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

Connoisseurship and the Communication of Anatomical Knowledge: The Case of William Cheselden’s Osteographia (1733)

This essay re-examines the connections between connoisseurship and anatomical knowledge in the works of the elite medics of eighteenth-century Britain. These medics, including Richard Mead and William Cheselden, were known both for their medical innovations and for their commitment to the practices of connoisseurship—the collection and criticism of fine art objects. The essay discusses the making, presentation and reception of one such object—the Osteographia (1733), a luxurious anatomical atlas produced by the famous surgeon William Cheselden and sharply criticized by another surgeon, John Douglas. Focusing on how these two surgeons engaged with the aesthetic and material qualities of the book, Wragge-Morley identifies hitherto overlooked connections between the much-contested discourses and practices of medical knowledge and connoisseurship

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

Additive Manufacturing of Next Generation Electrical Machine Windings - Opportunities in Fusion Engineering?

More electric propulsion across automotive and aerospace has lead to a demand for significant improvement in thepower density of electrical machines. This has, in turn, triggered research into advanced manufacturing methods for higher performance magnet systems in machines. The application of Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF), a form of Additive Manufacture (AM), to the current carrying coils of the electromagnetic circuit of a machine has allowed several significant improvements to the design of these parts. One benefit which can be realised in this way is the tailoring of conductor form to the operating field and the alteration of conductor topolgy to reduce AC loss. Another advantage of these manufacturing techniques is the ability to introduce methods of direct cooling to the coil, including highly efficient heat exchangers derived from generative design techniques. It is significant that the electrical conductivity achieved is now equivalent to that of conventional drawn Cu wire. This paper hypothesises that the lessons learned in developing production methods for next generation, high performance components for electric machines might also find utility in the very demanding electromagnetic circuits found in magnetic confinement fusion. Potential benefits for the production of Cable-in-Conduit Conductor (CICC) superconducting (SC) bus-bar joints, or even larger elements of conductors are discussed. This is used to motivate future experimental studies of the mechanical and electrical performance of AM Cu at cryogenic temperatures as well as the further development of the manufacturing state of the art

Restitution, description and knowledge in English architecture and natural philosophy, 1650-1750

Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren's interest in ancient buildings has been noted by historians of architecture and natural philosophy alike. The two men used to meet to discuss descriptions - both verbal and visual - and models of ancient buildings that had long since disappeared and were known only through ancient accounts, or that remained only in a ruined or altered form. These included the Temple of Solomon, described at different places in the Bible, Porsenna's tomb, cited as an example of extravagance by Pliny the Elder, and the Hagia Sophia. In 1675, Hooke recorded such a meeting in his diary: 'With Sir Chr. Wren. Long Discourse with him about the module [model] of the Temple at Jerusalem'. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Aesthetic Science:Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650-1720

The scientists affiliated with the early Royal Society of London have long been regarded as forerunners of modern empiricism, rejecting the symbolic and moral goals of Renaissance natural history in favor of plainly representing the world as it really was. In Aesthetic Science, Alexander Wragge-Morley challenges this interpretation by arguing that key figures such as John Ray, Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, Robert Hooke, and Thomas Willis saw the study of nature as an aesthetic project. To show how early modern naturalists conceived of the interplay between sensory experience and the production of knowledge, Aesthetic Science explores natural-historical and anatomical works of the Royal Society through the lens of the aesthetic. By underscoring the importance of subjective experience to the communication of knowledge about nature, Wragge-Morley offers a groundbreaking reconsideration of scientific representation in the early modern period and brings to light the hitherto overlooked role of aesthetic experience in the history of the empirical sciences