Leviathan and the soft animal: medical humanism and the invertebrate models for higher nervous functions, 1950s-90s.

摘要

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. This novel conscience was soon translated into concern for the specificity and historical origins of the new science, with remarkably convergent results. A few main features recurred as central to the definition of the field: the importance of technological advances; the role of modelling practices in the bridging of gaps between unrelated perspectives; the intrinsic interdisciplinary and variously reductionistic nature of the field. Most important, however, seemed to be not so much what the new multidiscipline actually was, or had been, but what it was to become: nothing less than the cornerstone of a general unified science to come, one attacking 'the ultimate goal of all science and philosophy - how does the mind/brain work! '