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Last broadcast on Thu, 8 May 2008, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas about the human brain. Since time immemorial people have puzzled over the brain and its functions. In the 5th century BC the Greek physician Hippocrates confidently asserted:
“Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, grieves and tears.”
This might suggest that people have never doubted the importance of the brain, but for Aristotle the heart was the ruler of the body and the seat of the soul.
Only in the 17th century, with new scientific advances, did the true importance of the brain begin to be appreciated. In 1669 the Danish anatomist, Nicolaus Steno, still lamented that, “the brain, the masterpiece of creation, is almost unknown to us.”
How far have our perceptions of how the brain works and what it symbolises changed over the centuries? And, in amongst the matter or our little grey cells, are we still searching for our souls?
With Vivian Nutton, Professor of the History of Medicine at University College London; Jonathan Sawday, Professor of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde; Marina Wallace, Professor at the University of the Arts, London, Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design
Further Reading
Edwin Clarke and Charles D. O'Malley, The human brain and spinal cord, ed. 2, (San Francisco, Norman, 1996)
Edwin Clarke and Kenneth Dewhurst, An illustrated history of brain function, ed. 2, (San Francisco, Norman, 1996)
Vivian Nutton, Ancient Medicine (London, Routledge, 2004)
Julius Rocca, Galen on the Brain (Leiden, Brill, 2003)
Charles Singer, Vesalius on the Human Brain (Oxford, Oxford University Press,1952)
Stanley Finger, Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations into Brain Function (Oxford University Press, 1994)
Martin Kemp, Marina Wallace, Spectacular Bodies, The art and science of the human body from Leonardo to now (Hayward Gallery/California University Press, 2000)
Caterina Albano, Ken Arnold, Marina Wallace, Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind (Artakt/Wellcome Trust, 2003)
Christopher G.Goetz, Michael Bonduelle, Toby Gelfand, Charcot: Constructing Neurology (Oxford University Press, 1995)
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Susan Greenfield, The Human Brain (Phoenix, 1997/2000)
Francis Schiller, Paul Broca: Explorer of the Brain (Oxford University Press, 1992)
Douwe Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory: A history of ideas about the mind (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Semir Zeki, A Vision of the Brain (Blackwell, 1993)
Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain(Picador, 2007)
Susan Greenfield, A Journey to the Centers of the Mind(New York, 1995)
Margaret Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing (NY, 2002)
Barry J Gibb, The Rough Guide to the Brain (Rough Guides, London, 2007)
La Struttura Miscroscopica: La vita di Camillo Golgi (Cisalpino, Pavia, 1996) [this is in Italian, but published by the University of Pavia where Golgi worked and has very good information and illustrations]
Broadcasts
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Thu 8 May 200809:00
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Thu 8 May 200821:30
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