Health in the Early Modern Philosophical Tradition

Health ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 180-221
Author(s):  
Gideon Manning
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Health It ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
System P ◽  
Concept Of Health ◽  
Good State ◽  
Medicine And Philosophy ◽  
Mind And Body

This chapter examines the connections between medicine and philosophy in the seventeenth century with a particular focus on Anne Conway, Rene Descartes, and thinkers influenced by Descartes such as Henricus Regius, Jacques Rohault, and Johannes De Raey. It is shown that, despite the strong dualism associated with Descartes, thinkers of the period were very interested in the close connections between body and mind. One problem confronting these thinkers was how to reconcile their mechanistic, anti-teleological understanding of bodies with the normative concept of health. It is also shown that Descartes was intensely concerned with using philosophy to achieve a good state of both mind and body, a project shared by medical authors who adopted the Cartesian system.

Occasionalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tad Schmaltz
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Body Interaction ◽  
Divine Activity ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Early Modern Metaphysics ◽  
Radical Form

Occasionalism was a theory of causation that played an important role in early modern metaphysics. In its most radical form, this theory holds that God is the only genuine cause, with natural events serving merely as ‘occasions’ for divine activity. According to an old textbook view, which has its source in the seventeenth century, occasionalism was introduced as an ad hoc solution to the problem, deriving from Descartes’s dualism, of how mind and body can causally interact. In fact, however, occasionalism has a history that dates from long before Descartes, and it was initially offered as a solution to theological rather than purely metaphysical difficulties. After Descartes, moreover, occasionalism remained significant for reasons that go far beyond the issue of mind-body interaction.

Poetry as Optical Technology

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-39
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Mechanical Model ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
John Dryden ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Visual Theory ◽  
William Davenant ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the impact of Johannes Kepler’s mechanical model of vision on early modern poetic theory. It begins with an overview of classical visual and optical theory as they relate to Plato’s and Aristotle’s descriptions of poetry as an image-making technology. At the same time, it explains how their poetic theories are in turn connected to a philosophical tradition that associates heightened visual capacity with spiritual insight and intellectual and moral authority. The chapter then moves into an exploration of how early modern poetic theorists both inherited and adapted this existing intellectual tradition in response to the optical and visual theory of the period. By comparing Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poetry (1595) and George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589)—two works that pre-date Kepler’s theory—to later, seventeenth-century works by William Davenant, Thomas Hobbes, and John Dryden, this chapter shows that the changing status of the image in seventeenth-century European culture resulted in a complementary alteration within theories of poetic representation.

Language Matters: ‘Counsel’ in Early Modern and Modern Medicine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Sabroe ◽  
Phil Withington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Successful Scientist

Francis Bacon is famous today as one of the founding fathers of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century. Although not an especially successful scientist himself, he was nevertheless the most eloquent and influential spokesperson for an approach to knowledge that promised to transform human understanding of both humanity and its relationship with the natural and social worlds. The central features of this approach, as they emerged in Bacon’s own writings and the work of his protégés and associates after 1605, are equally well known. They include the importance of experiment, observation, and a sceptical attitude towards inherited wisdom (from the ‘ancients’ in general and Aristotle in particular).

Divine Machines

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Living World ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Generation Theory

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. This book offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. The book shows how these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines. Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, the book takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here it reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. The book casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era.

Orthodox Radicals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Baptist Identity ◽  
Ongoing Project

Orthodox Radicals explores the origins and identity of Baptists during the English Revolution (1640–1660), arguing that mid-seventeenth century Baptists did not, in fact, understand themselves to be part of a larger, all-encompassing “Baptist” movement. Contrary to both the explicit statements of many historians and the tacit suggestion embedded in the very use of “Baptist” as an overarching historical category, the early modern men and women who rejected infant baptism would not have initially understood that single theological move as being in itself constitutive of a new group identity. Rather, the rejection of infant baptism was but one of a number of doctrinal revisions then taking place among English puritans eager to further their ongoing project of godly reformation. Orthodox Radicals thus complicates our understanding of Baptist identity and addresses broader themes including early modern religious toleration, the mechanisms by which early modern groups defined and defended themselves, and the perennial problem of historical anachronism. By combining a provocative reinterpretation Baptist identity with close readings of key theological and political texts, Orthodox Radicals offers the most original and stimulating analysis of mid-seventeenth century Baptists in decades.

Stuart Succession Literature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Distinct Category ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Distinguished Group ◽  
Modern British Literature

Moments of royal succession, which punctuated the Stuart era (1603–1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefiting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Bjørn Okholm Skaarup, Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (Farnham/Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2015), xii + 285pp. ISBN: 9781471448162

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Nutton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Spain

This chapter reviews the book Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (2015), by Bjørn Okholm Skaarup. The book traces the development of anatomy in Spain and Mexico from 1500 to the end of the seventeenth century. Skaarup cites particular instances where the Spanish experience can contribute substantially to wider debates, including Juan Tomas Porcell’s autopsies of plague victims in a hospital at Zaragoza in 1568 and the detailed plan of 1586 for a ‘house of anatomy’ there. He challenges O’Malley’s exaggerated description, based on Vesalius’s comments on his time in Spain between 1559 and 1561, that doctors and surgeons lack interest in anatomy. Skaarup reveals the difficulties faced by those who wished to introduce dissection as an essential part of the education of a doctor, as well as the objections that might be made.

Drifting Through a Planetary System

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karel Schrijver
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Planetary System ◽  
System P ◽  
History Of ◽  
Or Team ◽  
Water Contents

This chapter describes how the first found exoplanets presented puzzles: they orbited where they should not have formed or where they could not have survived the death of their stars. The Solar System had its own puzzles to add: Mars is smaller than expected, while Venus, Earth, and Mars had more water—at least at one time—than could be understood. This chapter shows how astronomers worked through the combination of these puzzles: now we appreciate that planets can change their orbits, scatter water-bearing asteroids about, steal material from growing planets, or team up with other planets to stabilize their future. The special history of Jupiter and Saturn as a pair bringing both destruction and water to Earth emerged from the study of seventeenth-century resonant clocks, from the water contents of asteroids, and from experiments with supercomputers imposing the laws of physics on virtual worlds.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

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