Michaelmas Term 2014 - The Brain

This term features four sets of readings on cerebral themes from the past, present, and future. For full reading lists please see the links available from the beginning of October here or on the HPS seminars website; hard copies will also be made available in the Reading Group’s boxfile in the Whipple Library.

We return to Darwin College, the original home of the Reading Group, for meetings on Monday evenings from 7.30-9pm. All are very welcome to join us!

13th October – Phrenological Genres

• Thomas Hood, 'Craniology' (1827)
• Charles Tennyson, 'Phrenology' (1827)
• John Trotter, Travels in Phrenologasto, chapter II, pages 17-26. (1829)
• 'A Phrenopatetic History' (1826)

3rd November – Cerebral Forms

• Thomas Willis, 'The Anatomy of the Brain' (1681), from his Five Treatises, preface, chapters I, III, VI, XIX.

17th November – Memory

• Israel Zangwill, ‘The Memory Clearing House’ (1893)
• H.G. Wells, World Brain (1938), pages 45-62.

1st December – Beyond the Brain

• Greg Egan, "Permutation City", Prologue and Chapters Two and Three (also in the University
• Library)
• David Chalmers, "The Singularity: A philosophical analysis.