Fermentation is a cornerstone phenomenon in Cartesian physiology, accounting for processes such as digestion or blood formation. I argue that the previously unrecognized conceptual tension between the terms ‘fermentation’ and ‘concoction’ reflects Descartes's efforts towards a novel, more thoroughly mechanistic theory of physiology, set up against both Galenism and chymistry. Similarities with chymistry as regards fermentation turn out either epistemologically superficial, or based on shared earlier sources. Descartes tentatively employs ‘fermentation’ as a less teleological alternative to ‘concoction’, later renouncing the (...) explicit use of the term, possibly to avoid chymical overtones. However, his continued use of analogies with fermentative processes in the natural world and in winemaking, coupled with a strong ontological commitment (the stance that the physiological processes are actual fermentations), leads to a reintroduction of natural teleology in his medical system, which I argue may be understood in an Aristotelian sense of ‘simple necessity’. The paper reveals a more nuanced account of Cartesian fermentative medicine, delineating some of its tensions with regard to chymistry as they play out in the dynamics of fermentation and concoction, and linking the analogies to fermentation processes to the difficulties in erasing teleology altogether. (shrink)

This article deals with physico-mathematical approaches to anatomy in post-Harveyan physiology. But rather than looking at questions of iatromechanics and animal locomotion, which often attracted this approach, I look at the problem of how blood returned to the heart – a part of the circulation today known as venous return but poorly researched in the early modern period. I follow the venous return mechanisms proposed by lesser-known authors in the mechanization of anatomy, such as Jean Pecquet (1622–1674) and Nicolaus Steno (...) (1638–1686), alongside the more famous Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679). Their mechanisms differed only in small details. Yet, these minor differences highlight significant aspects of the mechanization of the life sciences in the seventeenth century. First, they relied more on observations than hitherto acknowledged, even if only indirectly. Second, their mechanisms drew more from the physico-mathematical disciplines than from the trending corpuscularian philosophies of their time. Finally, these mechanisms led to a more accurate understanding of the circulation that remains valid today, thus revealing their cognitive benefits. In short, through the single problem of how blood returned to the heart, this article portrays the increasing complexity of anatomy in the early modern period. (shrink)

Materialism as a doctrine is, of course, a part of the history of philosophy, even if it was often a polemical construct, and it took until the 18th century for philosophers to be willing to call themselves materialists. Difficulties also have been pointed out in terms of “continuity,” i.e., does what Democritus, Lucretius, Hobbes and Diderot have to say about matter, the body and the soul all belong in one discursive and conceptual frame? Interestingly, materialism is also a classic figure (...) in the history of medicine, often intersecting with philosophical considerations. Notably, the question of body-soul relations. This is apparent in Galen’s treatise on body and soul and then much more massively in the early modern period (with reference to Galen, but also Lucretius, and Aristotelian naturalism). In the following essay I reflect on the exact nature of early modern medical materialism, its philosophical status and contribution. (shrink)

This essay examines Descartes’s impact on medical faculties in the German Reformed context, focusing on the case of the Marburg physician Johann Jakob Waldschmidt (1644–89). It first surveys the wider backdrop of Descartes-reception in German universities, and highlights its generally conciliatory character. Waldschmidt appears as a counterpoint to this tendency. The essay then situates Waldschmidt’s work in the context of confessional politics at the University of Marburg, and specifically of the heightened controversy in Hesse around the teaching of Descartes in (...) the last years of Waldschmidt’s life. The second half of the essay details Waldschmidt’s ambitious program to reform medicine along Cartesian lines, in physiology, pathology, and therapy, and evaluates its merits and limits. (shrink)

