Dissertation Research -- Animal Experiments in 17th Century Italy

简介：本项目将探讨美第奇宫廷与动物实验文化兴起之间的关系。这段时间将从1654年（莱奥波尔多·德·美第奇创立Cimento学院的那一年）到1694年（美第奇宫廷最杰出的博物学家弗朗西斯科·雷迪去世的那一年）。17世纪是生理学研究的一个重要时期。随着1628年《论心脏》的出版，威廉·哈维不仅声称发现了血液循环，而且建立了一种新的实验方法。智力价值：在当代研究环境中，有关动物实验的问题已经并将继续普遍存在。要想对这些问题有更深入的了解，一种方法就是了解这种研究模式的历史。它可能会给我们带来宝贵的历史教训，告诉我们研究的背景是如何随着时间的推移而发生巨大变化的。其中一个后果是，人类将增强挑战20世纪“实验室动物”作为人类探索的重要机器的主流故事的能力，这种故事显然依赖于用优越和统治来描述人与动物关系的简单故事。该项目将发展另一种观点，以更深入地理解为什么我们可以将动物描述为实验室中的机器；在这些房间之外，人类和动物之间的关系历史上发生了一些事情。在这个项目中，动物实验被作为一种实践来研究，这种实践与人类与非人类关系的更广泛的历史密切相关。通过将研究人员和动物在实验室内外的身体的意义和作用联系起来，就有可能理解实验实践与产生这些实践的社会之间的关系。更广泛的影响：用于讨论动物实验的哲学、社会和宗教类别都有确切的历史渊源，只有在恢复这些根源的过程中，我们不仅能够更好地理解辩论，而且能够协调所有这些声音，找到一种与动物互动的新方式。这个项目的资金是由生物学部和SBE学部的一个名为“生物学对社会的影响”的合资企业提供的，该项目由STS项目管理。

Introduction: This project will investigate the relationship between the Medici court and the rise of a specific culture of animal experimentation. The time period will cover from 1654 (the year in which Leopoldo dei Medici founded the Accademia del Cimento) to 1694 (the year in which Francesco Redi, the most prominent naturalist at the Medici court, died). The seventeenth century is an important period for physiological research. With the publication of De motu cordis in 1628, William Harvey not only claimed the discovery of the circulation of blood, but also established a new experimental approach.Intellectual Merit: Questions concerning animal experimentation are and will continue to be pervasive in the contemporary research environment. One way to develop a deeper understanding of what's involved in these questions is to develop a well informed history of this mode of research. What will likely emerge from it are valuable historical lessons as to how the context of that research has dramatically changed over time. One consequence will be an enhanced ability to challenge the predominant twentieth century story of "lab animals" as important machines for human exploration, which clearly depends on a simplistic story of human/animal relationships described in terms of superiority and domination. An alternative view will be developed in the project that provides a deeper understanding of why we can describe animals as machines inside the laboratory; something happened in the history of the relationship between human and animals outside those rooms. In the project, animal experimentation is studied as a practice strongly related to the broader history of human-nonhuman relationships. By connecting the meaning and the role of the bodies of the researchers and the animal when they are inside and outside of the laboratory makes it is possible to understand the relationship between the experimental practices and the society in which these practices are born. Broader Impacts: The philosophical, social and religious categories used to discuss animal experimentation all have precise historical origins and only in recovering these roots we will be able not only to have a better understanding of the debate, but also to harmonize all these voices finding a new way to interact with the animals.Funds for this project were provided by a joint venture of the BIO and SBE directorates known as "Impacts of Biology on Society," which is administered via the STS program.