Being Brains is based on some of the research we carried out, together and separately, over a number of years. From the beginning we had a book in mind, and some of the material we published as articles or chapters has been reworked here. It is also both together and separately that we have incurred many personal and intellectual debts. We can here acknowledge only a few.
Various institutions have supported us generously: the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the Carlos Chagas Filho Research Support Foundation of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher-Level Personnel (CAPES), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Institute for Social Medicine of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies), and CEHIC (Center for the History of Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona).
We are grateful to our friend Aurore Millet for graciously letting us use Reminiscence I no. 4 (2005) for the cover of the book. Her red pencil drawing comes from a series reflecting her experiences on both sides of Israel’s “security fence.” In it, “a sense of spirituality and silent minimalism” (as Tina Sherwell puts it in Millet 2009) powerfully combines the intimate psychological sphere with the political and social world—a combination that, in a different way, is also at the heart of Being Brains.
From Tokyo to Mexico City and from Montreal to Buenos Aires, we have exchanged ideas and opinions with very many individuals and presented our work on numerous occasions to extremely varied audiences in a large number of institutions. We can here do no more than to mention a few.
We owe special gratitude to Lorraine Daston, the director of Department II at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, for her insightful feedback as well as for facilitating many opportunities for us to carry out our joint work.
Joelle Abi-Rached, Maurizio Meloni, and Nikolas Rose have been cherished critical interlocutors. Antonio Battro, a dear friend, invited us to the Mind, Brain, and Education Summer School at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice (Sicily), where we benefited from valuable discussions in a unique setting.
Francisco Ortega thanks in particular the Department of Social Science, Health, and Medicine of King’s College, London, where he was Senior Visiting Research Fellow in 2012–2013. He is also grateful to Dominique Behague, Benilton Bezerra, Jurandir Freire Costa, and Rafaela Zorzanelli.
Fernando Vidal is especially grateful for the hospitality of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He also thanks Nicole Becker, Suparna Choudhury, Nicolas Langlitz, and Claudia Swan.