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The Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica ('On the fabric of the human body') is a foundational work of medicine in the West. Its more than 200 woodcuts revolutionized how people pictured the human body, flayed and cut to reveal musculature, nerves, organs and bones. Even now, 475 years after it was first published, the bold images of skeletons and skinless 'muscle men' in sinuous poses (by illustrator Jan Steven van Calcar) beguile.
More than 700 copies survive from the 1543 and 1555 editions, which Vesalius supervised. Of these, roughly two-thirds contain comments in the margins, bizarre doodles, and coloured-in and even defaced images, as we reveal in our book The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius. Early readers, on evidence, studied Vesalius's treatise diligently, yet had no compunction about scribbling in a hugely expensive volume.
Looking deeper, the marginalia tell two stories. One is that some found the images baffling, and attempted to clarify them in innovative ways. Another is that the pious found the figures' necessary nudity scandalous, and felt impelled to weigh in with ink and scissors. Our study of the reactions of hundreds of readers has taught us that medical communities do not always adopt innovative solutions quickly, even when they are presented in such an elegant format as the Fabrica. It takes time to get used to novelty. And we have learnt that even the most ingenious scientific minds can fail to predict how political and religious institutions will respond to their work.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05941-0
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @07:11PM (1 child)
In this graph [google.com], you can see that the word "foundational" was basically nonexistent until the 1980s, when it saw an exponential rise in usage. I suspect that's because the word "fundamental" became associated with the word "fundamentalist", as in "fundamentalist Christian"; the rise of the political power of the evangelicals in America probably made "fundamental" a dirty word—indeed, when I hear "fundamental" (and especially "fundamentalist"), I think of raving, fanatical lunatics of any dogmatic sort.
However, you can see in this graph [google.com] that the word "fundamental" is still probably the "correct" word, and "foundational" is just in its infancy as a real word.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:07PM
While that's an interesting theory (and I don't doubt some people shifted from "fundamental" for reasons you cite), "foundational" has been around since the 1650s [merriam-webster.com]. It may not have been popular, but it's not a new word.
And my personal sense is that it means something slightly different. "Fundamental" also has the connotation of "basic," as in the SIMPLE underlying principles of something. I've rarely heard "foundational" used in that sense to imply the "basics." Whereas "foundational" can refer to the FOUNDING stuff that began something, as in the summary here. It was one of the texts that FOUNDED modern medicine, hence foundational.
"Fundamental" is a similar word, but it doesn't have the same connotations. This book may also have been "fundamental," as in conveying the basic substance of the field as a textbook, but I don't think that's what TFA meant to convey.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @07:12PM (1 child)
china thinks the "internets" need to be CLEAN and facebook will ban all mention of nudity?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @07:32PM
hey BOT, can you smack some contextual sense into your friend here?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @08:27PM (3 children)
Why the clickbait headline? The summary is about a treatise on anatomy. Why can't we call it what it is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @08:36PM (1 child)
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @08:57PM
Don't donate to the catholic church. Unless you approve of priests raping alter-boys and such, and you want to pay them to continue to do so. It's not a few isolated cases like the church tells you.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @09:07PM
The summary is about the censorship of reproductive organs from a 16th century anatomy book by its contemporary readers.
You're asking Soylent's editors to remove "sex" from the title of Nature's story since it's "clickbait".
You know, you're walking a thin line between being ironic and being stupid. And it's leaning towards the latter...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @08:31PM (2 children)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18548944 [nih.gov]
Reliance on "consensus" can hold back science for hundreds of years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @08:49PM (1 child)
Not a single mention of consensus in that article summary. Methinks you are trying to make an "alternate" "point"?
What holds science back are the defenders of the status quo who reject new ideas as preposterous. It is dangerous to toss out ideas without any real consideration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @09:00PM
Uniform belief in the same authorities is "consensus".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:56AM (1 child)
https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/liverpages/medliver.gif [stanford.edu]
https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/liverpages/largeliver.gif [stanford.edu]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 27 2018, @09:50PM
Uh. Four.
Right. Left. Caudate. Quadrate.
Even Wikipedia knows that. [wikipedia.org] Though yes I understand right and left are common parlance, and the author's point has merit anyway. But get basics like that wrong and who will read the rest?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 27 2018, @09:41PM
It was foundational. Using present tense makes it read like it is still used today as a basic reference.
Are we sure that the margin notes and covers were created by the owners of their day / the medical community? (And they may well be, just no proof of that here).
So are we really equating the medical community of the 1500s with the medical community of the 2000s? Or equating the medical community of the 2000s with that of the 1500s? [citation needed]
"Quickly," is relative and in this case without any referent. If you pretend to a rigorous article then quantify. At least tell me what quickly is in comparison to what?
For the sake of argument allowing the statement, indeed the change process of medical bodies usually wait for incremental proofs before adopting a change. It's called an ethcial approach to applied science. And for every "miracle drug" that doesn't get approved overnight and cost lives there are more lives saved by not adopting quack ideas fast. Or such is the hope, anyway. And then there is the use of outmoded ideas and thoughts because the corpus of medicine and allied fields is so large that a provider might not be exposed to an idea or might not be prepared to adopt it readily in the face of something else that appears to work. Yet the body of knowledge advances over time. C'est la vie.
This sig for rent.