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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.