Dr. Guy Dove on "Failing Up: Descartes and the Origins of Neuroscience"
LFPL's At the Library Series
English - October 03, 2022 11:46 - 48.9 MB - ★★★★★ - 5 ratingsBooks Arts Education library libraries author culture history information education news politics Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Previous Episode: Dr. Bailey Thomas on "Towards a 'More Perfect Union': Race, Failure, and Social Progress"
Next Episode: Gregory Maupin on how “Failure Is Success”
We often think of science as the result of a gradual process of improvement. On this view, partially successful theories are replaced over time by ever more successful ones. In this class, I argue that deeply flawed theories – which even contemporaries immediately recognize as failures – can influence and encourage scientific investigation and thinking. Descartes’ hydrodynamic conception of neurophysiology provides a specific example of how it is possible to fail up in science.