scholarly journals Bastidores da anatomia: da história à essência humana

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Isabela Pereira Almeida ◽  
Andressa Karoline Da silva Malheiro ◽  
Zara Dantas Oliveira

INTRODUCTION: The history of Anatomy, its artistic representation and the history of the human body, with its taboos, have come a long way until the present moment. The objective of this work is to understand the historical points of this area of knowledge, as well as the subjectivity involved, correlating it with Literature and the Arts. DEVELOPMENT: The production of anatomical knowledge begins in prehistory; it is watertight in the Middle Ages; gains momentum in Oriental Medicine and reaches its peak in spectacles of public dissections. Anatomy is established as a form of entertainment through the regulation of public dissections, leading to the trivialization of death, the appreciation of the grotesque, the scarcity of corpses and the fear of misappropriation of bodies. As anatomy has grown as an area of knowledge, it has created the basis for health sciences and human care. It has emerged over time that the study of anatomical pieces requires essential principles - sensitivity, ethics and respect - and allows us to reflect on the transposition of the boundaries between the beautiful versus the grotesque; the pleasant versus the disgusting. It also allows reflection on the trivialization, commercialization and eroticization of the body, as well as on the limits of science. CONCLUSION: Human anatomy, in its multiple aspects, has come a long way and constitutes a precious source of knowledge, however, it is faced with enticement by the most different interests. It is necessary to rescue the beauty of the human body, which is an inseparable part of the being that inhabits / dwelt there in order to resignify its human essence.

Author(s):  
Rachael Allen

Bearing witness to these anatomies ‘in the flesh’ is rooted in the cultural history of human anatomy and dissection: the meeting of artists and anatomists around the dissecting table; the public spectacle of ritualised dissections in Renaissance anatomical theatres; the study of anatomy in institutions; the contentious display of dead bodies in Gunther von Hagen’s Body Worlds, to name a few. Our bodies have commonly been understood by both medical and lay people as a biological machine of sorts and an image ‘embedded in popular culture and sustained in the anatomy lab’. First-hand experience of anatomical dissection has become a guarded professional ritual and a marker of special knowledge that depends on the violation of the taboo (access to the interior of the body and to death): ‘The anatomy theatre lies at the mysterious heart of medicine in the public fantasy and the professional imagination.’ Categorical, turbulent and romantic accounts of human dissection have circulated widely over the centuries, through prose, poetry and the arts, and it is precisely because of the body’s moral centrality that it can be used subversively by contemporary artists today.


Author(s):  
Michael A. Kornienko ◽  

The author analyzes the prerequisites for the formation of a theological and philosophical school, founded in 990 by Bishop Fulbert in Chartres, which flourished during the years of the Episcopal ministry of Yves of Chartres (1090–1115), a recognized intellectual center of Western Europe. The role of the Chartres Cathedral School as a citadel of metaphysical, cosmological and natural-scientific Platonism in the era of early scholasticism is revealed. The philosophical orientation of the Chartres school (orientation to the ideas of Neoplatonism), as shown in the work, is the result of a combination of the ideas of Plato, aristotelism, stoicism, pythagoreanism, Eastern and Christian mysticism and religion. The body of ideas characteristic of the Neoplatonism tradition is analyzed, the account of which is essential in understanding the specifics of the Chartres school ideological platform: the ideas of a mystically intuitive knowledge of the higher, the stages of transition from “one and the universal” to matter, the idea of comprehension of pure spirituality. The thesis is substantiated that the time of the highest prosperity of the Chartres school, its highest fame is the XII century, which went down in the history of civilization as the era of the cultural renaissance taking place in France. The specificity of the 12th century renaissance, as shown in the study, lies in the growing interest in Greek philosophy and Roman classics (this also determines the other name of the era – the Roman Renaissance), in expanding the field of knowledge through the assimilation of Western European science and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. The thesis in which the specifics of the entry of Greek science into the culture of Western Europe is also identified. This entry was carried out through the culture of the Muslim world, which also determined the specifics of the cultural renaissance of France of the XII century. Radical changes are revealed that affect the sphere of education and, above all, religious education; the idea of reaching the priority positions of philosophy and logic is substantiated – a situation that has survived until the end of the Middle Ages. This situation, as shown in the work, was facilitated by the rare growth rate of the translation centers of Constantinople, Palermo, Toledo. It is shown that scholasticism in its early version is oriented towards religious orthodoxy. In the teaching of philosophy, the vector turned out to be biased towards natural philosophy, which was due, as shown in the work, to the spread of the ideas of Aristotle and Plato. In its educational program, the school synthesized the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Elements of natural philosophy are inherent in the works of Bernard of Chartres, Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres representing the Chartres school. Deep studies on the problem of universals ensured the invasion of logic in the field of metaphysical constructions of the Chartres school.


