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Wilhelm Reich, Biologist

Wilhelm Reich, Biologist PDF Author: James E. Strick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067428688X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Book Description
Psychoanalyst, political theorist, pioneer of body therapies, prophet of the sexual revolution—all fitting titles, but Wilhelm Reich has never been recognized as a serious laboratory scientist, despite his experimentation with bioelectricity and unicellular organisms. Wilhelm Reich, Biologist is an eye-opening reappraisal of one of twentieth-century science’s most controversial figures—perhaps the only writer whose scientific works were burned by both the Nazis and the U.S. government. Refuting allegations of “pseudoscience” that have long dogged Reich’s research, James Strick argues that Reich’s lab experiments in the mid-1930s represented the cutting edge of light microscopy and time-lapse micro-cinematography and deserve to be taken seriously as legitimate scientific contributions. Trained in medicine and a student of Sigmund Freud, Reich took to the laboratory to determine if Freud’s concept of libido was quantitatively measurable. His electrophysiological experiments led to his “discovery” of microscopic vesicles (he called them “bions”), which Reich hypothesized were instrumental in originating life from nonliving matter. Studying Reich’s laboratory notes from recently opened archives, Strick presents a detailed account of the bion experiments, tracing how Reich eventually concluded he had discovered an unknown type of biological radiation he called “orgone.” The bion experiments were foundational to Reich’s theory of cancer and later investigations of orgone energy. Reich’s experimental findings and interpretations were considered discredited, but not because of shoddy lab technique, as has often been claimed. Scientific opposition to Reich’s experiments, Strick contends, grew out of resistance to his unorthodox sexual theories and his Marxist political leanings.

Wilhelm Reich, Biologist

Wilhelm Reich, Biologist PDF Author: James E. Strick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067428688X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Book Description
Psychoanalyst, political theorist, pioneer of body therapies, prophet of the sexual revolution—all fitting titles, but Wilhelm Reich has never been recognized as a serious laboratory scientist, despite his experimentation with bioelectricity and unicellular organisms. Wilhelm Reich, Biologist is an eye-opening reappraisal of one of twentieth-century science’s most controversial figures—perhaps the only writer whose scientific works were burned by both the Nazis and the U.S. government. Refuting allegations of “pseudoscience” that have long dogged Reich’s research, James Strick argues that Reich’s lab experiments in the mid-1930s represented the cutting edge of light microscopy and time-lapse micro-cinematography and deserve to be taken seriously as legitimate scientific contributions. Trained in medicine and a student of Sigmund Freud, Reich took to the laboratory to determine if Freud’s concept of libido was quantitatively measurable. His electrophysiological experiments led to his “discovery” of microscopic vesicles (he called them “bions”), which Reich hypothesized were instrumental in originating life from nonliving matter. Studying Reich’s laboratory notes from recently opened archives, Strick presents a detailed account of the bion experiments, tracing how Reich eventually concluded he had discovered an unknown type of biological radiation he called “orgone.” The bion experiments were foundational to Reich’s theory of cancer and later investigations of orgone energy. Reich’s experimental findings and interpretations were considered discredited, but not because of shoddy lab technique, as has often been claimed. Scientific opposition to Reich’s experiments, Strick contends, grew out of resistance to his unorthodox sexual theories and his Marxist political leanings.

Sparks of Life

Sparks of Life PDF Author: James E. Strick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674044088
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
How, asks James E. Strick, could spontaneous generation--the idea that living things can suddenly arise from nonliving materials--come to take root for a time (even a brief one) in so thoroughly unsuitable a field as British natural theology? No less an authority than Aristotle claimed that cases of spontaneous generation were to be observed in nature, and the idea held sway for centuries. Beginning around the time of the Scientific Revolution, however, the doctrine was increasingly challenged; attempts to prove or disprove it led to important breakthroughs in experimental design and laboratory techniques, most notably sterilization methods, that became the cornerstones of modern microbiology and sped the ascendancy of the germ theory of disease. The Victorian debates, Strick shows, were entwined with the public controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution. While other histories of the debates between 1860 and 1880 have focused largely on the experiments of John Tyndall, Henry Charlton Bastian, and others, Sparks of Life emphasizes previously understudied changes in the theories that underlay the debates. Strick argues that the disputes cannot be understood without full knowledge of the factional infighting among Darwinians themselves, as they struggled to create a socially and scientifically viable form of Darwinian science. He shows that even the terms of the debate, such as biogenesis, usually but incorrectly attributed to Huxley, were intensely contested.

Where's the Truth?

