Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object

Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object PDF Author: Jonathan Simon
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498531482
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Introduced in 1894 as a treatment for a deadly childhood disease, the diphtheria serum stands as a milestone in pharmaceutical history. Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object: A Philosophical Analysis of Serotherapy in France 1894-1900 considers the production and use of this serum in France, analyzing the drug in terms of a technological object. To do this, Jonathan Simon draws on the philosophy of technology, exploring the application of this approach to medical drugs and suggesting how such an analysis can in turn contribute to this domain of philosophy. Starting with the manufacture of the serum from horses’ blood, Simon then considers the processes involved in transforming the blood serum into a legal medical drug and establishing its efficacy as a treatment against diphtheria. The book looks at the place the drug assumed in French society at the time, as well as the legal and political implications of its manufacture and use. All these elements are deployed to characterize a specifically French serum, as the author argues that the constitution of the drug in its full sense is not only technical but also social, political, and legal. Considering the serum as technological object facilitates a philosophical reflection on the nature of medical drugs in general by means of a thorough analysis of this particular historical example. The insights offered in this book will be of interest to students and scholars working on the philosophy of technology, particularly the medical sciences, as well as to historians of medicine, particularly those interested in the history of pharmacy.

Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object

Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object PDF Author: Jonathan Simon
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498531482
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Get Book Here

Book Description
Introduced in 1894 as a treatment for a deadly childhood disease, the diphtheria serum stands as a milestone in pharmaceutical history. Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object: A Philosophical Analysis of Serotherapy in France 1894-1900 considers the production and use of this serum in France, analyzing the drug in terms of a technological object. To do this, Jonathan Simon draws on the philosophy of technology, exploring the application of this approach to medical drugs and suggesting how such an analysis can in turn contribute to this domain of philosophy. Starting with the manufacture of the serum from horses’ blood, Simon then considers the processes involved in transforming the blood serum into a legal medical drug and establishing its efficacy as a treatment against diphtheria. The book looks at the place the drug assumed in French society at the time, as well as the legal and political implications of its manufacture and use. All these elements are deployed to characterize a specifically French serum, as the author argues that the constitution of the drug in its full sense is not only technical but also social, political, and legal. Considering the serum as technological object facilitates a philosophical reflection on the nature of medical drugs in general by means of a thorough analysis of this particular historical example. The insights offered in this book will be of interest to students and scholars working on the philosophy of technology, particularly the medical sciences, as well as to historians of medicine, particularly those interested in the history of pharmacy.

Pasteur's Empire

Pasteur's Empire PDF Author: Aro Velmet
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190072822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Why did "microbe hunters" at the Pasteur Institute become the most important health experts in the French empire in the early twentieth century? Pasteur's Empire illustrates how French microbiologists transformed life in the colonies in the name of humanitarian public health, which often had grave consequences for those living under French rule.

Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge

Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge PDF Author: Ashley Shew
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 149854312X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
Animal studies literature, and its public consumption have sparked interest in questions about humanity. Most scholars aim these studies to help us sort out how we should regard other creatures and how we should understand ourselves in light of their capacities. This book offers something a little different, investigating the conceptual limits of tool-use and technology through the lens of technological knowledge. Making sense of animal studies can be tricky because of long-held and culturally pervasive beliefs and messages about human triumph over nature (where animals are considered to be part of nature). Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge, considers animal tool use, techniques, and construction within the context of theories about what constitutes technology and what constitutes knowledge. With reference to an engaging variety of animal case studies, primarily from research on apes, dolphins, and crows, this book shows how concepts from philosophy of technology can be used to make better sense of the animal cases. These animal cases also help us to refine our philosophical concepts, creating more careful distinction and uniting different accounts of technological knowledge.

Unframing Martin Heidegger’s Understanding of Technology

Unframing Martin Heidegger’s Understanding of Technology PDF Author: Søren Riis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498567673
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book presents a new and radical interpretation of some of Martin Heidegger’s most influential texts. The unfamiliar interpretations all seek to question and unframe hasty assessments of the concepts and constellations of thoughts surrounding Heidegger’s notion of modern technology. Heidegger’s impressive work still hides many treasures and strange thoughts giving original insights into the rise of biotechnology, transgressions between art and technology and the writing of Western history. By way of surprising thought experiments, critical questioning, allusions and systematic conclusions, this book presents Heidegger’s thoughts on technology in a way that not only shows his importance for philosophy and modern society, but also identifies his shortcomings and uses his original thoughts and concepts against him.

