Hidden Histories of Science (Paperback)

~ Robert B. Silvers (Editor) "It was in a mood of irritable skepticism that the Scottish surgeon James Braid attended a public demonstration of Animal Magnetism on the night of..." (more)
Key Phrases: canonical icon, tumor viruses, Jackson Laboratory, Nobel Prize, Peyton Rous (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In these essays, Jonathan Miller, Oliver Sacks and Daniel Kevles show how and why some discoveries and insights in science emerge with great promise, only to be discarded or forgotten, then re-emerge years later as important. Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould suggest deep and largely unacknowledged distortions in the way scientists and popularizers alike conceive the sturcture of the world and its natural history. Illustrations.

Product Details

• Paperback: 194 pages
• Publisher: New York Review of Books (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940322056
• ISBN-13: 978-0940322059
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,619,040 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Promising concept - mediocre execution, March 7, 2001

By	K. Marko (Boise, ID USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The jacket summary for this book suggests an interesting concept for exploration, namely the reasons that some scientific theories remain in obscurity for generations, only to be subsequently 'rediscovered' and validated. After reading this book, I'm still waiting for a thorough treatment of this phenomenon. The book is a collection of five essays that are not thematically connected as well as I would expect. Several of the essays largely consists of anecdotes and personal observations, not any sort of philosophical development or historical overview. Oliver Sacks' closing essay, "Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science", is by far the best and could well serve as the basis for a more complete treatment. Too bad I couldn't find this article on the New York Review of Books Web site since it would save buying the book.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice beginnings but more stories and linking desirable, April 25, 2003

By	R. M. Williams "just an avid reader" (tucson, arizona USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Hidden Histories of Science (Hardcover)

book review _Hidden Histories of Science_
Hidden Histories of Science

Collection of 5 essays:
jonathan Miller on "Going Unconscious"

Stephen Jay Gould on "Ladders and Cones: Constraining Evolution by Canonical Icons"

Daniel J Kevles on "Pursuing the Unpopular: A History of Courage, Viruses, and Cancer"

R.C Lewontin on "Genese, Environment, and Organisms"

Oliver Sacks on "Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science"

A light read on the topic of: "episodes or themes, in the history of science that seemed to them worth recalling, not least because of what they suggested about the uses or implications of scientific history itself." pg ii Uneven essays, more like something i expect to read on the net rather than in print.

"Going Unconscious" is about hypnotism. An interesting example with the Okey sisters who had been successful "in a Pentecostal congregation in a nearby church, where their glossolalic interventions had attracted admiring attention. The career of these two young women neatly illustrates the way in which the symptoms of serious personality disorders can be shaped and then reshaped, depending on the social intitution in which they manifest themselves. In a congregation which recognized and valued the notion of 'speaking in tongues' the sisters modulated their conduct until they were recognizable as Pentecostal prophets, whereas in the wards of the newly converted professor of medicine their repertoire changed under the influence of Elliotson's positive conditioning and they re-emerged as mesmeric shamans." pg 11

"Ladders and Cones" is S.J.Gould's contribution to the evolution discussion as he points out that the common pictures we all have in our minds as a result of their being published repeatedly. The ladder of life and the cone(tree) of life as dominate motifs transmitted as inaccurate pictures.

"Pursuing the Unpopular" is the best of the essays. On cancer, the 75 year history of retrovirus, following luck and scientific society's disregard to show that oncogenes exist.
"It is difficult to think of another case of scientific advance where almost every one of the key pioneers encountered pointed resistance from his community of peers." I'd offer pirons as the infective agent in mad cow disease and the bacterial infection basis for ulcers as two more cases. "What permitted the pioneers eventually to prevail was to a significant extent their professional courage, imagination, and persistence. Yet it was also the tolerance and pluralism of the basic biomedical research system--the tolerance of deviant ideas and the pluralism that provides niches in which the ideas have a chance to flourish." pg 107-6

"Genes, Environment, and Organisms"
1. mechanistic nature of biological explanations
2. the historical nature of biological explanations
3. the contingency of biological explanations
4. the great need for developmental explanations
5. internal and external explanations play a very important part in the developmental scheme
6. life creates its own environment.

The experiment on page 124 with the supporting picture on page 125 is very good. Take 3 plants, divide each into 3 pieces, plant each piece in a different environment based on elevation. Watch the results that each plant does grow differently in each environment especially as compared to the set of results.

Oliver Sacks is a really good attention-grabbing author, "Scotoma" which is darkness or shadow, as used by neurologists, denote a disconnection, a hiatus in perception caused by a lesion in the central nervous system. pg 150 It is a neat look at several points in science where ideas where lost to be discovered years later, color preception is one of the examples. The radical continguency of science is again looked at mostly in the medical field. This essay was the impetus for the book.

A nice read, nothing great, might have been much more given the taste of each essay, but unfortunately left as a taste and not a full meal.

thanks for reading the essay.