History of Science

Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud: The Sciences of Life and Society
In this course we will examine our concepts of society, power, value, and desire through reading selected works by Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. The goal is not to attempt to prove or disprove their many arguments, but to understand those views and the social context that shaped them through a close examination of their works. Special emphasis will be on reading the original texts and attention will be paid to how they went about their critiques as well as the revolutionary consequences that followed --- including those that were often antithetical to their own views and work.

Debates in Nineteenth-Century European Philosophy offers an engaging and in-depth introduction to the philosophical questions raised by this rich and far reaching period in the history of philosophy. Throughout thirty chapters (organized around fifteen individual philosophers), the volume surveys the intellectual contributions of European philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, but it also engages the on-going debates about how these contributions can and should be understood. As such, the volume provides both an overview of Nineteenth-Century European philosophy and an introduction to contemporary scholarship in this field.

Le recours croissant aux médicaments psychotropes est-il le reflet d’une société de plus en plus fragile sur le plan psychique, de plus en plus encline à développer des dépendances, ou encore très sensible au puissant discours sur la prévention et les risques sanitaires ?

Au-delà de l’influence, maintes fois étudiée, du médicament comme vecteur de la médecine dans le cadre de nos vies quotidiennes, les auteurs mettent l’accent sur l’influence du social (conduites, imaginaire, normes, valeurs, etc.), sur l’utilisation du médicament et sur les pratiques médicales et la médecine. Ce retournement analytique permet de mieux expliquer la place centrale du médicament dans nos vies.

Ils démontrent la difficulté de comprendre le recours massif au médicament dans nos sociétés sans le replacer dans le cadre des processus plus complexes : exigences de performance sociale, obsession de la santé parfaite, idéologies de la prévention, centration sur soi, individualisme, valorisation décontextualisée du biomédical, place grandissante du corps dans la représentation de soi, etc.

Chercheurs, enseignants, étudiants et intervenants provenant du monde de la santé et du communautaire et désirant comprendre les logiques sociales du recours au médicament seront intéressés par le contenu de cet ouvrage.

William Hunter (1718-1783) lacked the wherewithal earlier in his career, but on becoming financially independent from his father in 1754 he expanded his anatomical collections with purchases of books, manuscripts and portraits of figures from the history of medicine.  Hunter’s concept of his museum altered further and in 1767 he embarked on acquiring natural history specimens and objects from other subject areas. By the time of his death, the numbers of both his coins and medals and natural history objects far outstripped the other contents.  Unlike many others Hunter was not a ‘stamp collector’, simply compiling a cabinet of curiosities or sybaritic expressions of status, but acquired natural history material with the aim of supplementing his knowledge and interest in the subject.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, scientists and physicians the world over began to think of sex as something that could be studied and understood through rational methods. In places like Germany, these sexologists were associated with progressive political movements that combated stigmatization of homosexuality and contraception and broke taboos regarding issues such as impotence and masturbation. In this podcast, Liat Kozma examines how sexology traveled and transformed in Middle Eastern contexts through the writings of Egyptian doctors and Jewish exiles.