Nuncius

Ever since the phrenological heads of the early 19th century, maps have translated into images our ideas, theories and models of the brain, making this organ at one and the same time scientific object and representation. Brain maps have always served as gateways for navigating and visualizing neuroscientific knowledge, and over time many different maps have been produced – firstly as tools to “read” and analyse the cerebral territory, then as instruments to produce new models of the brain. Over the last 150 years brain cartography has evolved from a way of identifying brain regions and localizing them for clinical use to an anatomical framework onto which information about local properties and functions can be integrated to provide a view of the brain’s structural and functional architecture...

This article examines visual practices inside the laboratory and in the arts, highlighting a problem of reductionism in the transformation from data to images and in the visual incarnation of the neuro-realism fallacy, that is the extreme images of brain scan. Neurosciences are not inherently reductionist. John R. Mallard’s work around data visualisation problems in the development of biomedical imaging shows how scientists themselves can be attentive to the construction of visual practices and their meaning...

This article traces attempts in the 1930s to create a spatio-temporal model of the active, living brain. Images and models of electric, illuminated displays – derived from electro-technology and engineering – allowed for a changing imaginary of a brain that was immediately accessible. The example of the Luminous Brain Model, a three-dimensional science education model, demonstrates how the visual language of illumination could serve as a flexible rhetorical tool that offered sensations of liveliness to modern viewers and promised to show a transparent view of a dynamic brain...

Neuromorphic technologies lie at the core of 21st century neuroscience, especially in the “big brain science” projects started in 2013 – i.e. the BRAIN Initiative and the Human Brain Project. While neuromorphism and the “reverse engineering” of the brain are often presented as a “methodological revolution” in the brain sciences, these concepts have a long history which is strongly interconnected with the developments in neuroscience and the related field of bioengineering since the end of World War II...

The triune brain idea has been rated as the most influential in post-war neuroscience. The first part of this article seeks to retrace its genesis and development through the vicissitudes of the research conducted by Paul D. MacLean (1913–2007). Ten years have passed since his death: despite the loss of scientific credit, the apparent simplicity of his tripartite theory continues to exert a certain popular appeal. In the second part of the article an attempt is made to figure out how the transfer from the laboratory to public fruition could happen...

In the famous debate whether neurons communicate via chemical mediators or electrical signals, Henry Dale and Otto Loewi mounted powerful evidence on the mediation of nervous activity by chemical transmitters, while John Eccles led the campaign for the electrophysiologists. Eventually, Eccles converted to chemical transmission, when he identified excitatory and inhibitory postsynaptic potentials initiated by the release of chemical neurotransmitters in the synaptic cleft. This well-known episode from the history of neurophysiology counts as a rare instance of philosophy of science advancing scientific research, because the philosopher Karl Popper had encouraged Eccles to theorize an experiment proving the falsity of his own interpretation – according to Popper’s philosophy of science progressing by falsification...

This paper explores the material and visual practices that defined studies of psychopathology in early twentieth-century American medicine, through a close look at the work of neuropathologist Elmer E. Southard (1876–1920). As a discipline sitting at the intersection between laboratory and clinical practice, neuropathology has received little attention from historians of the brain sciences. Unlike the neurologist, who was interested in treating patients and saving lives, the neuropathologist often encountered patients following death, and studied the brain for signs of pathology during autopsy...

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Swedish anatomists Anders and Gustaf Retzius, father and son, collaborated with artists, photographers, and printers to produce image plates for their many publications in normal, comparative, morbid, and microscopic anatomy. This article explores the role of images in their oeuvres, identifying impacts of changing scientific ideals, aesthetic sensibilities, and technologies of observation and visualization. It examines how the Retziuses mobilized historically contingent concepts of truth and beauty to support claims to authority...

While representing one of the most important developments in the knowledge of the brain, both for its theoretical advances and its medical consequences, the work of David Ferrier met with strong criticism from conservative circles in Victorian society. At the end of 19th century certain British neurologists and neurosurgeons – including Ferrier – faced vehement public attacks by those aristocrats who, under the banner of antivivisectionism and “natural theology”, expressed their fears of the reorganization of medicine into a scientific discipline...

This paper presents how rhinoplasty as a surgical technique with a particular social impact developed, and how motivated patients and courageous surgeons contributed to the process before Gaspare Tagliacozzi published his seminal work De curtorum chirurgia in 1597. The few sources that provide evidence of people having their noses reconstructed enable us to understand how this technique gradually spread across Europe from the south of Italy northwards. They also give information about the fate of some individual patients and their surgeons...

