The War of the Soups and the Sparks: The Discovery of Neurotransmitters and the Dispute over How Nerves Communicate
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《新英格兰医药杂志》
When studying history, one typically considers political leaders and the environment in which important decisions were made; when studying science, facts and key experiments are most often the focus of attention. However, it may be equally important to study the history of scientific progress. In The War of the Soups and the Sparks, Elliot Valenstein, an accomplished experimental psychologist at the University of Michigan and the author of several popular books, attempts to do just that by combining political history and the history of science. He focuses on the personalities and experiences of the scientists involved in various discoveries.
The "war" in The War of the Soups and the Sparks was a prominent scientific debate: Do neurons communicate through chemical signals (soups) or electrical signals (sparks)? The debate began with the advent of the compound microscope in the early 1800s, picked up steam at the turn of the 20th century, hit its climax after World War II, and reached its conclusion shortly thereafter. The major players were physiologists, rooting for the sparks, and pharmacologists, representing the soups. The persons responsible for convincing the scientific community that neurotransmission is primarily chemical include the Nobel laureates Sir Henry Hallett Dale and Otto Loewi and the equally influential, if less acclaimed, Walter Bradford Cannon.
In telling this story, Valenstein focuses on those who were responsible for each step along the way. Thus, the chapters are organized not in a timeline but according to investigator or group of investigators. This organization, combined with Valenstein's tendency toward long-windedness and melodrama, leads to redundancy and possibly confusion about the chronology. However, the author's goal — to emphasize that political and personal situations influenced scientific progress — is noteworthy. Such an emphasis converts this informative history of neuroscience into a lesson for all scientists.
One message emphasized through the historical figures in The War of the Soups and the Sparks is the importance of avoiding the age-old mistake of unreasonable opposition to new ideas. The soups-and-sparks debate might have ended sooner had the physiologists appreciated the growing evidence of chemical neurotransmission. A second, related message is the importance of preventing one's personal traits from standing in the way of objective reasoning. Valenstein repeatedly implies that if Dale had been less a conservative empiricist and more willing to speculate and theorize beyond observable facts, science in his field might have progressed more rapidly. However, Valenstein also cautions against the opposite extreme: Cannon was probably denied a Nobel Prize because he vigorously defended a broad theory in the absence of substantial evidence.
Perhaps, however, there is too much emphasis in the book on the Nobel Prize winners. One almost has the feeling that if the others discussed had been awarded Nobel Prizes, Valenstein would have dedicated more space to them. His comprehensive description of this critical period in the development of neuroscience is largely focused on investigators in Europe and the United States. However, considerable advances were also made by South American neuroscientists, such as Eduardo de Robertis, and a host of researchers in Canada, such as endocrinologist Hans Selye.
The War of the Soups and the Sparks provides insight into an important time in political history and the history of neuroscience. By connecting the two, Valenstein reminds readers that scientific progress does not occur in a vacuum and that there is more to consider than facts and timetables. How circumstances and personalities interact to lead to scientific progress not only is of interest, but also can be quite interesting.
Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D.
Elizabeth I. Martin, B.A.
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, GA 30322
cnemero@emory.edu(By Elliot S. Valenstein. )
The "war" in The War of the Soups and the Sparks was a prominent scientific debate: Do neurons communicate through chemical signals (soups) or electrical signals (sparks)? The debate began with the advent of the compound microscope in the early 1800s, picked up steam at the turn of the 20th century, hit its climax after World War II, and reached its conclusion shortly thereafter. The major players were physiologists, rooting for the sparks, and pharmacologists, representing the soups. The persons responsible for convincing the scientific community that neurotransmission is primarily chemical include the Nobel laureates Sir Henry Hallett Dale and Otto Loewi and the equally influential, if less acclaimed, Walter Bradford Cannon.
In telling this story, Valenstein focuses on those who were responsible for each step along the way. Thus, the chapters are organized not in a timeline but according to investigator or group of investigators. This organization, combined with Valenstein's tendency toward long-windedness and melodrama, leads to redundancy and possibly confusion about the chronology. However, the author's goal — to emphasize that political and personal situations influenced scientific progress — is noteworthy. Such an emphasis converts this informative history of neuroscience into a lesson for all scientists.
One message emphasized through the historical figures in The War of the Soups and the Sparks is the importance of avoiding the age-old mistake of unreasonable opposition to new ideas. The soups-and-sparks debate might have ended sooner had the physiologists appreciated the growing evidence of chemical neurotransmission. A second, related message is the importance of preventing one's personal traits from standing in the way of objective reasoning. Valenstein repeatedly implies that if Dale had been less a conservative empiricist and more willing to speculate and theorize beyond observable facts, science in his field might have progressed more rapidly. However, Valenstein also cautions against the opposite extreme: Cannon was probably denied a Nobel Prize because he vigorously defended a broad theory in the absence of substantial evidence.
Perhaps, however, there is too much emphasis in the book on the Nobel Prize winners. One almost has the feeling that if the others discussed had been awarded Nobel Prizes, Valenstein would have dedicated more space to them. His comprehensive description of this critical period in the development of neuroscience is largely focused on investigators in Europe and the United States. However, considerable advances were also made by South American neuroscientists, such as Eduardo de Robertis, and a host of researchers in Canada, such as endocrinologist Hans Selye.
The War of the Soups and the Sparks provides insight into an important time in political history and the history of neuroscience. By connecting the two, Valenstein reminds readers that scientific progress does not occur in a vacuum and that there is more to consider than facts and timetables. How circumstances and personalities interact to lead to scientific progress not only is of interest, but also can be quite interesting.
Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D.
Elizabeth I. Martin, B.A.
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, GA 30322
cnemero@emory.edu(By Elliot S. Valenstein. )