A Rope Stretched Over an Abyss: Ethics, Law and Neuroscience by
Pierre Pouget The dream of a complete noesis of the natural
world is probably one of the most and profound aspirations of
the human species, and even if the word 'scientist' was only
introduced in 1840, this desire to understand the rules
governing our physical world was expressed in the earlier stage
of human civilization. As Franciscan friar Bacon emphasized in
the middle of the 13th centuries, 'The strongest argument proves
nothing so long as the conclusions are unverified by
experience'. Yet the scientific approach of the medicine has
since then always faced difficulties in undertaking those
experiments. An important step during medical training is the
dissection of human or animal cadavers. Over the course of the
history this practice has been often viewed as both morally and
legally unacceptable. In fact, in the city of Alexandria in
ancient Egypt, where Herophilos and others explored the nervous
system, the circulatory system and the anato