Cited by T. Quick, 'Disciplining Physiological Psychology: Cinematographs as Epistemic Devices, 1897-1922', Science in Context 30 (4), pp. 423-474.
Description:

' As one of the first scientists to be trained in the newly-founded physiology laboratories of 1880s Britain, Sherrington was early on immersed in a culture in which the recording, measurement and delineation of bodies held precedence over discussion of what might contribute to their creation. The laboratory founded by Michael Foster at Cambridge, in which Sherrington completed his undergraduate studies, took its epistemic cue from the simultaneously-founded Cavendish physics laboratory. Figures such as Foster, John Newport Langley and Sherrington's mentor Walter Holbrook Gaskell strove there to develop means by which the rhythms of living organs and their relation to one another could be made visible and mappable, and thereby subject to precise calculation (Geison 1978, esp. 112-115).'

 

Relevant passage from Geison:

'In choosing to devote more of its resources to science, Cambridge merely reinforced the traditional distinction between the two universities. Among the Cambridge colleges, Trinity had long been and still remained the leading centre and advocate for scientific studies. It is in local traditions, and above all in the traditions of Trinity College, that the scientific dominance of late Victorian Cambridge over Oxford is chiefly to be sought. That point may gain credence from a brief comparison between the rise of biology and the rise of physics in Cambridge during this period.

At first sight, any comparison between the two may seem remote. James Clerk Maxwell, who launched Cambridge physics on its glorious path, had a brilliant reputation as a scientist in his own right; Foster did not. Moreover, Maxwell, unlike Foster, was on familiar ground in Cambridge, having served for several years as an examiner for the Mathematical Tripos. Finally, whereas Foster came as a "simple College lecturer," Maxwell returned as a university professor assured of a new university laboratory. As a matter of fact, the committee that had originally recommended the creation of Maxwell's chair had also insisted that a new and separate laboratory for physics was indispensable - indeed, more indispensable than the professorship itself, since provision was made to terminate the chair with the first professor's tenure of office. [note: 'see CUR, 16 Nov. 1870, pp. 94-95,']

These recommendations, made in February 1869, had generated a prolonged debate. Perhaps partly because the Mathematical Tripos now included questions on heat, electricity, and magnetism, and partly because the Clarendon Laboratory of physics was already going up at Oxford, few dons disputed any longer the need for a laboratory of experimental physics at Cambridge. But the colleges demonstrated no greater willingness to contribute their funds to this project than they had to the new science museums nearly two decades earlier, and the debate was still going on when Foster accepted the Trinity praelectorship in May 1870. Five months later, the committee's proposal received a new lease of life when the chancellor of the university, William Cavendish (the seventh Duke of Devonshire) expressed his willingness to do what the colleges would not. [note: 'see ibid., 1870-1872, passim; Willis and Clark, Architectural History, III, pp. 181-184; Winstanley, Later Victorian Cambridge, pp. 194-198; and Sveidrys, "Rise of Physical Science."'] Early in 1871, Maxwell was appointed the first Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics. By autumn, he and Coutts Trotter had completed a tour of the newest physics laboratories in England and abroad, and the famous Cavendish Laboratory was soon being constructed in accordance with their recommendations at the extravagant cost of £8,500. [note: 'CUR, 6 December 1971 [sic], pp. 95-96; 6 March 1872, p. 182.'] Although this figure exceeded the original estimate by more than £2,000 "the Duke paid up without a murmur." [note: 'Egon Larson [pseudonym], The Cavendish Laboratory: Nursery of Genius (London, 1962), p. 14.']

