Being Alive in Descartes' Physiology: Animals and Plants, the Immutatio and the Impetus

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-94
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Baldassarri
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Third ◽  
Organic Systems ◽  
Mechanical Explanation ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Medical Note

In René Descartes' works there are four major references to living bodies as objects of his natural philosophy. The first is contained in the Fifth part of the Discours de la Méthode, published in June 1637, where Descartes provides a mechanical explanation of the heartbeat and other living functions of the body. The second is in a bio-medical note collected in the Excerpta anatomica dated November 1637, where he discusses nutrition and growth. The third is the famous claim on the absence of a section on living bodies in the Principia philosophiae, published in 1644. The fourth is in La Description du corps humain, Descartes' late physiology likely dated 1647-1648. In this article, by exploring these passages and contextualizing his physiological observations of animals and plants, I reassemble Descartes' science of life: his dismissal of soul, his mechanical framework, his interpretation of bodily self-maintenance and growth, his understanding of living bodies as integrated and organic systems, and the role of a power such as the immutatio and forces such as the impetus.

scholarly journals O PAPEL DO CORPO EM DUAS CONCEPÇÕES DE SUJEITO: O COGITO CARTESIANO E O EXPERIENCIALISMO / The role of the body in two conceptions of subject: the cartesian cogito and the experientialism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrícia Oliveira de Freitas
Keyword(s):  
Rene Descartes ◽  
The Body ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Cartesian Cogito

Este artigo de natureza qualitativa tem como objetivo delinear a concepção de sujeito proposta pela Linguística Cognitiva, tendo em vista que a noção de subjetividade, para o constructo teórico em questão, nem sempre é explícita. Para levar a cabo tal empreitada, este estudo fundamenta-se no pressuposto de que, para se estudar a mente humana, não se deve excluir o corpo do processo analítico (LAKOFF; JOHNSON, 1980; LAKOFF, 1987; JOHNSON, 1987). Assim sendo, acredita-se que a inserção da encarnação física humana no quadro teórico da razão, isto é, a teorização da promoção do corpo ao mesmo patamar ocupado pela mente, sem a possibilidade de dissociação entre eles, seja o fator crucial para se alcançar uma definição possível do que se trata o sujeito para a Linguística Cognitiva. Com o intuito de suscitar tal discussão, resgatam-se, inicialmente, as questões relacionadas ao sujeito engendrado no século XVII, influenciado por René Descartes com a intuição intelectual do cogito, no advento da Filosofia Moderna: o sujeito gerido pela substancialidade, universalidade e consciência. Como contraponto ao sujeito cartesiano, discute-se o paradigma filosófico da Hipótese da Corporificação, tornando possível o debate sobre o inconsciente cognitivo, a mente corporificada e o pensamento metafórico. Desse modo, pretende-se lançar mão do conceito de consciência, bem como os dualismos sobre mente/corpo, interioridade/exterioridade, racionalismo/empirismo e universalismo/relativismo.

The Role of the ‘Walking Legs’ in Aquatic and Terrestrial Locomotion of the Crayfish Austropotamobius Pallipes (Lereboullet)

1975 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 447-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE M. POND
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Hydrodynamic Drag ◽  
Terrestrial Locomotion ◽  
Austropotamobius Pallipes ◽  
The Third ◽  
Fourth Pair

1. The hydrodynamic drag acting on the crayfish Austropotamobius pallipes is measured and it is concluded that, in the range of velocities used in walking, the drag is independent of the posture of the limbs and the direction of motion of the body. At swimming velocities the streamlining caused by promotion of the legs reduces the drag losses to half that of a crayfish moving in the forwards walking posture at the same speed. 2. The forwards walking of intact crayfish is compared with that of the same animal after amputation of one or more pairs of legs. It is concluded that the third and fourth pair of legs provide most of the propulsion under water and the second pair is not essential to locomotion under any of the conditions tried.

Redefining the Role of Experiment in Bacon's Natural History: How Baconian was Descartes before Emerging from His Cocoon?

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 158-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mădălina Giurgea ◽  
Laura Georgescu
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

AbstractIn this article we argue that the views that Francis Bacon and René Descartes held about the role of experiments in the process of discovery are closer than previously accepted. Looking at the way experiments and the heuristics of experimentation are embedded in Bacon's posthumous History of Dense and Rare and Descartes' Discourses 8, 9, 10 of the Meteorology, we will show that experiments help the investigator both in solving specific problems that could not have otherwise been foreseen and in generating relevant information that advances the scope of the investigation.

scholarly journals EPISTEMOLOGI RASIONALISME RENE DESCARTES DAN RELEVANSINYA TERHADAP PENDIDIKAN ISLAM

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cahaya Khaeroni
Keyword(s):  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Islamic Education ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
René Descartes

