HYLOMORPHISM INTO PIECES. Elements, Atoms, and Corpuscles in Natural Philosophy and Medicine, 1400–1600 (PSMEMM 7) (original) (raw)
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This paper aims to spotlight some important, but neglected, aspects of early modern interactions between matter theories and the life sciences. It will trace the ways in which atomistic or corpuscular modes of reasoning were adopted to explain the origin of life. To that end this paper will examine three seventeenth-century natural philosophers: Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680). Through the analysis of their discussions on the minute constitutive parts of living beings (plants, animals and human beings) as living corpuscles, it will inquire into the exchange of ideas among those who advocated “non-mechanist” or “vitalistic” types of corpuscular philosophy. This paper’s ultimate goal is to shed light on the role of bio-medical ideas in seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Sennert, Corpuscles and Spontaneous Generation 3. Gassendi and Seminal Molecules 4. Kircher and the Corpuscular Origin of Life 5. A Brief Conclusion
Hardly anything seems more ordinary than the extended, concrete bodies populating the world of experience. Yet in explaining their manifest properties, physicists must appeal to entities radically unlike the bodies of our experience. Medieval Aristotelians too struggled to resolve tensions between the characteristics of the bodies we experience (corporeality), and the principle that accounts for the way bodies are (matter). This panel uncovers key difficulties that theorists of the High Middle Ages encountered when deploying Aristotelian notions of body to account for the bodies we experience. It thus offers a new window onto the fraying and reweaving of medieval paradigms of the physical world in the thirteenth century. The first three papers examine tensions within medieval paradigms of corporeality. Neil Lewis will explore medieval attempts to fit ‘body’ into the Aristotelian categorial scheme by distinguishing body as substance and quantified body. David Cory will examine the emergence of a ‘dual explanation’ of physical phenomena in terms of materiality and corporeality. Nicola Polloni will show how this duality raised questions about matter’s (un)knowability, putting its physical function into tension with its metaphysical limitations. The last two papers treat two cases, concerning bodily properties, that challenged Aristotelian paradigms among thirteenth-century Christian and Islamic intellectuals. Therese Cory will examine how Parisian theorists sought to integrate light into their paradigm of corporeality. Emma Gannagé will examine how the post-Avicennian medical tradition handled the problem of bodies exhibiting secondary qualities (magnetism or healing properties) beyond those manifested by all bodies in common.
Th is paper analyzes the theory of mixtures, material substances and corpuscles put forward by the Portuguese Thomistic philosopher Francisco Soares Lusitano. It has been argued that the incapacity of the Aristotelian- Th omistic tradition to reconcile an Aristotelian theory of mixtures with hylomorphism opened the way to the triumph of atomism in the seventeenth century. By analyzing Soares Lusitano’s theory of mixtures, this paper aims to demonstrate that early modern Thomism not only rendered the Aristotelian notion of elements compatible with the metaphysical bases of hylomorphism, but further incorporated an explanation of physical phenomena based upon the notion that bodies were basically made up of small and subtle corpuscles. By doing so, it shows that, contrary to what is so often claimed, early modern corpuscularism was not intrinsically incompatible with late Aristotelian philosophy.
Santorio Santori and the Emergence of Quantified Medicine, 1614-1790: Corpuscularianism, Technology and Experimentation, ed. Jonathan Barry & Fabrizio Bigotti. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
Recent research on early theories of matter has shown the emergence of atomistic interpretations from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. 1 The Renaissance was a turning point where atomistic theories flourished as transitional accounts which combined ancient atomism, Aristotelian physics, and alchemy. Such an atomist "revival" was prompted by the rediscovery of Diogenes Laërtius' doxography of Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, and by the first edition of Lucretius' poem De rerum natura. The Aristotelian natural philosophy also played an important role in this current by continuing the scholastic debates on matter, the elements, and their substance. In addition, alchemy was crucial in the atomistic recrudescence as it considered the essential principles of matter, while praising Democritus as an ancient alchemical figure. Collectively,
Early Science and Medicine, 1997
In this article, I argue that the interest on the part of Bacon, Hill, and Warner in corpuscularian interpretations of natural phenomena and their similarity to certain views later held by Digby or Boyle offer a strong indication for the existence of an 'independent English atomistic milieu', a view that fits more closely Porter & Teich's recent model of national contexts for early modern science than Kargon's traditional picture of English atomism as a foreign import. In the course of this article, I consider Francis Bacon's anti-Aristotelian polemic in the light of his continued adherence to a conception of material form and his essentially Aristotelian metaphysics, as well as the relationship between his conception of form and his corpuscular theories of matter. This is followed by an examination of Walter Warner's natural philosophical manuscripts. Particular attention is paid to his Averroist distinction between assistant form (which has the role of an a...
Sixteenth-century natural philosophers and physicians crafted novel ideas on bodies and their internal powers. Their theories often went far beyond the framework of the traditional Aristotelian perspective, influencing the broader philosophical scene of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Although the principal actors in Renaissance natural philosophy had a variety of motivations and points of departure, many of them were medically educated humanists or humanistically trained physicians. This was the case, for example, of Jean Fernel, Girolamo Cardano and Julius Caesar Scaliger. Under the influence of these figures, eminent writers such as Bernardino Telesio and Justus Lipsius, though not educated as physicians, took pains to engage in discussions of the natural world. Their writings exerted a considerable impact on later generations. Contents 1. Natural Philosophy, Medicine and Alchemy 1-1. Medicine 1-2. Alchemy/Chymistry 2. The Formative and Plastic Power of the Seed 2-1. Galen's Idea Revived 2-2. The Seed's Celestial Force 2-3. The Plastic Faculty as God's Invisible Hand 2-4. Toward Plastic Nature 3. Spirits, Cosmic Heat and the Principle of Life 3-1. Spirits and Their Celestial Origin 3-2. Cosmic Heat and the World-Soul 3-3. The Spirit as the Material Crystallization of Cosmic Heat 4. Seeds and the Seminal Principle 4-1. Ubiquity of Invisible Seeds in Nature 4-2. The Christianization of Cosmic Heat 4-3. A Synthesis as a the Philosophy of Seeds - References