Nadine Weidman
Biographic Data
| ID | 972521 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nadine Weidman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nadine |
| FAMILY NAME | Weidman |
| SIGNATURE | WEIDMAN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0894-5247 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Navigating the science-popularization divide: A response to Venkataraman et al
Eloge: Michael Mark Sokal (1945-2025)
The Perils of Prehistory: A Review
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion, Grant Bollmer
Journal Article The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion, Grant Bollmer Get access The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion Grant Bollmer Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023. 304 pp. Nadine Weidman Nadine Weidman Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Alli…
Loneliness and Touch
Fromm-Reichmann’s insistence on the physical aspect of loneliness and on touch as its antidote connects her to a long tradition of humanistic biology. This reaction paper traces the history of that tradition from the early 20th century onward and situates her within it. Interpreting Fromm-Reichmann’s 1959 article as part of this tradition allows us to notice the assumptions she shares with its other members
Abraham Maslow, Utopian Realist
The ideal human community or “Eupsychia” envisioned by Abraham Maslow was a place inhabited by a thousand “self-actualizing people” who shared a devotion to certain higher values. These values were, for Maslow, universally human and biologically rooted, and they included truth, beauty, justice, and the ability to become the best that one was capable of becoming. In addition to imagining it, Maslow searched for Eupsychia in reality and thought he …
Introduction: The Hoffman Report in historical context
This brief introduction explains the historical background of the Hoffman Report, the 2015 independent counsel's investigation into the American Psychological Association's role in aiding ‘enhanced interrogations’ of detainees in the Bush Administration's Global War on Terror. It also outlines the articles in this special section of History of the Human Sciences on the Hoffman Report in Historical Context
Mental Health and the Search for Challenge
Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America
A historian of science examines key public debates about the fundamental nature of humans to ask why a polarized discourse about nature versus nurture became so entrenched in the popular sciences of animal and human behavior. Are humans innately aggressive or innately cooperative? In the 1960s, bestselling books enthralled American readers with the startling claim that humans possessed an instinct for violence inherited from primate ancestors. Cr…
Burnham, Popular Science, and Popularization
Previous articleNext article FreeSpecial Section: Second LookBurnham, Popular Science, and PopularizationNadine WeidmanNadine WeidmanHarvard University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHow Superstition Won and Science Lost is a mournful story of decline and fall, a tale in which what was on…
Cultural Relativism and Biological Determinism: A Problem in Historical Explanation
This essay seeks to explain how Ashley Montagu, the American anthropologist, could have been both a cultural relativist and a biological determinist, two stances that seem to be opposites. The essay argues that the seeming contradiction can be resolved by placing Montagu in his historical contexts and by understanding what he meant by “biological determinism
History of psychology
The editor of History of Psychology discusses her plan to vary the journal's content and expand its scope in specific ways. The first is to introduce a "Spotlight" feature, a relatively brief, provocative thought piece that might take one of several forms. Along with this new feature, she hopes further to broaden the journal's coverage and its range of contributors. She encourages submissions on the history of the psy-sciences off the beaten path…
Overcoming our mutual isolation: How historians and psychologists can work together
The history of psychology is one of those unusual academic fields pursued by two different groups of scholars in two different institutional locations: psychologist-historians and historians of science. In this concluding reflection on the special issue, I argue for a new kind of relationship between these two professional groups. Neither their consolidation nor their mutual isolation is the best way forward for our small and neglected field. Ins…
Popularizing the Ancestry of Man: Robert Ardrey and the Killer Instinct
This essay examines Robert Ardrey (1908-1980)-American playwright, screenwriter, and prolific author-as a case study in the popularization of science. Bringing together evidence from both paleoanthropology and ethology, Ardrey became in the 1960s a vocal proponent of the theory that human beings are innately violent. The essay shows that Ardrey used his popular scientific books not only to consolidate a new science of human nature but also to que…
Victorian Psychology and British Culture, 1850-1880 (review)
In this lucidly written and erudite book, Rick Rylance reconstructs the turbulent, contested discursive world of nineteenth-century British psychology. He chooses to focus on three decades, 1850-1880, before psychology became firmly rooted in the experimental laboratory, before—most traditional histories of psychology would claim—it became a proper science. One of Rylance's aims is to break down hard-and-fast distinctions between psychology's "lo…