The historical catalogs of the museum collections contain a wealth of information for historians seeking to reconstruct their contents, how they were displayed and the ways in which they were used. This paper will present the complete transcription of a draft catalog that was prepared in 1797 for the Museum of Natural History and Antiquities of the University of Padua. Conserved in the university's Museum of Geology and Paleontology, the catalog was the first to be compiled of the museum, which was established in 1733 thanks to the donation by Antonio Vallisneri Jr...

Ichthyological investigations and technological advancements, such as the laying of submarine telegraph cables, promoted new dredging methods in the second half of the 19th century. In contrast to the idea of a lifeless deep ocean (Edward Forbes' azoic hypothesis), the discovery of deep water fauna and the challenge of defining its systematics opened up new theoretical perspectives. In this frame, which was already marked by the impact of Darwin's theory, naturalistic surveys in freshwater environments in western Switzerland intertwined with those of oceanographic expeditions...

In his excellent work Anamorphoses ou perspectives curieuses (1955), Baltrusaitis concluded the chapter on catoptric anamorphosis with an allusion to the small engraving by Hans Tröschel (1585-1628) after Simon Vouet's drawing Eight satyrs observing an elephant reflected on a cylinder, the first known representation of a cylindrical anamorphosis made in Europe. This paper explores the Baroque intellectual and artistic context in which Vouet made his drawing, attempting to answer two central sets of questions...

The assumption that the Cartesian bête-machine is the invention of René Descartes (1596-1650) is rarely contested. Close examination of Descartes' texts proves that this is a concept founded not on the basis of his own writings, but a subsequent critical interpretation, which developed and began to dominate his work after his death. Descartes' Treatise on Man, published posthumously in two rival editions, Florentius Schuyl's Latin translation De Homine (1662), and Claude Clerselier's Traité de l'homme, has proved particularly problematic...

In 2012 a manuscript was rediscovered in the Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio of Bologna, titled Libro degli infermi dell'Arciconfraternita di S. Maria della Morte. It is the record of incoming patients of one for the main hospitals of the city, devoted exclusively to the sick poor and not just to the poor, called Santa Maria della Morte, compiled by a young student assistant (astante) for the period 1558-1564. I publish here a transcription of a portion of this Libro pertaining to the year 1560. My introduction situates the manuscript within the context of the history of early modern Italian hospitals, describes the organization of the hospital of Santa Maria della Morte based on archival sources of the period, and finally highlights the connections between surgical and anatomical education and the internal organization of the hospital...

Science in the early modern world depended on openness in scholarly communication. On the other hand, a web of commercial, political, and religious conflicts required broad measures of secrecy and confidentiality; similar measures were integral to scholarly rivalries and plagiarism. This paper analyzes confidentiality and secrecy in intellectual and technological knowledge exchange via letters and drawings. We argue that existing approaches to understanding knowledge exchange in early modern Europe--which focus on the Republic of Letters as a unified entity of corresponding scholars--can be improved upon by analyzing multilayered networks of communication...

When Isaac Newton died in 1727 he left a rich legacy in terms of draft manuscripts, encompassing a variety of topics: natural philosophy, mathematics, alchemy, theology, and chronology, as well as papers relating to his career at the Mint. One thing that immediately strikes us is the textuality of Newton's legacy: images are sparse. Regarding his scholarly endeavours we witness the same practice. Newton's extensive drafts on theology and chronology do not contain a single illustration or map. Today we have all of Newton's draft manuscripts as witnesses of his working methods, as well as access to a significant number of books from his own library...

In the Middle Ages and the premodern period knowledge of alchemical practices and materials was transmitted via collections of recipes often grouped concomitantly with art-technological instructions. In both alchemy and chemical technology particular importance is placed on artisanal and craft practices. Both are concerned with the description of colours. Both require procedures involving precise and specifically defined actions, prescriptions and ingredients. Assuming that alchemical and artistic texts have the same textual format, this raises the question: were they produced, diffused and read by the same people? This paper investigates the authorship and the context of production behind a sample of German alchemical manuscripts dating from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century...

This paper, which presents first results of a wider book project, will reconstruct the influence of the so-called 'radical wing' of the Reformation, above all Anabaptism, Socinianism, and Antitrinitarism, on the tradition of natural philosophy that had established itself in particular in Veneto through the works of Pietro Pomponazzi, Agostino Nifo, and Giacomo Zabarella. Italian physicians and foreign students at the University of Padua developed theories that anticipated many scientific innovations of the 17th century (especially with regard to blood circulation)...