My take-away from Oliver Sacks memoir is the value of a historically grounded science. Sacks got a lot of grief for reading the primary sources of naturalists w

My take-away from Oliver Sacks memoir is the value of a historically grounded science. Sacks got a lot of grief for reading the primary sources of naturalists writing in the 19th century, but it helped him develop a phenomenal facility for science communication and exposed him to useful ideas that had lapsed in popularity.