propagated his arguments. However in contrast to Callon and Latour’s atomistic account of scientific power and agency, this paper will extend their analysis to explore the impact of network building and delegation on domestic life, human desire, and personal identity. Walter’s engagement with the complexities of love and the human brain demonstrates how the transformative power of scientific rhetoric extends simultaneously into both the organization of the world and the subjectivity of the individual.

What would be the use of a neuroscience which cannot tell us anything about love?

Programs of the Brain (Young 1978, 143)

In the early 1950s the neurophysiologist and electroencephalographer, William Grey Walter, began to speculate on the future evolution of the human brain. Rejecting the vision of disembodied nervous systems and dome-headed descendants proposed by the populist authors of pulp science fiction, Walter instead imagined a series of linked transformations that would encompass our neural organization, technology, and society. He argued that our future evolution would be an indirect process, in which the development of new mechanisms of information storage and communication would allow the brain to shake off its mundane operations and embark instead on a process of mental growth through play and speculation. As Walter wrote:

The exteriorization of tedious or controversial reasoning will no doubt have as profound an effect upon the brain and society as the introduction of skilled and respectful servants has on a humble household. … But the future of the brain is more intriguing than a mere holiday from drudgery, for it is only when the servants of thought have done their work and retired unobtrusively to their quarters that the master brain can discover its own place and settle down to its proper work. (Walter 1953, 194; 1961, 234)

Argument

After having measured the velocity of the nervous impulse in the 1850s, Helmholtz began doing research on the temporal dimensions of visual perception. Experiments dealing with the velocity of propagation in nerves (as well as with aspects of perception) were carried out occasionally for some fifteen years until their final publication in 1871. Although the temporal dimension of perception seems to have interested Helmholtz less than problems of geometry and space, his experiments on the time of perception were technically rather subtle and seminal, especially compared with experiments performed by his contemporaries, such as Sigmund Exner, William James, Rudolf Hermann Lotze, Ernst Mach, Wilhelm Volkmann, and Wilhelm Wundt. Helmholtz’s conception of the temporal aspects of perception reflects the continuity that holds between psychophysiological research and the Kantian philosophical background.

A passage in Copernicus's De Revolutionibus regarding the rotation of the Earth provides evidence that he was aware, whether directly or indirectly, of an Islamic tradition dealing with this problem that goes back to Na[sdotu]īr al-Dīn al-[Tdotu]ūsī (1201–1274). The most striking similarity is the use of comets by both astronomers to discredit Ptolemy's “proofs” in the Almagest that depended upon observational evidence. The manner in which this question was dealt with by Copernicus, as an astronomical rather than natural philosophical matter, also argues for his being within the tradition of late medieval Islamic astronomy, more so than that of medieval Latin scholasticism. This of course is bolstered by his use of non-Ptolemaic models, such as the [Tdotu]ūsī couple, that have a long history in Islam but virtually none in medieval Europe. Finally, al-Qūshjī, who was in Istanbul just before Copernicus was born, entertained the possibility of the Earth's rotation; this also opens up the possibility of non-textual transmission.

this article confronts an old-new orientation in the historiographical literature on the “galileo affair.” it argues that a varied group of historians moved by different cultural forces in the last decade of the twentieth century tends to crystallize a consensus about the inevitability of the conflict between galileo and the church and its outcome in the trial of 1633. the “neo-conflictualists” — as i call them — have built their case by adhering to and developing the “three dogmas of the counter-reformation”: church authoritarianism is portrayed by them as verging towards “totalitarianism.” a preference for a literal reading of the scriptures is understood as a mode of “fundamentalism.” and mild skeptical positions in astronomy are read as expressions of “instrumentalism,” or “fictionalism.” the main thrust of the article lies in an attempt to historicize these three aspects of the catholic reform movement. finally, the lacunae in insufficiently explored historiographical landscape are delineated in order to tame the temptation to embrace the three dogmas, and to modify the radical conflictualist version of the story of galileo and the church.

in the lively discussions on galileo's laws of motion after the pisan's death, we observe what might be called a new “galilean affair.” that is, a trial brought against his new science of motion mainly by french and italian jesuits with the substantial adherence of m. mersenne. this new trail was originated by gassendi's presentation of galileo's de motu not simply as a perfectly coherent doctrine, but also as a convincing argument in favor of the truth of copernicanism.