Killing Times ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 87-118
Author(s):  
David Wills

What is called the “temporal technology” of the human can be analyzed as a relation between time and blood. The death penalty reveals that relation not as a natural one but as a “prosthetic” one, whereby time gets attached to the human body in such a way that it mimics the flow of blood but at the same time shows that flow to be mechanically produced. That conclusion is reached by tracing a history of mortal time that links Socrates to Heidegger and by examining in detail Hegel’s promotion of blood as a figure for dialectical sublation in general, a blood that is simultaneously inside and outside the body. As a result, blood is “shed” by means of an execution whether it involves the guillotine or lethal injection.


2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 631-651
Author(s):  
Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa

Summary Based on earlier research, and especially Tadeusz Ulewicz’s landmark study Iter Romano- -Italicum Polonorum, or the Intellectual and Cultural Links between Poland and Italy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1999) this article examines the influence of Rome - in its role as the Holy See and a centre of learning and the arts - on Poland’s culture in the 15th and 16th century as well as on the activities of Polish churchmen, scholars and writers who came to the Eternal City. The aim of the article is to trace the role of the emerging Humanist themes and attitudes on the shape of the cultural exchange in question. It appears that the Roman connection was a major factor in the history of Polish Humanism - its inner development, its transformations, and the ideological and artistic choices made by the successive generations of the Polish elite. In the 15th century the Roman inspirations helped to initiate the Humanist impulse in Poland, while in the 16th century they stimulated greater diversity and a search for one’s own way of development. In the post-Tridentine epoch they became a potent element of the Poland’s new cultural formation. Against the background of these generalizations, the article presents the cultural profiles of four poets, Mikołaj of Hussów, Klemens Janicjusz, Jan Kochanowski, and Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński. They symbolize the four phases of the Polish Humanist tradition, which draw their distinctive identities from looking up to the Roman model


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 447-472
Author(s):  
Kay Anderson ◽  
Colin Perrin

Abstract In the context of current concerns within the environmental humanities to challenge the idea that humans are somehow irreducible to nature, this article takes up the much-neglected history of the idea of human exceptionality itself. According to now familiar accounts, metaphysical assumptions about the unique status of the human are considered to have persisted—including to the present day—despite evolutionary contentions that the human should be understood as a purely physical being. Such, largely Christian and Cartesian, metaphysical notions of a human soul or mind doubtlessly endure. But in this article we consider the—largely ignored, yet now arguably more prevalent—idea that humans are exceptional because of their physicality. Here, then, we outline the emergence of the scientific claim that a uniquely human condition of nature transcendence is owed not to some immaterial quality of mind or soul, but rather to the distinctiveness of human anatomy. It was, we will argue, the body—and, above all, the head—which provided the basis of a modern attempt to establish that humans were creatures of a categorically different order from all other animals. More precisely, it was as human cultural differences were correlated with variations in the size and shape of the head that the human body, in its upright stature, came to provide an explicitly materialist—and, as we shall see, potently ethnocentric—foundation for the claim that human beings are exceptional. The modern idea of human exceptionality is thus shown to be based in large part on a scientifically dubious, and culturally specific, argument about the nature-transcendent quality of beings that walk upright. This is a particular form of humanist discourse that often forgets its own contingencies and instabilities, as well as its comprehensively violent inheritances.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2 (66)) ◽  
pp. 230-235
Author(s):  
T. V. Khmara ◽  
B. H. Makar

