Man on his Nature (Cambridge Library Collection - Science and Religion)
(Based on the Gifford Lectures of 1937-8 in Edinburgh, Nob...)
Based on the Gifford Lectures of 1937-8 in Edinburgh, Nobel Prize winner Charles Sherrington's 1940 study addresses the nature of the mind and its relationship to life and matter. The book centres on the writings of the little-known sixteenth-century physician Jean Fernel. After setting out Fernel's views on the nature of man, Sherrington proceeds to develop his own thoughts, drawing upon a wide variety of philosophical theories. Using Fernel as a historical case study, the book demonstrates how any scientific outlook is always part of its age, and shows how views on the eternal enigmas of mankind, mind and life have changed radically over time. Sherrington's book is important in the history of ideas for its assessment of the value of advances in natural science as a framework for the development of natural theology.
The Integrative Action of the Nervous System - Scholar's Choice Edition
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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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The Integrative Action of the Nervous System - Primary Source Edition
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
(Originally published in 1940, and first reprinted as this...)
Originally published in 1940, and first reprinted as this second edition in 1951, this volume was written by the Nobel laureate Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952). To read this book is to share in wonder at the mystery of life, uncovered by a great scientist who was also a great lyrical writer. To read Sir Charles on the eye making itself (pp. 105-113) is to attend a miracle.
The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Integrative Action of the Nervous System...)
Excerpt from The Integrative Action of the Nervous System
In the year 1883 a legacy of eighty thousand dollars was left to the President and Fellows of Yale College in the city of New Haven, to be held in trust, as a gift from her children, in memory of their beloved and honored mother Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman.
On this foundation Yale College was requested and directed to establish an annual course of lectures designed to illustrate the presence and providence, the wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in the natural and moral world. These were to be designated as the Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures. It was the belief of the testator that any orderly presentation of the facts of nature or history contributed to the end of this foundation more effectively than any attempt to emphasize the elements of doctrine or of creed; and he therefore provided that lectures on dogmatic or polemical theology should be excluded from the scope of this foundation, and that the subjects should be selected rather from the domains of natural science and history, giving special prominence to astronomy, chemistry, geology, and anatomy.
It was further directed that each annual course should be made the basis of a volume to form part of a series constituting a memorial to Mrs. Silliman. The memorial fund came into the possession of the Corporation of Yale University in the year 1902; and the present volume constitutes the second of the series of memorial lectures. The first volume in this series was Electricity and Matter, by Prof. J.J. Thomson, of Cambridge University.
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The endeavour of Jean Fernel,: With a list of the editions of his writings,
(Originally published in 1946, this book examines the writ...)
Originally published in 1946, this book examines the writing and controversy of Jean Fernel's The Natural Part of Medicine, the 1542 publication that attempted to replace Galen's treatise on physiology. Sherrington assesses Fernel's impact on the field of medical writing, and includes multiple plates illustrating early editions of Fernel's treatise and important figures of the day. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in medical history.
Sir Charles Scott Sherrington was an English neurophysiologist, histologist, bacteriologist, and a pathologist, Nobel laureate and president of the Royal Society in the early 1920s.
Background
Charles Sherrington was born in Islington, an area of London, Great Britain, on November 27, 1857. The identity of his parents has been a subject of debate, with some sources saying his father was James Norton Sherrington, a country doctor, and Anne Brookes. Other sources say that Charles, as well as both of his brothers, were the sons of Anne Brooks and Caleb Rose, a surgeon in Ipswich.
Education
Charles grew up under the tutelage of Caleb Rose, who maintained an excellent selection of books, paintings and geological items, which sponsored a lifelong love of art and intellectual curiosity. At the age of 14, he enrolled in the ‘Ipswich School’.
As a young man, he began studying with the ‘Royal College of Surgeons’ in England. He also wanted to study at Cambridge but his family could not afford it.
In 1876, he enrolled at St. Thomas' hospital to study medicine. Three years later, he entered Cambridge as a non-collegiate student to pursue a course in physiology.
In 1883, he took home many top honors in ‘Natural Sciences Tripos’, an international academic competition.
Career
In 1884, he was admitted as a member of the ‘Royal College of Surgeons’. The same year, he and a fellow scientist published a landmark paper on brain surgery they had conducted on a dog.
In 1885, he earned a Bachelor's degree in Medicine and Surgery from ‘Cambridge University’. He was also hired by ‘Cambridge University’ to travel to Spain to investigate an outbreak of Asiatic cholera.
In 1886, Sherrington successfully became a licentiate of the ‘Royal College of Physicians’, a prestigious group of elite medical experts. During the same year, he was sent to Italy to investigate another cholera outbreak.
In 1891, he was appointed to become the superintendent of the ‘Brown Institute for Advanced Physiological and Pathological Research’ of the ‘University of London’, where he conducted both human and animal research.
In 1892, he discovered the unique muscles that initiate the stretch reflex. For the next two years, Charles would publish several papers on the subject of spinal reflexes and nerve supply to the muscles.
In 1895, he became the Professor of Physiology at Liverpool. Two years later, Sherrington gave a famous lecture entitled the 'Croonian Lecture' on his work on animal pathology.
In 1906, a compendium of ten of Sherrington's lectures, delivered at ‘Yale University’ was published in a book entitled 'The Integrative Action of the Nervous System'.
In 1913, he was awarded the ‘Waynflete Chair of Physiology’ at ‘Oxford University’. Several of his students went on to be Nobel laureates.
In 1919, he published his landmark book 'Mammalian Physiology: a Course of Practical Exercises'.
In 1925, he published 'The Assaying of Brantius and other Verse', a book of poems about World War I.
In 1933, he gave a much-admired lecture in Cambridge entitled 'The Brain and its Mechanism' outlying his belief that mental performance affected physiological processes.
In 1936, he retired from Oxford. He then moved back to Ipswich and built his own house, where he continued to correspond with students and intellectuals around the world.
In 1940, a book entitled 'Man on His Nature', featuring Sherrington's thoughts on philosophy and religion, was published.
On March 4, 1952, this eminent scientist breathed his last in Sussex, England at the age of 94.
In 1916, he openly supported women being admitted to the medical school at ‘Oxford University’, making him an early feminist.
Quotations:
"Each waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, comedy, farce, or tragedy, by a dramatis personae, the 'self', and so it will be until the curtain drops. "
"As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space. "
"The brain is a mystery; it has been and still will be. How does the brain produce thoughts? That is the central question and we have still no answer to it. "
"Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern-always a meaningful pattern-though never an abiding one. "
"Natural knowledge has not forgone emotion. It has simply taken for itself new ground of emotion, under impulsion from and in sacrifice to that one of its 'values', Truth. "
"The terminal path may, to distinguish it from internuncial common paths, be called the final common path. The motor nerve to a muscle is a collection of such final common paths. "
"This integrative action in virtue of which the nervous system unifies from separate organs an animal possessing solidarity, an individual, is the problem before us. "
"The brain seems a thoroughfare for nerve-action passing its way to the motor animal. It has been remarked that Life's aim is an act not a thought. To-day the dictum must be modified to admit that, often, to refrain from an act is no less an act than to commit one, because inhibition is coequally with excitation a nervous activity. "
Interests
His favorite past-time was collecting and reading old books.
Connections
On August 27, 1891, Charles Sherrington married Ethel Mary Wright. Together, they had one son, Carr E. R. Sherrington.