Where's the Truth? PDF Author: Wilhelm Reich
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374288836
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
Where's the Truth? is the fourth and final volume of Wilhelm Reich's autobiographical writings, drawn from his diaries, letters, and laboratory notebooks. These writings reveal the details of the outrider scientist's life—his joys and sorrows, his hopes and insecurities—and chronicle his experiments with what he called "orgone energy." A student of Freud's and a prominent research physician in the early psychoanalytic movement, Reich immigrated to America in 1939 in flight from Nazism, and pursued research about orgone energy functions in the living organism and the atmosphere. Where's the Truth? begins in January 1948, shortly after Reich became a target of the Federal Food and Drug Administration. He had already faced persecution by the U.S. government, having been mistaken by the State Department and the FBI for both a Communist and a Nazi. Starting in 1947, Reich was hounded by the FDA, which, in 1954, obtained an injunction by default against him that enabled it to burn six tons of his published books and research journals, and to ban the use of one of his most important experimental research tools—the orgone energy accumulator. Challenging the right of a court to judge basic scientific research, Reich was imprisoned in March 1957 and died in the U.S. Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, eight months later. The text gathered here shows Reich's steadfast determination to protect his work. "Where's the truth?" he asked a lawyer, and that question animates this volume and rounds out our understanding of a unique, irrepressible modern figure.

In Defense of Wilhelm Reich

In Defense of Wilhelm Reich PDF Author: James DeMeo
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780980231670
Category : Orgonomy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Wilhelm Reich has been chronically slandered and misrepresented in the popular media, and in "scientific" circles, beyond all rationality. His controversial research findings have been replicated by other scholars and scientists, but the entire subject of his work has been a serious Taboo for decades. Natural Scientist DeMeo corrects the record.

Biologists Under Hitler

Biologists Under Hitler PDF Author: Ute Deichmann
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674074057
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Book Description
Her book also provides overwhelming evidence of German scientists' conscious misrepresentation after the war of their wartime activities. In this regard, Deichmann's capsule biography of Konrad Lorenz is particularly telling.

Genesis - In The Beginning

Genesis - In The Beginning PDF Author: Joseph Seckbach
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400729413
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 911

Book Description
Genesis – In The Beginning deals with the origin and diversity of Life and early biological evolution and discusses the question of where (hot or cold sources) and when the beginning of Life took place. Among the sections are chapters dealing with prebiotic chemical processes and considering self-replication of polymers in mineral habitats. One chapter is dedicated to the photobiological regime on early Earth and the emergence of Life. This volume covers the role of symmetry, information and order (homochrial biomolecules) in the beginning of Life. The models of protocells and the genetic code with gene transfer are important topics in this volume. Three chapters discuss the Panspermia hypothesis (to answer “Are we from outer Space?”). Other chapters cover the Astrobiological aspects of Life in the Universe in extraterrestrial Planets of the Solar System and deal with cometary hydrosphere (and its connection to Earth). We conclude with the history and frontiers of Astrobiogy.

The Mass Psychology of Fascism

The Mass Psychology of Fascism PDF Author: Wilhelm Reich
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374203644
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 435

Book Description
In this classic study, Reich repudiates the concept that fascism is the ideology or action of a single individual or nationality, or of any ethnic or political group. Instead he sees fascism as the expression of the irrational character structure of the average human being whose whose primary biological needs and impulses have been suppressed for thousands of years.

Exploring the Origin, Extent, and Future of Life

Exploring the Origin, Extent, and Future of Life PDF Author: Constance M. Bertka
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521863635
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
Philosophers, historians, ethicists, and theologians provide the perspectives of their fields on astrobiology for graduate students and researchers.

The Bion Experiments on the Origins of Life

The Bion Experiments on the Origins of Life PDF Author: Wilhelm Reich
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466847522
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
The Bion Experiments, published in a limited German edition in 1938 and now available in English for the first time, represents a cornerstone in Reich's scientific development. The work documents a series of experiments conducted in Oslo in 1936-37 in which Reich applied the formula of tension?charge?discharge?relaxation, derived from his research on the function of the orgasm, to the microscopic biological world, thereby opening a route to an understanding of the origin of life. This work is divided into two parts: the first, a detailed report on the experiments; the second, Reich's conclusions and an exposition of his research method. The Bion Experiments provides a unique insight into Reich's scientific method, and makes available the experimental material essential to understanding his later work with cancer and orgone biophysics.

The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality

The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality PDF Author: Wilhelm Reich
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466846933
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
This study of the invasion of compulsory sexual morality into human society was written in 1931 and now appears for the first time in the English language. It preceded "The Mass Psyhchology of Fascism" and "The Sexual Revolution" and was Reich's first step in approaching the answer to the problem of human mass neuroses. Growing out of his involvement with the crucial question of the origin of sexual suppression, this attempt to explain historically the problem of sexual disturbances and neuroses draws upon the ethnological works of Morgan, Engels and, in particular, Malinowski, whose remarkable studies of the sexual life and customs of the primitive people of the Trobriand Islands confirmed Reich's clinical discoveries.