School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemOut of the madhouse: From asylums to caring community?(WILEY, 2021-07)The asylum era has occupied historians of madness for decades, but the story of deinstitutionalization has received comparatively less attention. While this complex process varied from country to country, there were common elements in the way it unfolded across the western world. Historians like to point out that deinstitutionalization was a long time coming, that the demise of the big public madhouses was grounded in their extraordinary expansion in the latter part of the 19th century. Even then, they had come in for scathing criticism suggesting they were inhumane and counterproductive. Public mental hospitals in the United States and some European countries began to empty soon after the Second World War, even before the new drugs arrived in the 1950s, partly driven by labor shortages that encouraged occupational rehabilitation. By then, psychiatrists and allied professionals had embraced the idea of a mental health continuum and shorter-term treatment in community-based services. The economic strains of the 1970s and 80s pushed the process along irreversibly, ensuring that longstanding critiques directly shaped social policy or served as convenient rationales.
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ItemDarwin's "Mr. Arthrobalanus'': Sexual Differentiation, Evolutionary Destiny and the Expert Eye of the Beholder(SPRINGER, 2017-05)Darwin's Cirripedia project was an exacting exercise in systematics, as well as an encrypted study of evolution in action. Darwin had a long-standing interest and expertise in marine invertebrates and their sexual arrangements. The surprising and revealing sexual differentiation he would uncover amongst barnacles represented an important step in his understanding of the origins of sexual reproduction. But it would prove difficult to reconcile these findings with his later theorizing. Moreover, the road to discovery was hardly straightforward. Darwin was both helped and hindered by the tacit expectations generated by his transformist theorizing, and had to overcome culturally-embedded assumptions about gender and reproductive roles. Significant observational backtracking was required to correct several oversights and misapprehensions, none more so than those relating to the chronically misunderstood "Mr. Arthrobalanus." With careful attention to chronology, this paper highlights some curious and overlooked aspects of Darwin's epic project.
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Item"Darwin's Delay": A Reassessment of the Evidence(University of Chicago Press, 2017-09-20)The suggestion that Darwin delayed publishing his species theory has long occupied a central part of his biographical storyline. The notion of a fretful delay reached a melodramatic apogee in Adrian Desmond and James Moore’s best-selling 1991 biography. Janet Browne’s acclaimed work downplayed the pathos but depicted a somewhat hesitant Darwin. In 2007 John van Wyhe upended this tableau, arguing that there was no evidence to support a secretive, fear-based delay. Contrary to vanWyhe, this essay suggests that Darwin was only selectively and strategically open about his belief in transmutation prior to his barnacle project. The 1844 appearance of the anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was one in a series of blows that prompted Darwin to reappraise the evidential requirements of his species theory. Nonetheless, much depends on how one interprets the barnacle project. Darwin’s decision to take on the whole group guaranteed its lengthy duration and effectively delayed his species work. The barnacle project could not be considered a necessary preparation, since it was not undertaken to address species theory problems. The evidence and insights Darwin gained from it were largely incidental and came after his decision to tackle the whole group. However, the credentialing motivations behind it were driven by field-generated self-doubts that are difficult to separate from fear. Darwin gained much-needed confidence from it and was far more open about his species theorizing afterward. The project helped Darwin becomethe authoritative figure he needed to be.
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ItemThe controversial Hans Eysenck(BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOC, 2011-04)