The depoliticization of Karl Lashley: A response to Dewsbury
In this response to Donald Dewsbury's article, I address Dewsbury's criticisms of my interpretation of Karl Lashley by, first, disputing Dewsbury's characterization of my historiographic stance. I then go on to address Dewsbury's specific points, particularly regarding Lashley's racism and hereditarianism, which I argue are central to an understanding of the context of his science. I conclude by criticizing Dewsbury's proposed personality theory …
Constructing Scientific Psychology: Karl Lashley's Mind-Brain Debates
Constructing Scientific Psychology, published in 1999, was the first full-scale interpretation of the life and work of the major American neuropsychologist Karl Lashley. It sets Lashley's research at the heart of two controversies that polarized the American life and human sciences in the first half of the twentieth century. These concerned the relationship between 'mind' and 'brain' and the relative roles of 'nature' and 'nurture' in shaping beh…
A response to Bruce (1998) on the Lashley-Hull debate
A response to Bruce (1998) on the Lashley-Hull debate
Charcot: Constructing Neurology . Christopher Goetz, Michel Bonduelle, Toby Gelfand
A History of Psychology . John G. Benjafield
Heredity, intelligence and neuropsychology; or, why The Bell Curve is good science
The Alpha Males: An Early History of the Regional Primate Research Centers . W. Richard Dukelow
Brain, Mind, and Medicine: Charles Richet and the Origins of Physiological Psychology. Stewart Wolf
Seven Pioneers of Psychology: Behaviour and Mind. Ray Fuller
Popularizing the Ancestry of Man: Robert Ardrey and the Killer Instinct
This essay examines Robert Ardrey (1908-1980)-American playwright, screenwriter, and prolific author-as a case study in the popularization of science. Bringing together evidence from both paleoanthropology and ethology, Ardrey became in the 1960s a vocal proponent of the theory that human beings are innately violent. The essay shows that Ardrey used his popular scientific books not only to consolidate a new science of human nature but also to que…
Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America
A historian of science examines key public debates about the fundamental nature of humans to ask why a polarized discourse about nature versus nurture became so entrenched in the popular sciences of animal and human behavior. Are humans innately aggressive or innately cooperative? In the 1960s, bestselling books enthralled American readers with the startling claim that humans possessed an instinct for violence inherited from primate ancestors. Cr…
Overcoming our mutual isolation: How historians and psychologists can work together
The history of psychology is one of those unusual academic fields pursued by two different groups of scholars in two different institutional locations: psychologist-historians and historians of science. In this concluding reflection on the special issue, I argue for a new kind of relationship between these two professional groups. Neither their consolidation nor their mutual isolation is the best way forward for our small and neglected field. Ins…
Mental Health and the Search for Challenge
A response to Bruce (1998) on the Lashley-Hull debate
The Alpha Males: An Early History of the Regional Primate Research Centers . W. Richard Dukelow
Mental testing and machine intelligence: The Lashley-Hull debate
Karl Lashley and Clark Hull had a long and unresolved controversy about the structure and function of the brain, its relationship to the mind, and the use of machine metaphors to explain intelligence. Though on the surface their debate was not about the relative importance of heredity or environment in determining intelligence and behavior, this is the subtext that ran through their exchanges. A determined hereditarian, Lashley was committed, bot…
The Roots of Behaviourism . Robert H. Wozniak , Conwy Lloyd Morgan , Jacques Loeb , Max Meyer , John B. Watson
The Alpha Males: An Early History of the Regional Primate Research Centers . W. Richard Dukelow
Brain, Mind, and Medicine: Charles Richet and the Origins of Physiological Psychology. Stewart Wolf
Seven Pioneers of Psychology: Behaviour and Mind. Ray Fuller
Charcot: Constructing Neurology . Christopher Goetz, Michel Bonduelle, Toby Gelfand
A History of Psychology . John G. Benjafield
Heredity, intelligence and neuropsychology; or, why The Bell Curve is good science
A response to Bruce (1998) on the Lashley-Hull debate
A response to Bruce (1998) on the Lashley-Hull debate
Constructing Scientific Psychology: Karl Lashley's Mind-Brain Debates
Constructing Scientific Psychology, published in 1999, was the first full-scale interpretation of the life and work of the major American neuropsychologist Karl Lashley. It sets Lashley's research at the heart of two controversies that polarized the American life and human sciences in the first half of the twentieth century. These concerned the relationship between 'mind' and 'brain' and the relative roles of 'nature' and 'nurture' in shaping beh…
The depoliticization of Karl Lashley: A response to Dewsbury
In this response to Donald Dewsbury's article, I address Dewsbury's criticisms of my interpretation of Karl Lashley by, first, disputing Dewsbury's characterization of my historiographic stance. I then go on to address Dewsbury's specific points, particularly regarding Lashley's racism and hereditarianism, which I argue are central to an understanding of the context of his science. I conclude by criticizing Dewsbury's proposed personality theory …
