A reading order
Start here.
The subject has a shape. It begins with a measurement, a current flowing from a wound, and spends two centuries arguing over what that current is for.
- 01from 1852 · 98 passagesAnimal electricityA cut muscle drives a current. Du Bois-Reymond measured it; the argument over what it means has not ended.
- 02from 1902 · 566 passagesThe resting potentialEvery cell holds a voltage across its membrane, not only nerve and muscle.
- 03from 1902 · 711 passagesPlants answer tooBose recorded electrical responses in plants and metals and asked where the living begins.
- 04from 1888 · 804 passagesOne cell, behavingJennings and Binet watched Paramecium and Stentor avoid, choose and adapt.
- 05from 1880 · 483 passagesMachine or agentLoeb called it forced movement. Jennings called it trial and error.
- 06from 1888 · 1,199 passagesGrowing backMorgan, Child and the planarian: what tells a fragment which end is the head.
- 07from 2016 · 75 passagesThe voltage mapPatterns of membrane voltage that precede anatomy, and what happens when they are rewritten.
- 08from 2013 · 48 passagesWhere the energy comes fromProton gradients across membranes: the cell's other electricity.
- 09from 2019 · 23 passagesHow big is a selfCells joined by gap junctions pursue goals no single cell holds.