How are we to connect the mechanist methodology used by Baglivi in his physiological treatises with the apparently strict empiricism that he promotes in his therapeutic work entitled Practice of Physick, reduc’d to the Ancient Way of Observations? In order to answer this question, we examine the methodological implications of the “history of diseases” that Baglivi promotes by using Bacon’s recommendations in the Novum organum. Then, we compare this result with the place that historians generally gave to Baglivi in the (...) medical context of that time: the place of a dogmatic and “iatromechanist” physician who was far from practical and therapeutic concerns. This confrontation allows us first to apprehend the polemical origin of the so-called “iatromechanism” as a historiographical label, and second, to question the preeminence of the role of observations in the shaping of the classical distinction between “rational” physicians and “empirical” ones. When Early Modern physicians use the dichotomy between “empirical” and “rationalist” in order to discredit what they perceive as oversimplification or dogmatism, there is most often a third group at stake: a group which is depicted as the providential and intelligent solution to sectarianism. For Baglivi, this third group would be an “Empirick rational sect.” The distinction between a medicina prima and a medicina secunda allows us to understand such an apparently paradoxical category. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

There is a familiar opposition between a ‘Scientific Revolution’ ethos and practice of experimentation, including experimentation on life, and a ‘vitalist’ reaction to this outlook. The former is often allied with different forms of mechanism – if all of Nature obeys mechanical laws, including living bodies, ‘iatromechanism’ should encounter no obstructions in investigating the particularities of animal-machines – or with more chimiatric theories of life and matter, as in the ‘Oxford Physiologists’. The latter reaction also comes in different, perhaps (...) irreducibly heterogeneous forms, ranging from metaphysical and ethical objections to the destruction of life, as in Margaret Cavendish, to more epistemological objections against the usage of instruments, the ‘anatomical’ outlook and experimentation, e.g. in Locke and Sydenham. But I will mainly focus on a third anti-interventionist argument, which I call ‘vitalist’ since it is often articulated in the writings of the so-called Montpellier Vitalists, including their medical articles for the Encyclopédie. The vitalist argument against experimentation on life is subtly different from the metaphysical, ethical and epistemological arguments, although at times it may borrow from any of them. It expresses a Hippocratic sensibility – understood as an artifact of early modernity, not as some atemporal trait of medical thought – in which Life resists the experimenter, or conversely, for the experimenter to grasp something about Life, it will have to be without torturing or radically intervening in it. I suggest that this view does not have to imply that Nature is something mysterious or sacred; nor does the vitalist have to attack experimentation on life in the name of some ‘vital force’ – which makes it less surprising to find a vivisectionist like Claude Bernard sounding so close to the vitalists. (shrink)

De generationewas the last of the three works published by William Harvey during his lifetime. Although this work on generation was most ambitious, being the product of prolonged and detailed researches, it has received relatively little attention from modern writers. It is generally felt that this work, like William Gilbert'sDe mundo, departs significantly from the more pronounced empirical approach to science which characterized Harvey's first publication,De motu cordis. De generationeshows that Harvey regarded reference to teleological and vitalistic principles as necessary (...) for the solution of crucial problems in biology. In this respect he differed from his contemporaries, the iatrochemical and iatromechanical physiologists, whose non-teleological approach seems, at least superficially, to be in sympathy with the modern biological tradition. The structure and content ofDe generationeare so evidently determined by Aristotle's biological writings, that the work is used to illustrate Harvey's failure to emancipate himself from the philosophical encumbrances of antiquity. (shrink)

