“Still in Process”: Collaborative Authorship in a Twentieth-Century Biomedical Textbook

Abstract

Although drama and film rely on collaboration, the arts can otherwise be a solitary endeavor. We think of the painter, the composer, the writer withdrawing to the studio or loft or room apart, as Alphonse Daudet withdrew to his windmill for the Lettres. In the past, science too could be pursued alone. Newton and Darwin were great individualists and discoverers: their works had single authorship. But in modern times, with new techniques that result in vastly accumulating data, science must now be a collaborative endeavor. Only the many fragments will lead to the whole.