Brain Advance Access published online on September 19, 2008
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awn210
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Book Review |
Cicero's brain and vibrating nerves
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Few pairs of books about the history of the brain could be more discordant than this one. Daniel Lord Smail, a Harvard historian, makes a strong plea for integrating the general history of mankind with the evolutionary history of the brain. No mean task, certainly not for someone whose first book, published in 1999, examined changes in spatial designation in the notarial registries of medieval Marseille. The other book, edited by Whitaker, Smith and Finger, contains a collection of essays about 18th century advances in understanding of the nervous system. Despite their disparate vantage points, the pairing serves as a reminder that the organ of neuroscience is not immutable but evolving—however slowly.
The first three chapters of Smail's book are a passionate vindication of ‘deep history’, that is, history beginning at least with the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens in Africa, some 140 000 years ago. In his eyes, the
University Medical Centre Utrecht, The Netherlands