Heritage science

Today, rather than doing a bit of built heritage, I have been turning the pages of a bit of science heritage, a book called 'The nature of human conflicts' by the famous Russian neurologist A. R. Luria, translated into English and published in New York in 1932, a tip from Sacks in his 'Awakenings', a book last mentioned at reference 2.

This particular copy started life at the Wesleyan College Library, at Macon, Georgia and the accompanying tickets record just one loan, in November 1965. Hopefully the present tickets replaced others. The Wesleyan college appears to have been one of the very first women's colleges in the US, starting up in 1836 - and as far as I can tell they are still a women's college, although they do award men honorary degrees. My own prior contact was mixed, for which see reference 4.

I have not got very far yet, but Luria's language seems terribly old fashioned, very mannered, even allowing for translation. But it also reflects an old fashioned courtesy towards his colleagues and their work - in which I am reminded of some of the writings of Freud, with whose career Luria overlapped. Perhaps it will seem less old-fashioned when I get past the introductory chapter.

For the present I offer one of Luria's observations. Roughly speaking, that having discovered the brain was made of neurons, and that neurons come in excite and inhibit varieties, the part of the scientific world concerned with people and their brains jumped to the conclusion that behaviour could be modelled as a system of modules, with each module exciting or inhibiting other modules. Excite and inhibit were the tropes of the day. While Luria's intuition or judgement was that this was not going to be good enough - with history having proved him right.

Plus one of my own. Flicking ahead, Luria appears to have been able to get hold of murderers, some just a day or so after the event, to do some of his experiments on. Can't see even an eminent neurologist being given that sort of access over here, now. Not even then.

Reference 1: The nature of human conflict, or emotion, conflict and will - A. R. Luria - 1932 (or so).

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-parable.html.

Reference 3: https://wesportal.wesleyancollege.edu/ICS/.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=wesleyan.