Water wizards: reshaping wet nature and society

The article investigates how humans ‘networked’ wet nature and how this affected the shaping of Dutch society. First, it takes a grand view of Dutch history and describes how wet network building intertwined with the shaping of the Dutch landscape, its economy and its polity. Second, it investigates the specific challenges of wet network building—integrating potentially conflicting uses of water into one design—for the case of the national fresh water supply network (1940–1971). Finally, it discusses ecological damage, emerging new risks and cultural patterns related to wet network building.     

Networking Europe

The paper explores processes of transnational network building in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first section reviews several relevant literatures. It concludes that historiographies of Europe often recognize the pivotal importance of transnational network building, but fail to analyse network developments as well as their entanglement with wider historical processes. Specialized infrastructure studies exist in economic and technological history, but have a distinct (sub)national focus. The networking of Europe has not been investigated. The second section presents a preliminary narrative of transnational network building in the 19th and 20th century. It highlights the relationship between network building and political events in different eras, as well as different types of ambiguities or tensions. The conclusion suggests a number of topics for further research.     

Science,industry and the colonial state: a shift from a German- to a Dutch-controlled cinchona and quinine cartel (1880–1920)

This study shows how control over delicately balanced supply chains from raw material to the final product shifted from one national industry to another. By 1920, Dutch cinchona producers and quinine manufacturers dominated the international cartel that controlled the worldwide production and distribution of quinine (an antimalarial), quinine sulphate (a semi-finished product) and cinchona (the raw material). Twenty years earlier, however, this cartel had been controlled by the German pharmaceutical industry. How can we understand the shift of power in the world’s first pharmaceutical cartel? We argue that the internal shift of power was largely the result of the following three factors: a global industrial laboratory revolution; the vertical integration of a transoceanic network of cinchona producers, quinine manufacturers, (colonial) scientists and state officials across the Dutch Empire; and Germany’s economic isolation during the First World War.     

Anthropological Neurology: Symptoms and Their Meanings According to Joseph Prick (1909–1978)

This article describes the life and work of the Dutch neurologist Joseph Prick (1909–1978) and his idea of an anthropological neurology. According to Prick, neurological symptoms should not only be explained from an underlying physico-chemical substrate but also be regarded as meaningful. We present an outline of the historical and philosophical context of his ideas with a focus on the theory of the human body by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) and the concept of anthropology-based medicine developed by Frederik Buytendijk (1887–1974). We give an overview of anthropological neurology as a clinical practice and finally we discuss the value of Prick's approach for clinical neurology today.     

Plain lives in a golden age. Popular culture,religion and society in 17th-century Holland

Though it has rarely been the subject of academic criticism, there is a philosophy of truth that animates Jean-Jacques Rousseau's broader philosophical system. This philosophy of truth was unique for its time—in the same way as the whole of Rousseau's thought—in its emphasis on feeling over reason, the heart over the mind, the simple over the sophisticated, the useful over the demonstrable, the personal over the systematic. Rousseau's philosophy of truth might be more accurately called a ‘philosophy of truthseeking’ or an ‘ethics of truthseeking’, because its focus is on the pursuit and acquisition of truth rather than on the nature of truth itself. What was needed, Rousseau believed, was a guide back to the simple truths of human happiness—truths that were immediately apparent to us in our natural state but have become opaque in society. This article describes Rousseau's normative philosophy of truthseeking, of what human beings must do if they hope to (re)discover the truths of human happiness. This philosophy can be summarised as utility, autonomy, immediacy and simplicity in pursuit of what Rousseau called the ‘truths that pertain to the happiness of mankind’.