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Electricity and the nervous fluid

Roderick W. Home

Journal of the History of Biology 3 (2):235-251 (1970)

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Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to Connectionism.John Sutton - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press.details Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are 'stored' only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models, argues John Sutton, depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 101 citations
The “Eels” of South America: Mid-18th-Century Dutch Contributions to the Theory of Animal Electricity.Peter J. Koehler, Stanley Finger & Marco Piccolino - 2009 - Journal of the History of Biology 42 (4):715-763.details During the mid-18th century, when electricity was coming into its own, natural philosophers began to entertain the possibility that electricity is the mysterious nerve force. Their attention was first drawn to several species of strongly electric fish, namely torpedoes, a type of African catfish, and a South American "eels." This was because their effects felt like those of discharging Leyden jars and could be transmitted along known conductors of electricity. Moreover, their actions could not be adequately explained by popular mechanical (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
Luigi Galvani and the debate on animal electricity, 1791–1800.Naum Kipnis - 1987 - Annals of Science 44 (2):107-142.details Galvani's discovery provoked an animated debate that lasted for about a decade. So far, historians have studied only the controversy between Volta and Galvani. I show that a more extensive examination of the response to Galvani's treatise reveals a number of important issues that were characteristic of the contemporary physics and physiology but have not much attracted the attention of historians. In particular, the analysis shows the need to reappraise Galvani's role in establishing animal electricity. Download Export citation Bookmark 14 citations
Franklin's Electrical Atmospheres.Roderick W. Home - 1972 - British Journal for the History of Science 6 (2):131-151.details Benjamin Franklin's enunciation of his so-called ‘one-fluid’ theory of electricity in the period 1747–55 nas often been hailed as an important milestone in the history of physics. So indeed it was, for, with the rapid and widespread acceptance of the new theory, the science of electricity became based for the first time on the view that the electrification of a body involved the accumulation of a ‘charge’ from elsewhere, rather than the excitation of matter already present in the body. Only (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
Technopoiesis—the Forgotten Dimension of Early Technique Development.Nissim Amzallag - 2020 - Philosophy and Technology 34 (4):785-809.details A brief survey of the development of some techniques from antiquity to recent times reveals that their initial phase was stimulated not by perspectives of exploiting their outcome, as is usually expected for technology, but by the valorization of the process itself. This initial phase, defined here as technopoiesis, is conceptually and practically distinct from what subsequently becomes technology in respect of inventiveness, standardization, technical skill, level of ornamentation, practical use, integration into systems of exchange, and ritualized versus secular uses. (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 6 citations

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