There is an interesting historical detour in the dissemination of one of the seventeenth century’s most praised discoveries: the reception of Harvey’s account of the circulation of the blood is closely intertwined, especially in the Low Countries, with Descartes’ account of the origin of the heartbeat. Descartes was one of the first figures to support the circulation of the blood and to give credit to Harvey for it, although he presumably arrived at the same conclusion independently through his own anatomical (...) experiments. He did so while vocally rejecting Harvey’s views on the muscular nature of the heart and his explanation of cardiac motion, to promote his own mechanistic solutions instead. Although Descartes’ .. (shrink)

RESUMEN A pesar de que la reducción de R. Descartes de los animales a meras máquinas puede explicarse como una consecuencia lógica de su punto de partida metafísico y gnoseológico, se puede argüir que esta reducción parece muy difícil de defender, puesto que se nos antoja contradictoria con nuestra experiencia cotidiana. Por otra parte, uno de los propósitos de la filosofía de Descartes es la “conservación de la salud”, que puede conseguirse mediante el establecimiento de una medicina “fundada en demostraciones (...) infalibles”. De cara a conseguir tal medicina el primer paso es alcanzar el conocimiento más preciso posible del cuerpo humano a fin de tener éxito en la práctica de la cirugía. De ahí que sea bastante plausible afirmar que la metafísica y la teoría del conocimiento de Descartes no serían sus principales intereses teóricos, sino solamente una explicación y justificación ingeniosas de lo que la ciencia de su tiempo llevaba haciendo no menos de cien años antes de él, así como una inteligente manera de obviar los escrúpulos cuando se anatomizaban cadáveres humanos y animales. En consecuencia, en este artículo mantendremos que el mecanicismo y dualismo cartesianos son una verdadera filosofía de la ciencia, desde el momento en que ambos estaban dedicados a explicar y justificar lo que la ciencia estaba haciendo en la práctica. ABSTRACT Despite of the fact that R. Descartes’s reduction of animals to mere machines can be explained as a logical consequence of his metaphysical and gnoseological starting point, one can argue that this reduction seems to be very difficult to defend, since it appears to be contradictory to our everyday experience. On the other hand, one of the explicitly confessed purposes of Descartes’s philosophy is the “conservation of health”, which can be achieved by establishing a medicine “founded in infallible demonstrations”. The first step in order to get such medicine is to acquire the most accurate as possible knowledge of the human body in order to be successful in practicing surgery. That is why it is fairly plausible to state that Descartes’s metaphysics and theory of knowledge were not his main theoretical concerns, but only a witty explanation and justification of what the science of his time was doing for no less than one century before him, as well as a clever manner to avoid scruples when anatomising both human corpses and animals. Consequently, in this paper we will claim that Cartesian mechanicism and dualism are actual philosophies of science, given the fact that both were devoted to explain and justify what science was in practice doing. (shrink)

Within the ambit of modernity, "to be" a "person" means "to have" "a body." But what exactly do we mean when we say: ‘I have a body’? Who or what is this ‘I’ that ‘has’ ‘a body’ anyway? And how and why does this ‘having’, this possessing, of ‘a body’ confer legal and psychological personhood on us? Does such bodily possession necessarily define a mode of ‘self ownership’? Is distinguishing between the notions of ‘being an organism’, or even ‘being alive’, (...) and ‘having a body’ just a matter of semantics? Or are there pragmatic, bio-political consequences to the ways we construe our vitality and embodiment? Can thinking about ‘the body’ as a (or even, the) matter of ‘self possession’ tell us something interesting about how ‘personhood’ informs our lives? After all, what is ‘the nature’ of ‘the body’, if it can be possessed in such a manner? And does this proprietary way of thinking exhaust the possibilities for how we can imagine what it means to be an organism, a person, a citizen or a human? (shrink)

Este ensayo se ocupa del tratamiento dado por René Descartes al descubrimiento de la circulación de la sangre hecho por William Harvey y sus diferencias respecto al papel del corazón en este proceso. Tomando distancia de la interpretación tradicional de la controversia, se concluye que, si bien Harvey fue un declarado aristotélico y Descartes un filósofo de estirpe materialista, los postulados de este último exhiben varios prejuicios escolásticos y una fuerte carga teórica en las observaciones. Por el contrario, la propuesta (...) de Harvey, aunque inspirada en el Estagirita, termina librando a la fisiología de consideraciones propias del pensamiento de Aristóteles. (shrink)

First Published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This dissertation addresses the heartbeat and the systems of natural philosophy that were used to explain it in the 17th century. Thus, I work in two domains of explanation. The first domain is physiology, in which William Harvey correctly ordered the heart’s systolic and diastolic motions, while René Descartes incorrectly reversed them. By looking at Harvey and Descartes’ more complete physiological models I reconsider the controversy that spun out of their divergent accounts. The second domain is the junction of physics (...) and metaphysics, representing the frameworks of natural philosophy behind physiology. I argue that Harvey’s physiology was correct while his supporting principles were “wrong,” and Descartes’ physiology was incorrect while his supporting principles were “right.” Thus, my thesis is that Harvey was “right” but perhaps for the wrong reasons, while Descartes was “wrong” but perhaps for the right reasons. Of course, this judgement is made from a contemporary perspective. By using a contextualist approach to history, I aim to show how the controversy between Harvey and Descartes resolved in Nicolas Steno, when he discovered that the heart is a muscle. (shrink)