Galileo's Gout: Science in an Age of Endarkenment - Rilegato

“Oliver Sacks, Richard Selzer, Lewis Thomas . . . Weissmann is in this noble tradition.”—Los Angeles Times

“Weissmann introduces us to a new way of thinking about the connections between art and medicine.”—The New York Times Book Review

Embryonic stem cell research. Evolution versus intelligent design. The transformation of medicine into “healthcare.” Climate change. Never before has science been so intertwined with politics; never have we been more dependent on scientific solutions for the preservation of the species. As at home with Galileo and his daughter in Florence as he is with Diderot in Enlightenment France, William and Alice James in fin-de-siècle Boston, or the latest research on the genome, Gerald Weissmann distills the lessons of history to guide us through our troubled age. His message is clear: “Experimental science is our defense—perhaps our best defense—against humbug and the Endarkenment.”

These reflections on the historical roots of the current culture wars in science and medicine again reveal Weissmann to be “by any standard, one of the major essayists of our time” (Eric Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2000).

Gerald Weissmann, MD, is a research professor of medicine, editor in chief of The FASEB Journal, and director of the Biotechnology Study Center at New York University School of Medicine. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including the London Review of Books and The New York Times Book Review. He is the author, most recently, of The Year of the Genome (2002). He lives in New York City and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.