The ambiguous frog. The Galvani-Volta Controversy on Animal Electricity. - PERA, MARCELLO
the Galvani-Volta controversy on animal electricity
KORTE INHOUD
How do ideas become accepted by the scientific community? How and why do scientists choose among empirically equivalent theories? In this pathbreaking book translated from the Italian, Marcello Pera addresses these questions by exploring the politics, rhetoric, scientific practices, and metaphysical assumptions that entered into the famous Galvani-Volta controversy of the late eighteenth century. This lively debate erupted when two scientists, each examining the muscle contractions of a dissected frog in contact with metal, came up with opposing but experimentally valid explanations of the phenomenon. Luigi Galvani, a doctor and physiologist, believed that he had discovered animal electricity (electrical body fluid existing naturally in a state of disequilibrium), while the physicist Alessandro Volta attributed the contractions to ordinary physical electricity. Beginning with the electrical concepts understood by scientists in the 1790s, Pera traces the careers of Galvani and Volta and explains their laborato...
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1992Uitgever: Princeton University Press203 paginasTaal: EngelsISBN-10: 0691085129ISBN-13: 9780691085128Koop dit boek tweedehands
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Original publisher's green cloth hardback, white title spine, pictorial dustjacket, 8vo: xxvi, 204pp., illustrations, chapternotes & references,. bibliography, index names. Very fine copy. Princeton, Princeton University Press. 1992 [Auteur: PERA, MARCELLO] [Jaar: 1992] [Titel: The ambiguous frog. The Galvani-Volta Controversy on Animal Electricity.]
