Sciences of walking: a history of locomotion research

Centre Alexandre Koyré, Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales / CNRS, Paris, France
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1004v1
Subject Areas
Anthropology, Anatomy and Physiology, Neurology, Orthopedics, Psychiatry and Psychology
Keywords
Locomotion, History of Science, History of Medicine, Physiology, locomotion systems, iatromechanics
Copyright
© 2015 Mayer
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Mayer A. 2015. Sciences of walking: a history of locomotion research. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1004v1

Abstract

Most people consider walking to be a natural and self-evident activity of everyday life. However, this familiarity turns out to be fragile in the face of the question "Do you know how you walk?" The mechanism of walking has puzzled scientists, doctors and writers for a long time. In my book Wissenschaft vom Gehen (Fischer, 2013), I have tried to provide a historical account of those forms of investigations of the human gait, some of the famous, others marginal and largely forgotten, that emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines (physiology, neurology, orthopedic surgery, anthropology, psychiatry) since the late 18th century. In my paper, I retrace – in five steps – the historical career of the sciences of walking throughout the 19th century.

Author Comment

This was a conference talk for the 2nd Winter Symposium of the Human Motion Project. It is part of the PeerJ “Human Motion Project” collection.