Medicine, connoisseurship, and the animal body

This essay reconsiders the links between medicine, connoisseurship, and aesthetic theory in early eighteenth-century Britain. Taking a satire on the body of the physician and collector John Woodward as its starting point, I show that medicine and connoisseurship shared a deep preoccupation with the possibility that the animal body could excessively influence the workings of the mind. Pursuing this line of argument, moreover, I will reconsider the place of mind–body dualism in eighteenth-century British medicine and aesthetics. With the exception of materialists such as the philosopher-physician Bernard Mandeville, medics and aesthetic theorists tended to identify the exercise of judgment with the operations of a disembodied mind, unsullied by the embodied mechanisms of the lower body. In practice, however, the insistence that the most refined forms of judgment depended on the presence and activity of a disembodied, immaterial soul was less meaningful than it seems. When confronted by failures of judgment, medics and connoisseurs alike sought explanations in the mechanisms of the animal body. Whether or not they believed in the immateriality of the soul, they pictured the mind as a malfunctioning animal machine, to be cured through the material agency of medical therapeutics

Charge diffusion in the field-free region of charge-coupled devices

The potential well in back-illuminated charge-coupled devices (CCDs) does not reach all the way to the back surface. Hence, light that is absorbed in the field-free region generates electrons that can diffuse into neighboring pixels and thus decreases the spatial resolution of the sensor. We present data for the charge diffusion from a near point source by measuring the response of a back-illuminated CCD to light emitted from a submicron diameter glass fiber tip. The diffusion of electrons into neighboring pixels is analyzed for different wavelengths of light ranging from 430 to 780 nm. To find out how the charge spreading into other pixels depends on the location of the light spot; the fiber tip could be moved with a piezoelectric translation stage. The experimental data are compared to Monte Carlo simulations and an analytical model of electron diffusion in the field-free region. The presented analysis can be used to predict the charge diffusion in other back-illuminated sensors, and the experiment is universally applicable to measure any type of sensors

Introduction: Science and connoisseurship in the European Enlightenment

A major theme of the European Enlightenment was the rationalization of value, the use of reason to determine the value of things, from diamonds to civilizations. This view of the Enlightenment is well-established in the human sciences. It is ripe for extension to the natural sciences, given the rich recent literature on affect, evaluation, and subjectivity in early modern science. Meanwhile, in art history, the new history of connoisseurship provides a model for the historical study of the evaluation of material things. Historians of natural history have already noted the connections between science, Enlightenment, and connoisseurship. The time has come to extend their insights to other areas of Enlightenment science. This means recognizing the breadth of connoisseurship – the social, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity of the practice – as understood in Europe in the eighteenth century and the latter part of the seventeenth century. An outline of the three papers in this special section gives an indication of how this historiographical project might be carried out

The Pleistocene geoarchaeology and geochronology of Con Moong Cave, North Vietnam: Site formation processes and hominin activity in the humid tropics

This paper presents the results of geoarchaeological and geochronological investigations at Con Moong Cave, North Vietnam. Beneath the published, terminal Pleistocene sequence, recent excavations have uncovered a ~5 m stratigraphic sequence containing flaked stone artifacts and sedimentary features that indicate extensive post-depositional change. As the effects of tropical conditions on Pleistocene cave sediments are poorly resolved, a range of complementary techniques was selected to reconstruct the nature of on-site sedimentation and occupation, while assessing the taphonomy of archaeological and palaeoecological materials. Our approach incorporates microstratigraphic, geochemical and sedimentological analyses, using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to estimate the time of sediment deposition in the cave. This case study has broad application to tropical zones worldwide. Sedimentation began in early Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4, while micromorphologically observed human occupation commenced before 42 thousand years ago (ka). By placing our results within the context of published, high-resolution regional records of climate, we demonstrate that on-site rhythms of Pleistocene occupation correlated with environmental changes in the region. During MIS 3, episodic abandonment of the site coincided with periods of drier conditions, while rapid climate fluctuations in MIS 2 corresponded with short-lived occupation events and a switch to predominantly geogenic deposition in the cave

The Cenozoic history of palms:Global diversification, biogeography and the decline of megathermal forests

10.1111/geb.13436GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY313425-43