An Andalusian tradition of zījes seems to have been predominant in the Maghrib due to the popularity of the zīj of Ibn Is[hdotu]āq al-Tūnisī (fl. Tunis and Marrakesh ca. 1193–1222) and derived texts compiled in the fourteenth century. This tradition computed sidereal planetary longitudes and allowed the calculation of tropical longitudes by using trepidation tables based on models designed in al-Andalus by Abū Is[hdotu]āq ibn al-Zarqālluh (d. 1100). This tradition also used Ibn al-Zarqālluh's model to calculate the obliquity of the ecliptic, which implied that this angle had a cyclical period of oscillation between a maximum of 23;53° and a minimum of 23;33°: after reaching this minimum value the obliquity of the ecliptic was bound to increase. This paper argues that some new Maghribi sources give information on observations made in the Maghrib in the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries that imply that precession had increased beyond the limits allowed by the Zarqāllian trepidation theory, while the obliquity of the ecliptic had diminished below the level accepted by astronomers who followed Ibn al-Zarqālluh. This explains the introduction in the Maghrib of Eastern zījes, which computed directly tropical longitudes and did not accept the cyclical variation of the obliquity. Information about observations of dawn and twilight made both in Egypt and in the Maghrib in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is also presented.

Argument

This essay studies the convergence of brain research with the physiology of emotions during the early twentieth century. It argues that the brain entered the laboratory of emotions not as an object of knowledge, but as a technique for producing emotions, in spite of the laboratory. The new brain-generated emotion signaled an epistemic break in the nature of studied emotion. It restructured the relationships between physiological and psychological forms of knowledge. It embodied the historical and political concerns of physiologists with pain. And it excluded the affectively experiencing subject from the study of “emotion.” The essay also suggests that the brain-generated emotion was an object suspended in time and abstracted from history. Its unique a-temporal and de-contextualized characteristic transformed emotion into a product of a laboratory whose mode of production mimicked the modern factory. The constitutive elements that were assembled in creating the brain as emotion-generator were instrumental for the important studies of James Papez, Paul MacLean, and for the modern concept of Limbic System.

The time has come [to]…begin the vivisection of the human heart according to scientific methods.

Angelo Mosso, 1896

i propose a revisionist account of the production and reception of galileo's telescopic observations of 1609–10, an account that focuses on the relationship between credit and disclosure. galileo, i argue, acted as though the corroboration of his observations were easy, not difficult. his primary worry was not that some people might reject his claims, but rather that those able to replicate them could too easily proceed to make further discoveries on their own and deprive him of credit. consequently, he tried to slow down potential replicators to prevent them from becoming competitors. he did so by not providing other practitioners access to high-power telescopes and by withholding information about how to build them. this essay looks at the development of galileo's monopoly on early telescopic astronomy to understand how the relationship between disclosure and credit changed as he moved from being an instrument-maker to becoming a discoverer and, eventually, a court philosopher.

Assuming the crucial interest of Arabic material for the recovery of the textual tradition of some Greek texts of mechanics, the following article aims at presenting a partial survey of the Graeco-Arabic transmission in the field of mechanics. Based on new manuscript material dating from the ninth to the twelfth century, it investigates the textual and theoretical traditions of two writings ascribed to Aristotle and Euclid respectively and transmitted to Arabo-Islamic culture in fragmentary form. The reception and the impact of the Peripatetic Mechanics are analyzed on the basis of texts edited by al-Khāzinī as well as by the comparative study of the proof of the law of the lever in three authors: Pseudo-Aristotle, Thābit ibn Qurra, and al-Isfizārī. The codicological analysis of the extant manuscripts of Maqāla fī ‘l-mīzān – a rather systematic treatise on the balance ascribed to Euclid – leads to the assumption that it is a Greek fragment edited in Arabic. This reconstruction of the Arabic tradition of Euclidean mechanics is further elaborated by an annotated synopsis of al-Isfizārī's systematic recension of the text.

