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2Paris or Berlin? Claude Bernard’s rivalry with Emil du Bois-ReymondHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 45 (2): 1-21. 2023.Claude Bernard (1813–1878) and Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896) rank as two of the most influential scientists of the nineteenth century. Renowned for their experiments, lectures, and writing, Bernard and du Bois-Reymond earned great prestige as professors of physiology in a time when Paris and Berlin reigned as capitals of science. Yet even though they were equals in every way, du Bois-Reymond’s reputation has fallen far more than Bernard’s. This essay compares aspects of the two men’s attitude…Read more
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2M. Norton Wise, Aesthetics, Industry, and Science: Hermann von Helmholtz and the Berlin Physical Society, Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2018 (review)German History 38 141-142. 2020.Book review
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50Stephen Gaukroger, Civilization and the culture of science: Science and the shaping of modernity, 1795–1935. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020, 544 pp., ISBN: 978‐0‐19‐884907‐0, $50.00 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 29 (1): 256-259. 2021.European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 256-259, March 2021.
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377Haeckel and du Bois-Reymond: Rival German DarwinistsTheory in Biosciences 1-8. 2019.Ernst Haeckel and Emil du Bois-Reymond were the most prominent champions of Darwin in Germany. This essay compares their contributions to popularizing the theory of evolution, drawing special attention to the neglected figure of du Bois-Reymond as a spokesman for a world devoid of natural purpose. It suggests that the historiography of the German reception of Darwin’s theory needs to be reassessed in the light of du Bois-Reymond’s Lucretian outlook.
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Headless in KashgarEndeavour 23 (1): 5-9. 1999.In 1854 the British East India Company, acting in co-operation with the Prussian Crown, commissioned Hermann, Adolph and Robert Schlagintweit to undertake a scientific expedition to India and High Asia. Despite the mission's outstanding achievements, all the brothers ended forgotten and miserable. This article will discuss (1) how three sons of a Munich eye surgeon attracted and lost so much high-level attention, and (2) what the Schlagintweits' successes and failures tell us about British and G…Read more
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160Autorité rhétorique: Claude Bernard et Émile du Bois-ReymondIn Jean-Gäel Barbara & Pierre Corvol (eds.), Les élèves de Claude Bernard: Les nouvelles disciplines bernardiennes au tournant du XXe siècle, . pp. 173-192. 2012.Professeur Finkelstein avait posée la question, pourquoi, bien que leurs réalisations scientifiques et leur scientifique approche soient similaires, Bernard était beaucoup plus connu dans son pays, France, et à son époque, que Bois-Reymond en Allemagne? Une question similaire a été posée au sujet du pourquoi Darwin est connu pour la théorie de l'évolution, tandis que Wallace a été remis en arrière-fond dans leur temps et dans l'histoire. Selon Finkelstein, la cause de la differences entre Bois-R…Read more
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582Emil du Bois-Reymond on "The Seat of the Soul"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 23 (1): 45-55. 2014.The German pioneer of electrophysiology, Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896), is generally assumed to have remained silent on the subject of the brain. However, the archive of his papers in Berlin contains manuscript notes to a lecture on “The Seat of the Soul” that he delivered to popular audiences in 1884 and 1885. These notes demonstrate that cerebral localization and brain function in general had been concerns of his for quite some time, and that he did not shy away from these subjects.
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The Mountains and the Sea: Travel as Discovery in the Lives of Emil du Bois-Reymond and Ernst Haeckel.Chronica Mundi 9 (1): 182-192. 2015.
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135Gustav Magnus und sein Haus: Im Auftrag der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft, ed. Dieter Hoffmann, Stuttgart: Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, 1995 (review)Technology and Culture 39 (3): 568-569. 1998.
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147Michel Meulders, Helmholtz, des lumières aux neurosciences, Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 2001 (review)Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 11 (3): 317-319. 2002.
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129Daniel P. Todes, Pavlov’s Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise, Baltimore: John Hopkins, 2002 (review)Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 14 (1): 70-71. 2005.
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72Russell Stannard, The End of Discovery: Are We Approaching the Boundaries of the Knowable? Oxford; New York: Oxford University, 2010 (review)Journal of Scientific Exploration 8 (4): 838. 2011.
