The Neuroscientific Turn

by Littlefield, Melissa M.; Johnson, Jenell M.

• ISBN13: 9780472118267
• ISBN10: 0472118269
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-02
• Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr

Summary

The Neuroscientific Turnbrings together 19 scholars from a variety of fields to reflect on the promises of and challenges facing emergent "neurodisciplines" such as neuroethics, neuroeconomics, and neurohistory. In the aftermath of the Decade of the Brain, neuroscience has become one of the hottest topics of study---not only for scientists but also, increasingly, for scholars from the humanities and social sciences. While the popular press has simultaneously lauded and loathed the coming "neurorevolution," the academy has yet to voice any collective speculations about whether there is any coherence to this neuroscientific turn; what this turn will and should produce; and what implications it has for inter- or transdisciplinary inquiry. Melissa M. Littlefield and Jenell M. Johnson provide an initial framework for this most recent of "turns" by bringing together 14 original essays by scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and neurosciences. The resulting collection will appeal to neuroscientists curious about their colleagues' interest in their work; scholars and students both in established neurodisciplines and in disciplines such as sociology or English wondering about how to apply neuroscience findings to their home disciplines; and to science, technology, and society scholars and students interested in the roles of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in the construction of knowledge.

Table of Contents

Preface: A Neuro-Pivot	p. xi
Introduction: Theorizing the Neuroscientific Turn-Critical Perspectives on a Translational Discipline	p. 1
The Neuroscientific Turn in Context
"The Paradise of Non-Experts": The Neuroscientific Turn of the 1840s United States	p. 29
The Performativity of a Historical Brain Event: Revisiting 1517 Strassburg	p. 49
The Neural Metaphor	p. 71
The Neuroscientific Turn in Practice
Brainhood, Selfhood, or "Meat with a Point of View": The Value of Fiction for Neuroscientific Research and Neurological Medicine	p. 89
Neuroscience and the Quest for God	p. 105
Literacy in a Biocultural World: Integrating Sociocultural Studies of Literacy and Neuroscientific Research	p. 120
Pragmatic Neuroethics and Neuroscience's Potential to Radically Change Ethics	p. 135
Fast-Moving Objects and Their Consequences: A Response to the Neuroscientific Turn in Practice	p. 152
Critical Responses to the Neuroscientific Turn
Neuroeconomics: A Cautionary Primer	p. 163
Functional Brain Imaging: Neuro-Turn or Wrong Turn?	p. 180
A Clinical Neuroscientist Looks Neuroskeptically at Neuroethics in the Neuroworld	p. 199
The Mind-Sciences in a Literature Classroom	p. 216
Afterword: Twisting the Neurohelix	p. 233
Contributors	p. 241
Index	p. 247
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