Towards neuroscientific management? Geometric chronophotography and the thin-slicing of the labouring body

The conventional history of the labour process suggests that Taylorism played a key role in the development and popularisation of production management techniques in general, and work science in particular. This paper argues that the work of Herman van Helmholtz, Edwaeard Muybridge, and Jules Etiennes Marey helped establish an ideology of the labouring body which not only pre-dated the work of Frederick Taylor, but which continues to influence management thinking and practices today.