History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences Peter Distelzweig Benjamin Goldberg Evan R. Ragland Editors Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences Volume 14 Editors Charles T. Wolfe, Ghent University, Belgium Philippe Huneman, IHPST (CNRS/Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), France Thomas A.C. Reydon, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany Editorial Board Marshall Abrams (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Andre Ariew (Missouri) Minus van Baalen (UPMC, Paris) Domenico Bertoloni Meli (Indiana) Richard Burian (Virginia Tech) Pietro Corsi (EHESS, Paris) François Duchesneau (Université de Montréal) John Dupré (Exeter) Paul Farber (Oregon State) Lisa Gannett (Saint Mary’s University, Halifax) Andy Gardner (Oxford) Paul Griffi ths (Sydney) Jean Gayon (IHPST, Paris) Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute, London) Thomas Heams (INRA, AgroParisTech, Paris) James Lennox (Pittsburgh) Annick Lesne (CNRS, UPMC, Paris) Tim Lewens (Cambridge) Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh) Alexandre Métraux (Archives Poincaré, Nancy) Hans Metz (Leiden) Roberta Millstein (Davis) Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter) Dominic Murphy (Sydney) François Munoz (Université Montpellier 2) Stuart Newman (New York Medical College) Frederik Nijhout (Duke) Samir Okasha (Bristol) Susan Oyama (CUNY) Kevin Padian (Berkeley) David Queller (Washington University, St Louis) Stéphane Schmitt (SPHERE, CNRS, Paris) Phillip Sloan (Notre Dame) Jacqueline Sullivan (Western University, London, ON) Giuseppe Testa (IFOM-IEA, Milano) J. Scott Turner (Syracuse) Denis Walsh (Toronto) Marcel Weber (Geneva) More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8916 Peter Distelzweig • Benjamin Goldberg Evan R. Ragland Editors Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy Editors Peter Distelzweig Benjamin Goldberg Department of Philosophy Department of Humanities University of St. Thomas and Cultural Studies St. Paul , MN , USA University of South Florida Tampa , FL , USA Evan R. Ragland Department of History University of Notre Dame Notre Dame , IN , USA ISSN 2211-1948 ISSN 2211-1956 (electronic) History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ISBN 978-94-017-7352-2 ISBN 978-94-017-7353-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7353-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955134 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Dordrecht is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Acknowledgments This volume grew out of the medicine, philosophy, and the ‘scientifi c revolution’ initiative funded in part by a Faculty Collaborative Research in the Humanities grant from the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh. The project aimed to cultivate collaborative work on the interactions between medicine and natural philosophy during the ‘scientifi c revolution’ across departments and institutions and included a number of workshops and reading groups at the University of Pittsburgh. This volume grows most immediately out of the initiative’s culminating conference on the theme hosted by the University of Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science in November 2012. We are grateful to the Center; to Professor John Norton, its director; and to Joyce McDonald and all the wonderful Center staff for their sup- port and help with the conference. We also thank the other conference cosponsors: the University of Pittsburgh’s Humanities Center, World History Center, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, along with the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. We thank all the conference presenters and dis- cussants for making it such a fruitful occasion to confi rm, explore, and articulate the importance of the medical context for early modern natural philosophy. It is our hope that this volume will be the same for its readers. We thank the series editors and staff at Springer for their support and patience in bringing it to completion. v Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Benjamin Goldberg , Evan R. Ragland , and Peter Distelzweig Part I Philosophy, Medicine and Method in the Renaissance 2 Lodovico Settala’s Aristotelian Problemata Commentary and Late-Renaissance Hippocratic Medicine ....................................... 19 Craig Martin 3 Renaissance Surgeons: Anatomy, Manual Skill and the Visual Arts .................................................................................. 43 Cynthia Klestinec 4 Why All This Jelly? Jacopo Zabarella and Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente on the Usefulness of the Vitreous Humor ............... 59 Tawrin Baker Part II Life and Mechanism 5 Machines of the Body in the Seventeenth Century .............................. 91 Domenico Bertoloni Meli 6 “Mechanics” and Mechanism in William Harvey’s Anatomy: Varieties and Limits .............................................. 117 Peter Distelzweig 7 Descartes on the Theory of Life and Methodology in the Life Sciences .................................................................................. 141 Karen Detlefsen 8 Mechanism, the Senses, and Reason: Franciscus Sylvius and Leiden Debates Over Anatomical Knowledge After Harvey and Descartes ............................................... 173 Evan R. Ragland vii viii Contents 9 Louis de la Forge and the Development of Cartesian Medical Philosophy ........................................................... 207 Patricia Easton and Melissa Gholamnejad Part III Matter and Life, Corpuscles and Chymistry 10 Transplantation and Corpuscular Identity in Paracelsian Vital Philosophy.............................................................. 229 Jole Shackelford 11 Mysteries of Living Corpuscles: Atomism and the Origin of Life in Sennert, Gassendi and Kircher ............................................. 255 Hiro Hirai 12 Mechanism and Chemical Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England: Boyle’s Investigation of Ferments and Fermentation ......... 271 Antonio Clericuzio 13 Boyle, Malpighi, and the Problem of Plastic Powers ........................... 295 Ashley J. Inglehart Part IV Medicalizing Philosophy? 14 Early Modern Medical Eudaimonism ................................................... 325 Justin E. H. Smith 1 5 Tres medici, duo athei? The Physician as Atheist and the Medicalization of the Soul ........................................................ 343 Charles T. Wolfe Index ................................................................................................................. 367 Contributors Tawrin Baker Department of History and Philosophy of Science , Indiana University , Bloomington , IN, USA Antonio Clericuzio Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Roma Tre University , Rome , Italy Karen Detlefsen Department of Philosophy , University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia , PA , USA Peter Distelzweig Department of Philosophy , University of St. Thomas , St. Paul , MN , USA Patricia Easton Department of Philosophy, Claremont Graduate University , Claremont , CA , USA Melissa Gholamnejad Department of Philosophy, Claremont Graduate University , Claremont , CA , USA Benjamin Goldberg Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies , University of South Florida , Tampa , FL , USA Hiro Hirai Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University , Nijmegen , Netherlands Ashley J. Inglehart Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University , Bloomington , IN , USA Cynthia Klestinec Department of English , Miami University of Ohio , Oxford , OH , USA Craig Martin History Department, Oakland University , Rochester , MI , USA ix x Contributors Domenico Bertoloni Meli Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, Indiana University, Bloomington , IN , USA Evan R. Ragland Department of History , University of Notre Dame , Notre Dame , IN , USA Jole Shackelford Program in the History of Medicine , University of Minnesota , Minneapolis , MN , USA Justin E. H. Smith Département Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences , Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 , Paris , France Charles T. Wolfe Ghent University , Ghent , Belgium Chapter 1 Introduction Benjamin Goldberg , Evan R. Ragland , and Peter Distelzweig There is no more fruitful occupation than to try to know oneself. And the benefi