Victorian Psychology and British Culture, 1850-1880 (review)
In this lucidly written and erudite book, Rick Rylance reconstructs the turbulent, contested discursive world of nineteenth-century British psychology. He chooses to focus on three decades, 1850-1880, before psychology became firmly rooted in the experimental laboratory, before—most traditional histories of psychology would claim—it became a proper science. One of Rylance's aims is to break down hard-and-fast distinctions between psychology's "lo…
Popularizing the Ancestry of Man: Robert Ardrey and the Killer Instinct
This essay examines Robert Ardrey (1908-1980)-American playwright, screenwriter, and prolific author-as a case study in the popularization of science. Bringing together evidence from both paleoanthropology and ethology, Ardrey became in the 1960s a vocal proponent of the theory that human beings are innately violent. The essay shows that Ardrey used his popular scientific books not only to consolidate a new science of human nature but also to que…
History of psychology
The editor of History of Psychology discusses her plan to vary the journal's content and expand its scope in specific ways. The first is to introduce a "Spotlight" feature, a relatively brief, provocative thought piece that might take one of several forms. Along with this new feature, she hopes further to broaden the journal's coverage and its range of contributors. She encourages submissions on the history of the psy-sciences off the beaten path…
Overcoming our mutual isolation: How historians and psychologists can work together
The history of psychology is one of those unusual academic fields pursued by two different groups of scholars in two different institutional locations: psychologist-historians and historians of science. In this concluding reflection on the special issue, I argue for a new kind of relationship between these two professional groups. Neither their consolidation nor their mutual isolation is the best way forward for our small and neglected field. Ins…
Burnham, Popular Science, and Popularization
Previous articleNext article FreeSpecial Section: Second LookBurnham, Popular Science, and PopularizationNadine WeidmanNadine WeidmanHarvard University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHow Superstition Won and Science Lost is a mournful story of decline and fall, a tale in which what was on…
Cultural Relativism and Biological Determinism: A Problem in Historical Explanation
This essay seeks to explain how Ashley Montagu, the American anthropologist, could have been both a cultural relativist and a biological determinist, two stances that seem to be opposites. The essay argues that the seeming contradiction can be resolved by placing Montagu in his historical contexts and by understanding what he meant by “biological determinism
Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America
A historian of science examines key public debates about the fundamental nature of humans to ask why a polarized discourse about nature versus nurture became so entrenched in the popular sciences of animal and human behavior. Are humans innately aggressive or innately cooperative? In the 1960s, bestselling books enthralled American readers with the startling claim that humans possessed an instinct for violence inherited from primate ancestors. Cr…
Introduction: The Hoffman Report in historical context
This brief introduction explains the historical background of the Hoffman Report, the 2015 independent counsel's investigation into the American Psychological Association's role in aiding ‘enhanced interrogations’ of detainees in the Bush Administration's Global War on Terror. It also outlines the articles in this special section of History of the Human Sciences on the Hoffman Report in Historical Context
Mental Health and the Search for Challenge
Abraham Maslow, Utopian Realist
The ideal human community or “Eupsychia” envisioned by Abraham Maslow was a place inhabited by a thousand “self-actualizing people” who shared a devotion to certain higher values. These values were, for Maslow, universally human and biologically rooted, and they included truth, beauty, justice, and the ability to become the best that one was capable of becoming. In addition to imagining it, Maslow searched for Eupsychia in reality and thought he …
The Perils of Prehistory: A Review
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion, Grant Bollmer
Journal Article The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion, Grant Bollmer Get access The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion Grant Bollmer Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023. 304 pp. Nadine Weidman Nadine Weidman Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Alli…
Loneliness and Touch
Fromm-Reichmann’s insistence on the physical aspect of loneliness and on touch as its antidote connects her to a long tradition of humanistic biology. This reaction paper traces the history of that tradition from the early 20th century onward and situates her within it. Interpreting Fromm-Reichmann’s 1959 article as part of this tradition allows us to notice the assumptions she shares with its other members
Psychology (16 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · History (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology (10 works) · Psychoanalysis (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Art history (7 works)