This paper discusses the thoughts of Rene Descartes and the relevance towardsIslamic education. The great thesis of Rene Descartes is cogito ergo sum (I think,therefore I exist), has spawned a revolution of thought in philosophy. Descartesemphatically proclaimed that only reason or ratio alone can be the basis that canbe trusted, and not faith or revelation as always restrained in mid-century. Withthe method of doubt, Descartes treading philosophical thought to doubt everythingin order to achieve an ultimate certainty he always longed for. Despite eventuallyhe realized that nothing is true, except uncertainty itself. In the area of education(especially Islamic education), Descartes certainly gave a new foundation for thestudy and communication of doctrine not only as a process doctrine, but giving alarger portion to the role of reason itself.Key words: Epistemology, Rasionalism, Islamic education

Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and Newton

2019 ◽  
pp. 803-815
Author(s):  
Andrew Janiak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Space Time ◽  
First Line ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Time And Motion ◽  
René Descartes

Isaac Newton had a vexed relationship with his most important immediate predecessor in mathematics and philosophy, René Descartes. He was typically loath to admit the importance of Cartesian ideas for the development of his own thinking in mathematics and natural philosophy. For this reason, generations of students and scholars relying on Newton’s published work had little inkling of Descartes’s significance. This unfortunate fact was compounded by the tendency of philosophers to focus on the Meditations or the Regulae in their scholarship, for it was Descartes’s Principles above all that influenced Newton’s thinking as a young man. With the discovery of a previously unpublished manuscript amongst Newton’s papers by two famous historians of science in the middle of the twentieth century, everything changed. The manuscript, now known as De Gravitatione after its first line, illustrates the astonishing care with which Newton read the Principles, focusing his critical acumen on Descartes’s understanding of space, time, and motion. These criticisms of Descartes, in turn, shine light on otherwise opaque passages in Newton’s most significant published discussion of space, time, and motion, the Scholium in Principia mathematica. Indeed, the very title of the latter work represents both an homage to, and a swipe at, Descartes’s work: Newton would offer mathematical principles of natural philosophy to replace Descartes’s qualitative account. It is not a stretch to say that Newton saw further because he stood on Descartes’s shoulders, even if he wouldn’t admit it publicly.

The Body of Light in Renaissance England

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-62
Author(s):  
Simon Cox
Keyword(s):  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Body ◽  
Subtle Body ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Renaissance England ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Body Concept ◽  
New Form ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

This chapter engages with the first Anglophone attestations of the term “subtle body.” It appears first in the contentious correspondence between Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes between whom there was some disagreement over who plagiarized the idea from whom. Most of the chapter is taken up with the Cambridge Platonists who came in their wake, who formulated complex philosophical and mythological views of the Neoplatonic vehicles of the soul, now under the English name “subtle body.” It ends with Lady Anne Conway, who fuses the Platonism of the Cambridge group with Kabbalah to create a new form of spiritual monism. This chapter is significantly about how the subtle body concept was employed by Renaissance Platonists arguing against the reductive materialism of Cartesian mechanical philosophy.

scholarly journals “Encores me frissonne et tremble le coeur dedans sa capsule”: Rabelais’s Anatomy of Emotion and the Soul

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-58
Author(s):  
Emmanuelle Lacore-Martin
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Animal Spirits ◽  
Philosophie Naturelle ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

This article examines the role of anatomical references in the representation of emotion and argues that they constitute textual markers of the Rabelaisian view of the relationship between the body and the soul, and the nature of the soul itself. By analyzing the ancient models of natural philosophy and medicine on which Rabelais draws—Galen, in particular—and by contextualizing Rabelais’s thinking within contemporary debates on the faculties of the soul, the article aims to shed light on his representation of the intersection between material and immaterial processes within the human body. Instead of trying to reconcile potentially contradictory aspects of these ancient models with the Christian faith, Rabelais’s prose is informed by an intuitive understanding of ancient philosophy. His exploitation of the Galenic concept of the animal spirits gives us invaluable insights into the influence of materialist representations of the soul on Rabelais’s thinking. Cet article étudie le rôle des références anatomiques dans la représentation rabelaisienne de l’émotion et propose d’y voir les marqueurs textuels de la façon dont Rabelais conçoit les rapports entre l’âme et le corps, et la nature de l’âme elle-même. En analysant les modèles anciens de la philosophie naturelle et de la médecine — Galien en particulier — dont Rabelais s’inspire et en situant sa pensée dans le contexte des débats contemporains sur les facultés de l’âme, l’article vise à éclairer la façon dont Rabelais représente l’intersection à l’intérieur du corps humain des processus matériels et immatériels. Sans chercher à réconcilier avec la foi chrétienne certains aspects de ces anciens modèles qui peuvent être en contradiction avec elle, la prose rabelaisienne porte la marque d’une compréhension intuitive de la philosophie ancienne. En particulier, l’exploitation de la conception galénique des esprits animaux donne de précieux aperçus concernant l’influence des représentations matérialistes de l’âme sur la pensée de Rabelais.

