{"id":2372,"date":"2025-06-19T16:43:39","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T20:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2025-06-19T16:43:39","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T20:43:39","slug":"ramon-y-cajal-diseases-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/ramon-y-cajal-diseases-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Cajal on &#8220;diseases of the will&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Reiss (h\/t) recently recommended me a short book by Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal (1852-1934), an important Spanish neuroscientist and physician. Cajal first published the evocatively titled\u00a0<em> Reglas y Consejos sobre <\/em><em>Investigaci\u00f3n Cientifica: Los t\u00f3nicos de la voluntad\u00a0<\/em>in 1897 and it was subsequently revised and translated various times since then. By far the most entertaining portion for me is chapter 5, entitled &#8220;Diseases of the Will&#8221;. Despite the name, what Cajal actually presents is a taxonomy of scientists who do contribute little to scientific inquiry:\u00a0 &#8220;contemplators&#8221;, &#8220;bibliophiles and polyglots&#8221;, &#8220;megalomaniacs&#8221;, &#8220;instrument addicts&#8221;, &#8220;misfits&#8221;, and &#8220;theorists&#8221;. I include a PDF of this brief chapter, translated into English, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/cajal_1999_ch5.pdf\">here<\/a> for interested readers, under my belief it is in the public domain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Reiss (h\/t) recently recommended me a short book by Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal (1852-1934), an important Spanish neuroscientist and physician. Cajal first published the evocatively titled\u00a0 Reglas y Consejos sobre Investigaci\u00f3n Cientifica: Los t\u00f3nicos de la voluntad\u00a0in 1897 and it was subsequently revised and translated various times since then. By far the most entertaining &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/ramon-y-cajal-diseases-will\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Cajal on &#8220;diseases of the will&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-language","category-presentation-of-self","post_format-post-format-link"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2374,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}