Unlike the Cambridge School of Physiology, the Cambridge School of Physics has attracted considerable historical attention. In his book on the Cavendish Laboratory, J.G. Crowther suggests that it arose in response to the industrial needs of late Victorian England. [note: 'J.G. Crowther, The Cavendish Laboratory: Nursery of Genius (New York, 1974), esp. introduction and Chapter 1.'] more subtly, Arnold Thackray once asked incidentally "whether the Cavendish does not represent a phenomenon common among the new universities, if rare at Cambridge - the support of the new organs of scientific research by the new wealth of successful middle-class entrepreneurs and manufacturers." [note: 'A. Thackray, "Commentary [on Sviedrys' 'Rise of Physical Science']," Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 2 (1970), 145-149., quote on 149.'] Certainly William Cavendish was an industrialist with a concern for the promotion of science in its practical applications," [note: 'J.G. Crowther, Statesmen of Science (Bristol, 1966), pp. 213-233, quote on 219.'] and the Cavendish Laboratory did take on something of an industrial tone under Maxwell's successor, Lord Rayleigh. [note: 'See Sveidrys, "Rise of Physical Science," pp. 142-143.'] But it seems odd to link the new industrial and commercial wealth with a man of such impeccably aristocratic lineage as the seventh Duke of Devonshire. [note: 'For Thackray, "Commentary," p. 148, Cavendish is "the exception that proves the rule"; for Crowther, Statesmen, p. 213, it is an example of an "Aristocratic Superstructure on an Industrial Base."'] Surely it is crucial to emphasize that Cavendish was not only an industrialist, but also chancellor of Cambridge University and, first if not foremost, a Trinity man. In making his gift, Cavendish may have been motivated as much by loyalty to his university and his college as by any concern for British industry.

In any case Maxwell, like Cavendish, was a Trinity man, and so in fact were the next four Cavendish Professors - John William Strutt (Lord Raleigh), who was (like Henry Sidgwick) brother-in-law to Foster's student, F.M. Balfour; Sir J.J. Thomson, who eventually became Master of Trinity; Ernest Rutherford, who became Cavendish professor and a Fellow of Trinity in 1919; and Sir Lawrence Bragg, who resigned the Cavendish Professorship in 1953. [note: 'Cf. Trevelyan, Trinity College, p. 104.'] All four men won Nobel prizes, Sir William Bragg, father of Sir Lawrence, who shared the 1915 Nobel prize for physics with his son, was yet another Trinity man. If, when he made his gift to the university, Cavendish hoped to increase its glory and that of his college, he succeeded famously. In short, Cambridge physics has long shared with Cambridge physiology a brilliant tradition deeply rooted in the traditions of Trinity College itself.

Other intriguing parallels can perhaps be drawn between the rise of biology and the rise of physics in late Victorian Cambridge. Like the Cambridge School of Phyioslogy, which descended from and crystallized around the "ancestor problem" of the heartbeat, the embryonic Cambridge School of Physics apparently also focused on one problem to the relative exclusion of others. According to Sviedrys, at any rate, "Maxwell's laboratory was in effect and incipient electrical standards testing laboratory," and Lord Raleigh, "who wanted to identify the Cavendish with a concrete area of research, uniting the laboratory workers around a common research theme,.. selected the redeterminaton of electrical standards for this purpose." [note: 'Sviedrys, "Rise of Physical Science," p. 142.'] The most obvious parallel between the two schools in chronological. They were coeval; they developed together; and they achieved maturity and renown almost simultaneously. Only Sviedrys' inattention to Foster's early efforts can justify his claims that the Cavendish "was the first [Cambridge] laboratory to stress research," and that Foster developed his school "in the wake of the example set by Maxwell and the Cavendish Laboratory." [note: 'Ibid., p. 144. My emphasis. Indeed, Sviedrys himself elsewhere recognizes the virtual simultaneity; ibid., p. 137, n. 20.'] In the end, though, the deepest parallel between the two schools lay in their common link with Trinity College.And if, as Winstanley insists, "college sentiment" posed one of the major impediments to university reform, [note: 'Another being the deification of formal mathematics; Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge, p. 168 et passim.'] that same sentiment - under appropriate stimuli - could become a powerful engine for reform and even for the rise of natural science in the university at large.' (112-115)