Spark from the Deep: How Shocking Experiments with Strongly Electric Fish Powered Scientific Discovery

302 Pages·2013·16.971 MB·English

by  William J. Turkel

Spark from the Deep
animals, history, culture
Harriet Ritvo, Series Editor
SPARK DEEP
FROM THE
How Shocking Experiments with
Strongly Electric Fish Powered Scientific Discovery
WILLIAM J. TURKEL
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
© 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2013
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Turkel, William J. (William Joseph), 1967–
Spark from the deep : how shocking experiments with strongly electric fish powered scientific
discovery / by William J. Turkel.
pages cm — (Animals, history, culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-4214-0981-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) — isbn 978-1-4214-0994-8 (electronic) —
isbn 1-4214-0981-X (hardcover : alk. paper) — isbn 1-4214-0994-1 (electronic)
1. Electric fishes. 2. Electricity—Experiments—History. 3. Discoveries in sciences—History.
I. Title.
ql639.1. t87 2013
597—dc23 2012038726
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected].
The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials,
including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste,
whenever possible.
For Juliet,
and in memory of Mark Edwin Sitton, 1974–1998
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Strongly Electric Fish 7
2 Modeling Animal Electricity 36
3 Electrophysiology 65
4 The Spark of Life 93
5 Evolutionary Theories 123
6 Electric Currents 149
7 Discovering Electric Worlds 178
Conclusion. Nothing but a Movement of Electrons 206
Notes 215
Bibliography 237
Index 277
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Acknowledgments
The impetus for this book came from a graduate seminar that I took in
the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in 1997. We were watching a film demonstrating Hubel
and Wiesel’s orientation-selectivity experiments. On the screen, a greenish-
white bar turns on and off and rotates against a dark background. As it
does so, a static noise becomes more or less pronounced. The film shows
the stimulus being presented to an anesthetized cat while microelectrodes in
its visual cortex audify its neuronal response. I was struck by the contrast
between the banality of the images and sounds in the film and the wonder
and horror of the activities that were required to create it in the first place. I
decided I would rather be studying science as an activity than doing experi-
ments; this book is my attempt to explain the origins and wider significance
of electrophysiological experimentation.
As with my first book, this one would not exist if Harriet Ritvo had
not read a messy collection of desultory notes and then captured what the
whole thing could become in one brilliant, incisive phrase. She remains
the best friend and mentor anyone could ever hope to have. My thinking
was also shaped during many conversations with other close friends: Ed-
ward Jones-Imhotep on the history of electronics and the methodology of
science, technology, and society; Rob MacDougall on big history and the
history of technology; Tim Hitchcock on computational methods and new
ways of doing history; Kevin Kee on “the method”; and Devon Elliott on
just about everything.
While I was writing this book, it was known only as my “super-secret
monograph.” Most historians talk about the content of their projects and
keep their methods to themselves. As an experiment, I decided to try do-
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