TETRAD HUMORAL THEORY SEEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF BACON’S THEORY OF IDOLS Francis Bacon’s conception of idols is a sort of a reference point for showing the criticism of the tetrad humoral theory, which derives from ancient times and corresponds to Pre-Socratic philosophy and Aristotle’s philosophy. That theory was still dogmatic in 16th century medicine, while its elements were used until the end of Enlightenment, even though different ways of medical thinking were being formed. Bacon’s general characteristics of basic cognitive (...) mistakes in science can, as it seems, be used in order to show their equivalents in the system humoral approach. This way of approaching the problem can be placed within the critical diagnosis of humors’ conception, and taken up — starting from The Renaissance, by medics themselves: iatrochemists, iatromathematicians, iatromechanics. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that the general category of 'iatromechanics' conceals different views about how mathematics and mathematical physics should be applied in medicine, and thereby about how physiology should be quantified and mathematized. Mechanism, quantification and mathematization are indeed different, albeit interrelated, notions, which overlap without ever coming to be identical, and all of which depend upon the overall epistemological debate over the method for finding truth in science. This chapter compares the epistemological thought of the Newtonians Archibald (...) Pitcairne (1652-1713), James Keill (1673-1719) and the rationalists Yvo Gaukes (ca. 1660-1738) and Friedrich Hoffman (1660-1742). It contends that, still in the early eighteenth-century, contrasting understandings and uses of quantification in medicine related to different conceptions of the epistemological status of mathematics and its connection with experience especially. The chapter then focuses on how the experimental quantitative approach introduced in physiology by Santorio Santorio (1561-1636) is understood in these different scenarios. I argue that contrasting understandings and uses of quantification in medicine correspond not only to different conceptions about the epistemological status of mathematics, but also of its conjunction with experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 471 One would have liked amplification of the final chapter on "Descartes and History," first, as to how he was a product of the intellectual climate of his times, and secondly, as to the influence exerted by "the father of modern philosophy" at home and abroad. Even brief comments would have been welcome--for example, on Descartes's reaction to the Thomistic heritage, to Montaigne, Pyrrhonism, and Stoicism, Jesuit (...) formation, to the theory of "honn~te homme" capable of wielding the sword and the pen. The book mentions Chomsky; but why is there no reference to the exchange of four letters between Descartes and the Cambridge Piatonist Henry More on language as the criterion of reason to distinguish man from beast? The crucial role of theology in that age could be further emphasized, as well as the three-cornered nature of the century's combat between "the old philosophers," the Cartesians, and the empiricists who gathered strength after Gassendi. One looks in vain for reference to Descartes's role in denigrating history and promoting the moderns as a possible influence first in "la querelle des anciens et des modernes" and then in the Enlightenment faith in progress. The chapter would have been enriched by comment on Descartes's influence on "iatrophysical" and "iatrochemical" iatromechanism, particularly in the medical sciences. No doubt because of limitations of space, the internationalism of Descartes's "rayonnement " was not brought to light. In Holland, England, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland the sparks spread. But it is not fair to blame an author for not writing someone else's book with more on the history of ideas. Dr. R6e, the Editor of Philosophy and its Past, has made a personal and significant contribution to Cartesiana. We are grateful to him for helping us to understand Descartes. LEONORA COHEN ROSENFIELD University of Maryland Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity. Ed. Giorgio Tagliacozzo and Donald Phillip Verene. (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1976. Pp. xxix + 480. $16.50) This is the second of two volumes of essays on Giambattista Vico, the early eighteenthcentury Neopolitan philosopher of history. The first volume was part of, and served to signal, a fairly intense quickening of interest in Vico.' Since its publication at least a half dozen books on Vico have appeared in English. The first Vico Conference to be held in this country took place in January, 1976, coinciding with the publication of this second volume.2 The Conference and the two volumes represent an effort to stimulate an interest in and manifest the riches of Vico's thought. They must surely be the fruits of a labor of love on the part of Professor Giorgio Tagliacozzo, Director of the Institute for Vichian Studies and co-editor of both volumes. The publication of the second volume, coming at the end of the most fruitful decade in Vichian scholarship in the English-speaking world, provides an opportunity for some assessment of the general trends emerging within that scholarship. I prefer to discuss two related but distinguishableaspects of those trends: first, their interdisciplinarycharacter, and second, the increasingly divergent nature of both the historical and methodological approaches to Vico. On the whole, the predominant disciplinary interest in Vico in books published or translated into English before 1969 has been philosophical and has been heavily influenced by Croce's ' Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium, ed. Giorgio Tagliacozzo and Hayden V. White (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969). "Vico and Contemporary Thought," sponsored by the Institute for VicoStudies, associated with the Casa ltaliana of Columbia University and the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. 472 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY idealist interpretation. Vichian research has been enriched and broadened in the last ten years by the growth of philological studies, and the present volume is representative of this development. It is divided almost equally between articles in philology and philosophy. The primarily philological articles range from analyses, occasionally technical, of Vico's ideas about language and myth, 3 to Vico's place in the historical development of linguistics, rhetoric, and language usage from Aristotle to the eighteenth century4 and to his relevance for the contemporary study of language usage and... (shrink)