Argument

During the nineteenth century, physicians either discovered or invented a variety of clinical autobiography called “traumatic memory.” Freud produced two versions of this memory, the final version in the 1920s. A revolutionary nosology (DSM-III), adopted in 1980, promised to extirpate Freud and the concept of neurosis from American psychiatry. However, it made a tacit exception for Freud’s concept of traumatic neurosis, renaming it “posttraumatic stress disorder.” The following decades have been a period of intense clinical and scientific interest in this disorder. An influential research program has investigated traumatic neurosis and its brain through variations in cortisol excretion. I describe the history of this program and examine its distinctive knowledge product: its running narrative of its achievements. The narrative’s structure is analyzed and found to resemble a crossword puzzle constructed from heterogeneous kinds of inference, recalling The Interpretation of Dreams. My conclusion is that, far from extirpating Freud’s neurosis, biological research has secured a place for it in today’s post-Freudian psychiatry.

more than a century ago three eminent galileo scholars, raffaello caverni, antonio favaro, and emil wohlwill, discussed the emergence of galileo's science of motion and the documentary evidence pertaining to it. among the works of these scholars, only favaro's edizione nazionale of galileo's works is still widely used, while the contents of their other writings only play a minor if any role in the current english-speaking literature. the disappearance from historical memory of many of the substantial contributions by these authors is closely associated with a narrowing of the perspective under which galileo's science and its context have been discussed in more recent scholarship.

This article reassesses the reasons why Toledo achieved prominence as a center for Arabic-Latin translation in the second half of the twelfth century, and suggests that the two principal translators, Gerard of Cremona and Dominicus Gundissalinus, concentrated on different areas of knowledge. Moreover, Gerard appears to have followed a clear program in the works that he translated. This is revealed especially in the Vita and the “commemoration of his books” drawn up by his students after his death. A new edition of the Vita, Commemoratio librorum and Eulogium, based on all the manuscripts, concludes the article.

The article argues that Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and his court played a unique role in the transfer and diffusion of Arabic science (with its Greek, Hebrew and Christian elements). Scientists at the court translated and elaborated upon it. Moreover, there existed a two-way traffic of scientific knowledge between Frederick and his court scholars, on the one hand, and several oriental courts and their scientists on the other hand. Thus the reader gains a view of Frederick's scientific activities from the Arab perspective, too.

Frederick's contribution to the existing biological sciences of his time was his “Book of Falconry”, which was exceptional in the then contemporary approach and methods employed in those fields. Even in this treatise on falconry, Frederick drew upon the fund of knowledge of Arab practitioners. This chain of arguments concerning Arabic science is situated within the setup of Frederick's oriental political practice and sumptuous court life.

raffaello caverni is a controversial figure among the scholars of galileo's work. almost entirely ignored for half a century, his research has been more attentively considered only after his major work (caverni 1891–1900) was reprinted in 1970.

we consider this merit, however, to have almost no value in comparison to one which we wish to acquire from the offended worshippers of galileo. we announce to them that after having identified and reordered the scattered writings which complete the sixth dialogue as far as percussion is concerned, we were also able to reintegrate the dialogue with regard to the use of a little chain to provide a rule for aiming artillery, without having to resort to laborious calculations.

During the Middle Ages many Greek mathematical and astronomical texts were translated from Greek into Arabic (ca. ninth century) and from Arabic into Latin (ca. twelfth century). There were many factors complicating the study of them, such as translation from or into other languages, redactions, multiple translations, and independently transmitted scholia. A literal translation risks less in loss of meaning, but can be clumsy. This article includes lists of translations and a large bibliography, divided into sections.

antonio favaro was born in padua on 21 may 1847 to a cultivated family of lower nobility. after having accomplished his studies in mathematics at the university of padua in 1866, he went to turin, where he specialized as an engineer at the scuola d’applicazione (polytechnical high school) in 1869. as early as 1872, he was appointed as extra-ordinary professor at the university of padua. for fifty years he taught graphical statics there. during different periods he also gave courses in infinitesimal calculus and projective geometry. since 1878 favaro, as one of the first in an italian university, also taught history of mathematics. he died in padua on 30 september 1922, shortly after his retirement.

the historians of science have only recently learned of the existence of a sixth volume of the grandly conceived work of the abbé raffaello caverni entitled storia del metodo sperimentale in italia. five volumes had already been published between 1891 and 1898. the sixth volume was published, one might say, in an almost furtive way. in fact, the first notice of it was given in a journal by aldo mieli just a few months ago. among materials he is collecting under the heading, “for a biography of the italian historians of science,” in addition to other things already said about caverni in a previous issue, mieli has published the following “information received from g. vacca”: “the printing of the sixth volume of the history of the experimental method in italy dealing with the history of hydraulics had been started but was interrupted by the author's death. about 450 pages have been printed, the greater part of the copies of the loose sheets have been lost.”