Dissertation Research -- Animal Experiments in 17th Century Italy

简介：本项目将探讨美第奇王朝与动物实验文化兴起之间的关系。时间段将从1654年（莱奥波尔多·德·美第奇创立西门托学院的那一年）到1694年（美第奇宫廷最杰出的博物学家弗朗切斯科·雷迪去世的那一年）。世纪是生理学研究的重要时期。随着1628年《心的运动》一书的出版，威廉·哈维不仅宣称发现了血液循环，而且建立了一种新的实验方法。智力价值：关于动物实验的问题在当代的研究环境中是并将继续是普遍存在的。一种方法来发展一个更深入的了解什么是涉及这些问题是发展一个良好的历史，这种模式的研究。从中可能产生的是宝贵的历史教训，即研究的背景如何随着时间的推移发生了巨大变化。其结果之一是，人类有更强的能力挑战世纪的主流观点，即“实验室动物”是人类探索的重要机器，而这种观点显然依赖于以优越性和支配性来描述人/动物关系的简单化观点。在这个项目中，我们将开发另一种观点，更深入地理解为什么我们可以将动物描述为实验室内的机器;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，动物实验被研究为一种与人类与非人类关系的更广泛历史密切相关的实践。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，可以理解实验实践与这些实践产生的社会之间的关系。更广泛的影响：用于讨论动物实验的哲学、社会和宗教范畴都有确切的历史渊源，只有恢复这些根源，我们不仅能够更好地理解这场辩论，同时也是为了协调所有这些声音，找到一种与动物互动的新方式。该项目的资金由BIO和SBE董事会的合资企业提供，生物学对社会的影响”，这是通过STS计划管理。

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.