ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

NeuroZoology: Theodore Holmes Bullock, Comparative Physiology, and the Making of Neuroscience (1950s-1970s).

• In Event: Biology's 20th Century Evolution: From Genetics to AI

English Abstract

With its emphasis on molecular biology, technological advance, and the great riddle of the human brain, the “neuromolecular” account of the birth of the neurosciences as a scientific discipline overshadows important contributions to its origin. One relevant example is the place of zoologists, as purveyors of research models, as well as advocates of a biological, comparative perspective. This talk attempts to balance such a selective view, through the example of Theodore Holmes Bullock and his role in the establishment of neuroscience in the US, (1950s-1970s).
It takes a double focus:
1. His monumental reference book (co-authored with another zoologist, Adrian Horridge) Structure and Function in the Nervous System of Invertebrates. Published in 1965, it has been defined as “the Bible and Baedeker of comparative neurobiology” (Leonard 2001).
2. Bullock’s involvement in the Neuroscience Research Program (1962-1982), within which he refined his “simple-systems” approach to complex phenomena, such as learning and memory.
Both contributions embody the same combined goals of encouraging the search for minimal units of experiment in neuroscience (simplification), while promoting a comparative approach to the study of nervous systems, as opposed to the nervous system.
In its specificity, the story of Bullock’s transformation from “zoologist” to “neuroscientist” gestures to many analogous experiences of shifting perspectives. Taken collectively, these invite historians of neuroscience to look closer at its many different historical roots, as well as at its persistent, plural identity.

Author

• fabio De Sio, Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf