Philosophy and memory traces: Descartes to connectionism

his limitations. Yet, the malaria problem would prove to be a task worthy of Ross's relentless search for approval. Quite apart from being a stubborn obstacle to British colonialism in India and elsewhere, the plasmodia had become an international phenomenon. It offered Ross a stage for recognition. It also brought Ross and Manson together. While on furlough in the spring of 1894, Ross solicited Manson's advice when researching his essay for the Parkes Prize competition on 'Malarial fevers: their cause and prevention'. Manson, who served on the selection committee, recruited Ross by stroking his ego with personal gestures of approval. These ranged from invitations to lunch, references to books, demonstrating how to detect the protozoa microscopically, to sharing his mosquito-malaria theory in advance of publication. Even before Ross returned to India, the search for "the beast in the mosquito" had become a consuming preoccupation. As the new collection of letters between Ross and Manson richly shows, the complexity of the mosquito-malaria relationship required not only a resourceful autodidact but also a flawed personality to follow the theory to its conclusion. Organized chronologically, William Bynum and Caroline Overy have mercifully let Ross and Manson speak in their own words. While the editors do not intrude on the text, they do provide as much context as the reader demands. In addition to a sensible introduction, they furnish a serviceable glossary of technical terms, informative footnotes, a thorough biographical appendix of the men of science referred to in the letters, and an extensive bibliographical appendix. As a resource for the history of discovery, this compelling volume of correspondence will surely interest the professional scholar and lay reader alike. It is common for writers on cognitive science and neuroscience to deploy historical statements, especially about Descartes, as part of a rhetorical strategy to expose confusion and error. Most such writers are actually indifferent or even antagonistic to history as disciplined knowledge. This book is different. It contributes to the modern philosophy and science of mind by arguing that distributed processing theories of memory are not vulnerable to the criticisms of philosophers opposed to connectionist accounts of mental representations as traces. But it also seeks a "historical cognitive science ... to demonstrate that it is possible to attend to contexts and brains at once" (p. 1). To attain these ends, John Sutton makes a huge excursus through the early modern theory of the animal spirits, …