scholarly journals Modern ideas about the psyche: changing of the paradigm

2020 ◽  
Vol LII (1) ◽  
pp. 72-81
Author(s):  
Mikhail М. Reshetnikov
Keyword(s):  
Rene Descartes ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Biological Interface ◽  
Material Theory ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Human Psyche ◽  
The Brain

The problem of the psyche and consciousness has been the most mysterious one for a few thousand years and is still unresolved. It has been almost forgotten that Aristotle considered human psyche a structure that is not bound to the body. This idea did not persist, though. It was Hippocrates who ruined it and declared a different concept, which prevailed for many centuries, that the brain is a repository of all mental processes. Even such a genius as Rene Descartes took Hippocratess idea for granted and spent many months in attempts to find memory and emotions in gyrus and ventricles of the brain. This path the search of material structures of the psyche was followed by I.M. Sechenov, I.P. Pavlov and many others. Later, many other mistaken ideas were born, declared new and revolutionary ones and died prematurely. However, not only ideas died, but also patients, who were treated by methods developed on the basis of these hypotheses. The author formulates the idea of the brain as the biological interface and proves a non-material theory of the psyche, which is a discovery that requires a change in basic paradigms of human sciences.

scholarly journals ENSAIO PARA O ACIDENTAL: A LOUCURA E A QUEDA EM RANCIÈRE, BAS JAN ADER E DOM QUIXOTE / Essay for the accidental: loucura and fall in Rancière, Bas Jan Ader and Dom Quixote

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (41) ◽  
pp. 233-250
Author(s):  
Daniela Cunha Blanco
Keyword(s):  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Causal Chain ◽  
Don Quixote ◽  
The Body ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
The Status ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Contemporary Artist ◽  
Modes Of Thought

A partir de duas figuras que marcam a modernidade – René Descartes e dom Quixote – pensamos como configuram modos de pensamento diversos e opostos. Entre o método que busca o encadeamento causal das coisas e a errância do corpo entregue às aventuras da imaginação, o filósofo e o cavaleiro instauram um embate que não é aquele entre a razão e o sensível, mas sim, entre dois modos da razão. Nosso intuito é pensar, especialmente a partir de Jacques Rancière, como o cavaleiro errante teria aberto um novo campo da experiência sensível que denominamos acidental, cujo gesto é a recusa da lógica do encadeamento causal cartesiano. Damos a ver, ainda, o modo como o gesto inaugurado por dom Quixote será reverberado nos gestos do artista contemporâneo Bas Jan Ader, com seu empenho em buscar a queda tal qual dom Quixote buscara a loucura. O que surgiria com a recusa da causalidade no cavaleiro e no artista, em nossa hipótese, é uma mudança de estatuto da própria noção de acidente ou acidental que, deixando de ser considerado erro a ser evitado, passará a ser experienciado como a única possibilidade para um mundo pautado na contingência da vida.Palavras-chave: Heterogêneo sensível; Experiência acidental; Jacques Rancière; Errância; Modos de pensamento. AbstractBased on two figures that marks the modernity − René Descartes and Don Quixote − we think about how they configure different and opposite modes of thought. Between the method that seeks the causal chain of things and the wandering of the body given over to the adventures of the imagination, the philosopher and the knight establish a clash that is not that between reason and sensible, but between two modes of reason. We think, especialy from Jacques Rancière, how the errant knight would have opened up a new field of the sensible experience that we call accidental, whose gesture is the refusal of the logic of the Cartesian causal chain. We also show how the gesture inaugurated by Don Quixote will be reflected in the gestures of the contemporary artist Bas Jan Ader, with his efforts to seek the fall just as Don Quixote sought madness. What would arise with the refusal of causality in the rider and in the artist, in our hypothesis, is a change in the status of the very notion of accident or accidental that, no longer being considered as an error to be avoided, will now be experienced as the only possibility for a world based on the contingency of life.Keywords: Heterogeneous sensible; Accidental experience; Jacques Rancière; Wandering; Forms of thinking.

scholarly journals Zasady ogólne dotyczące praktyk pokutnych na podstawie Libri poenitentiales

Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 225-240
Author(s):  
Michał Kieling
Keyword(s):  
Internal Conversion ◽  
Spiritual Health ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Third ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Spiritual Therapy

The article discusses the most important premises which deal with Christian penance from the VI to the XI century. The main sources for the above article are the Penitential Books (Libri Poenitentiales), published as part of the series of Źródła Myśli Teologicznej (ŻMT 58), collected and edited by A. Baron and H. Pietras in 2011. The article consists of three parts. The first part examines the meaning of penance in the life of Christians as a medicine for sin which is an illness of the soul and the body. The second part presents the teaching of peniten­tials on the twelve ways of absolving from sins. The third part provides practical suggestions for confessors and penitents. The Penitential Books, as a witness to the development of penitential practices, confirm the role of individual spiritual therapy in the life of the Christian. This process of regaining of one’s spiritual health takes place, on one hand, through the grace of God’s Mercy, and, on the other hand, through penitential practices whose aim was internal conversion and outward change in one’s way of life.

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