L.A.H. Hogenhuis, Cognition and Recognition: On the Origin of Movement: Rademacher (1887–1957), A Biography, History of Science and Medicine Library, Vol. 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. xviii + 353, €99.00, $148.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-90-04-16836-7.

Abstract

In this hagiographic work, Professor L.A.H. Hogenhuis offers a detailed biography of the Dutch surgeon-turned-physiologist-turned-neurologist Gysbertus Godefredius Johannes Rademaker. A little-known protagonist of the ‘golden age’ of Dutch physiology, Rademaker was a pupil of Rudolf Magnus who continued his experimental study of posture and movement. The volume is divided into nine ‘books’ plus four short chapters and half a page of conclusions. It follows the life and career of Rademaker, providing some glimpses of the history of concepts and techniques (e.g. reflex action, stereotaxis) and of the contemporary developments of physiology and neurology of posture and movement. The first book provides an account of Rademaker’s family background and his early career as a general practitioner and horse-betting wizard in Java. Books II and III reconstruct his academic career first in Magnus’s department of pharmacology at Utrecht, then as a professor of physiology at Leiden, his studies on the control of standing and movement in animals and his concern for the ‘translation’ of the results into clinical terms. Books IV to IX are concerned with such diverse issues as the resistance movement in the Dutch academia during the Nazi occupation (IV); ‘Rademaker the man’ (V); a short recapitulation of the history of postural research with a (rather superficial) attempt at contextualising its sudden end in the 1930s (VI); Rademaker’s complete bibliography and list of academic honours (VII) and an appraisal of his views on standing and movement (VIII–IX). Despite the numerous interesting facets of Rademaker’s scientific biography (his move from clinical practice to physiological experimentation, and back again to clinical neurology; his view of standing as ‘frozen energy’; the cybernetic and mathematical development of his physiology, not to mention the opportune call for attention to the history of postural research, very little considered by historians), this work is not a particularly valuable contribution to the literature. After three hundred-odd pages, one is left with a sense of dissatisfaction, which increases when the author’s promises are considered. At the beginning, in fact, we learn that this biography ‘is defined as a model of the dynamics of cognition leading to a dual account of the life and scientific endeavours’ of Rademaker (hence the reference to ‘cognition’ in the title). According to the author’s intentions, a careful reconstruction of all stages of Rademaker’s career through ‘the intuitive and experimental evidence’ of his work should lead to an understanding of his experience not only as a historical singularity, but also as a model of scientific reasoning and life. In this endeavour, the author has drawn inspiration from the Plutarchian model of the Vitae Parallelae, in that he resorts to various parallels in order to highlight the main features of Rademaker’s intellectual and moral development. None of these claims are actually met by the book. The dynamics of cognition are often referred to (not least in the very concise conclusion), but in an obscure way, without any real commitment to the theoretical issue. As for the reference to Plutarch, its validity is very doubtful. This said, one can easily see how Hogenhuis’s work could have been a good (at times very informative) traditional biography if only it had undergone some real editing. The quantity of avoidable repetitions (a few times even entire paragraphs), misprints and sketchy digressions of dubious utility is far above the average. The interesting historical hints are diluted in a narrative overflow oscillating between extreme detail (for example, the summaries of all the PhD dissertations prepared in Rademaker’s institute, book IV) and excessive generality (for instance, the history of research on muscle tone in book VIII). Finally, the very outline of the chapters, with the partial exception of books II and III, is sketchy and the lines of argument often hard to follow. It is difficult to understand how such a sloppy editorial product can be sold for €99.