Sustainability in the Anthropocene

Sustainability in the Anthropocene PDF Author: Róisín Lally
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498584233
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
We are facing an environmental crisis that some say is ushering a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, one that threatens not only a great deal of life on the planet but also our understanding of who we are and our relation to the natural world. In the face of this crisis it has become clear that we need a more sustainable culture. In fact the language of sustainability has become pervasive in our culture and has deeply ingrained itself in our understanding of what living a good life would entail. “Sustainability,” however, is a contested word, and it carries with it, often implicitly and unacknowledged, deep philosophical claims that are entangled with all kinds of assumptions and power relations, some of them very problematic. This book attempts to set this urgent goal of sustainability free from its more reductive and harmful interpretations and to thereby apply a more thoughtful environmental ethics to current and emerging technologies, particularly those involving reproduction and the harnessing of energy that dominate our elemental relations to sun and air, wind and water, earth and forest. The book is divided into 4 sections: (1) Sustainability: A Contested Term, (2) Sustainability and Renewable Technologies: Sun, Air, Wind, Water, (3) Sustainability and Design, and (4) Sustainability and Ethics. The first section sets the context for our studies and opens a space for thinking sustainability in a more thoughtful way than is often the case in contemporary discussions. The next two sections are the heart of our contribution to postphenomenology and technoscience, and the essays, here, turn to concrete examinations of particular technologies and questions of technological design in the light of our environmental crisis. The fourth section closes the book by drawing some more general implications for ethics from the intersection of the foregoing themes.

Feedback Loops

Feedback Loops PDF Author: Andrew Wells Garnar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498597637
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
In a world of information technologies, genetic engineering, controversies about established science, and the mysteries of quantum physics, it is at once seemingly impossible and absolutely vital to find ways to make sense of how science, technology, and society connect. In Feedback Loops: Pragmatism about Science & Technology, editors Andrew Wells Garnar and Ashley Shew bring together original writing from philosophers and science and technology studies scholars to provide novel ways of rethinking the relationships among science, technology, education, and society. Through critiquing and exploring the work of philosopher of science and technology Joseph C. Pitt, the authors featured in this volume investigate the complexities of contemporary technoscience, writing on topics ranging from super-computing to pedagogy, engineering to biotechnology patents, and scientific instruments to disability studies. Taken together, these chapters develop an argument about the necessity of using pragmatism to foster a more productive relationship among science, technology and society.

Explorations in Baltic Medical History, 1850-2015

Explorations in Baltic Medical History, 1850-2015 PDF Author: Nils Hansson
Publisher: Rochester Studies in Medical H
ISBN: 158046940X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Examines medical history in northern Europe from 1850 to 2015 and sheds new light on the circulation of medical knowledge in that region

Postphenomenology and Media

Postphenomenology and Media PDF Author: Yoni Van Den Eede
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498550150
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Postphenomenology and Media: Essays on Human–Media–World Relations sheds light on how new, digital media are shaping humans and their world. It does so by using the postphenomenological framework to comprehensively study “human-media relations,” making use of conceptual instruments such as the transparency-opacity distinction, embodiment, multistability, variational analysis, and cultural hermeneutics. This collection outlines central issues of media and mediation theory that can be explored postphenomenologically and showcases research at the cutting edge of philosophy of media and technology. The contributors together enlarge the range of thinking about human-media-world relations in contemporary society, reflecting the interdisciplinary range of this school of thought, and explore, sometimes self-reflexively and sometimes critically, the provocative landscape of postphenomenology and media.

The Treatment of Diphtheria with Diphtheria Antitoxin ...

The Treatment of Diphtheria with Diphtheria Antitoxin ... PDF Author: Edwin Rosenthal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Diphtheria antitoxin
Languages : en
Pages : 10

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Book Description


Philosophical Arabesques

Philosophical Arabesques PDF Author: Nikolai Bukharin
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583671021
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Bukharin’s Philosophical Arabesques was written while he was imprisoned in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, facing trial on charges of treason, and later awaiting execution after he was found guilty. After the death of Lenin, Bukharin cooperated with Stalin for a time. Once Stalin's supremacy was assured he began eliminating all potential rivals. For Bukharin, the process was to end with his confession before the Soviet court, facing the threat that his young family would be killed along with him if he did not. While awaiting his death, Bukharin wrote prolifically. He considered Philosophical Arabesques as the most important of his prison writings. In its pages, he covers the full range of issues in Marxist philosophy—the sources of knowledge, the nature of truth, freedom and necessity, the relationship of Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. The project constitutes a defense of the genuine legacy of Lenin's Marxism against the use of his memory to legitimate totalitarian power. Consigned to the Kremlin archives for a half-century after Bukharin’s execution, this work is now being published for the first time in English. It will be an essential reference work for scholars of Marxism and the Russian revolution and a landmark in the history of prison writing.