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289The Ascent of Man? Emil du Bois-Reymond's Reflections on Scientific ProgressEndeavour 24 (3): 129-132. 2000.Triumphalist histories of science are nothing new but were, in fact, a staple of the 19th century. This article considers one of the more famous works in the genre and argues that it was motivated by doubt more than by faith.
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315Emil du Bois-Reymond vs Ludimar HermannComptes Rendus Biologies 329 (5-6): 340-347. 2006.This essay recounts a controversy between a pioneer electrophysiologist, Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896), and his student, Ludimar Hermann (1838–1914). Du Bois-Reymond proposed a molecular explanation for the slight electrical currents that he detected in frog muscles and nerves. Hermann argued that du Bois-Reymond's ‘resting currents’ were an artifact of injury to living tissue. He contested du Bois-Reymond's molecular model, explaining his teacher's observations as electricity produced by che…Read more
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213Matteucci and du Bois-Reymond: A Bitter RivalryArchives Italiennes de Biologie 149 (4): 29-37. 2011.This essay considers a long-standing controversy between two nineteenth century pioneers in electrophysiology: the German scientist Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896), and his Italian rival Carlo Matteucci (1811-1868). Historians have generally described their disagreement in du Bois-Reymond’s terms: the product of a contrast in scientific outlook. While not discounting this interpretation, I want to suggest that the controversy was driven as much by the rivals’ similarity as it was by their diffe…Read more
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143Why Darwin was EnglishEndeavour 24 (2): 76-78. 2000.A ‘late developer’ argument, common to Psychology and Economic History, can be used to explain cultural innovation. It argues that the 19th century theory of natural selection arose in England and not Germany because of – and not in spite of – England’s scientific backwardness. Measured in terms of institutions, communities, and ideas, the relative retardation of English science was precisely what enabled it to adopt German advances in novel ways.
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137A talk delivered at the conference “Science and Religion: The Religious Beliefs and Practices of Scientists—20th Century,” Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, 28 May 2002
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141Response to RichardsIn Kristin Gjesdal (ed.), Debates in Nineteenth-Century European Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses, . pp. 226-230. 2016.Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) complicates the historiography of the reception of Darwinism. His presentation of the theory was anti-teleological, a fact that refutes the claim that German Darwinists were Romantic.
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136Romanticism, Race, and RecapitulationScience 294 (5549): 2101-2102. 2001.Why race persists as an idea despite its scientific inutility.
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187Mechanical Neuroscience: Emil du Bois-Reymond’s Innovations in Theory and PracticeFrontiers 9 (130): 1-4. 2015.Summary of the major innovations of Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896)
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15Book review of contributions from scholars of 19th-century German
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287“Conquerors of The Künlün”? The Schlagintweit Mission to High Asia, 1854–57History of Science 38 (2): 179-218. 2000.Backstory of "The Man Who Would Be King." A meditation on the limits of scientific and historical representation.
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37M. du Bois-Reymond Goes To ParisBritish Journal for the History of Science 36 (3): 261-300. 2003.This article examines the science of electrophysiology developed by Emil du Bois-Reymond in Berlin in the 1840s. In it I recount his major findings, the most significant being his proof of the electrical nature of nerve signals. Du Bois-Reymond also went on to detect this same ‘negative variation’, or action current, in live human subjects. In 1850 he travelled to Paris to defend this startling claim. The essay concludes with a discussion of why his demonstration failed to convince his hosts at …Read more
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15Emil du Bois-Reymond's Reflections on ConsciousnessIn Chris Smith Harry Whitaker (ed.), Brain, Mind and Consciousness in the History of Neuroscience, Springer. pp. 163-184. 2014.The late 19th-century Ignorabimus controversy over the limits of scientific knowledge has often been characterized as proclaiming the end of intellectual progress, and by implication, as plunging Germany into a crisis of pessimism from which Liberalism never recovered. My research supports the opposite interpretation. The initiator of the Ignorabimus controversy, Emil du Bois-Reymond, was a physiologist who worked his whole life against the forces of obscurantism, whether they came from the Cath…Read more