Henry M. Cowles is a historian of modern science and medicine based at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey (2020). His next projects include a history of mental health since 1800, and a history of habits from Thoreau’s celebration of daily routine in Walden to the rise of “persuasive technologies” in Silicon Valley and beyond.
Henry M. Cowles
Articles
Dealer’s Choice: What Freedom Is—and Isn’t
Henry Cowles describes how every choice he makes is now haunted by Sophia Rosenfeld’s “The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.”
What Is It Like to Have a Brain?: On Patrick House’s “Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness”
Henry M. Cowles reviews Patrick House’s “Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness” and finds House’s brains to be remarkably similar to Wallace Stevens’s birds in “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”
Horrible Sanity: An Edgar Allan Poe for Our Time
Henry Cowles finds much to appreciate in John Tresch’s new biography of Edgar Allan Poe.
The Machine Stops: Science and Its Limits
Henry M. Cowles evaluates "The Knowledge Machine," the new book by Michael Strevens.
Peak Brain: The Metaphors of Neuroscience
Henry Cowles describes how our technologies anchor our metaphors, which in turn anchor how we think about the brain — and ourselves.
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