The paper deals with the history of the development of the anatomical museum of the Department of Human Anatomy named after M.H. Turkevych of Bukovinian State Medical University since the time of the foundation to our days. It has been shown that the development of the anatomical museum is inseparably connected with the organization of the material-technical base of the Department of Human Anatomy and the growth of the scientific potential of the Department staff. The value of the anatomical museum has been corroborated in training future professional doctors and researchers brought up on the best traditions and examples of the history of the Department of Human Anatomy named after  M.H. Turkevych and scientific-methodological achievements of its scientific associates.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 312-321
Author(s):  
DJ Jordan ◽  
M Griffin ◽  
B Phillips ◽  
S Hindocha ◽  
A Elgawad

Anatomy has long been a topic of interest amongst both those in medicine and those not. The understanding of biology, in terms of the function and structure of the organs and other structures of the body, has dramatically changed over time, and has been closely related to both scientific improvement and religious feeling.There is no doubt that gross anatomy is one of the preclinical cornerstones of medical education, but the way in which it has been taught has changed over the years. As early as the 16thcentury, Vesalius stated that anatomy could only be taught by dissection, however, alternative options for cadaveric study are certainly more available now than when this statement was made.Current teaching methods incorporate the tried and tested cadaveric based dissection, but has more recently been super ceded by the use of computer based imaging and the change to self-orientated or problem based learning. The shift towards the latter has led to a perceived suffering to the gain of anatomical and pathological knowledge of new doctors and surgeons.This paper aims to describe the history of anatomy teaching and review the current evidence for and against the current methods used for its deliverance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Author(s):  
Kira L Robison

Abstract The anatomical textbook in the late Middle Ages was one part of a greater pedagogical process that involved students’ seeing, hearing, reading, and eventually knowing information about the human body. By examining the role of the anatomical textbook and accompanying bodily images in anatomical learning, this article illuminates the complexity and self-consciousness of anatomical education in the medieval university, as professors focused on ways to enhance student memory of the material. Traditionally, the history of anatomy has been heavily influenced by the anatomical Renaissance of the late-sixteenth century, highlighting a focus on innovative medical knowledge and the scientific method. However, if we engage a pedagogical lens when looking at these medieval authors, it becomes quickly obvious that the whole point of university medicine was not to explore unknown boundaries and discover new ideas of medicine, but rather to communicate the current and established body of knowledge to those not familiar with it.


2021 ◽  
pp. 7-46
Author(s):  
Nathan Denton

Like the vast numbers of other organisms that roam, or have roamed, the earth, the modern human represents a finely honed tool—one forged through millennia as it struggled to survive and thrive in more or less unaccommodating environments. Displaying the battle scars and winning strategies of its brutal, but ultimately triumphant battle against the elements, our bodies hold vast amounts of encrypted information that describe our biological lineage. In addition to the countless mechanisms that have evolved to support our existence, however, the human body is somewhat unique in that it exhibits striking permanent physiological differences that identify and define the sexes. The biology that arises from, and the social meanings attributed to, these physical features penetrate deep into the heart of what it means to be human, as well as a man or a woman. Before delving into the biology of fat, we must first therefore consider the history of body shape. This chapter begins by discussing several explanations for why the modern human body might have evolved the shape it has, and why the body differs between the sexes. Building from this foundation, it examines how societal attitudes toward body shape are ascribed and their shift over time.


1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne A. Rebhorn

Abstract: Historically, the Renaissance marks a transformation in wfiich the elite classes come to define themselves by their aesthetic refinement, taste, and good manners. Accompanying this change is a special vision of the human body which is distinguished from that of artisans and peasants. This opposition has been described by Bakhtin as one between the classical body and the grotesque one, and it appears in the most unportant book for the Renaissance redefinition of the upper classes, Castiglione's II libro del cortegiano. Castiglione's view of the body actually derives from the rhetorical tradition of antiquity, in particular from Quintilian and Cicero's De oratore. A similar view appears in the works of Renaissance rhetoricians and can usefully be illustrated by analysis of Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), although the latter also retains a vision of the grotesque body as a result of the ambiguous social position of its author.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document