'The science of experimental physiology as it developed in Sherrington and his contemporaries' work can... be closely associated with a tendency towards the analysis and delineation of nature by mechanical means. These means, furthermore, were by-and-large applied within an already well-established epistemic mode: that of the 'analytic' reduction of natural objects into comparatively simple components, and the 'synthetic' reconstruction of these into new natural wholes (Pickstone 2000, esp. 117-121. See also Canales 2011, 345-351).'