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Out on the Limb: The Place of Medicine in Descartes' Philosophy

Gideon Manning

Early Science and Medicine 12 (2):214-222 (2007)

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Francis Bacon y René Descartes Acerca Del Dominio de la Naturaleza, la Autoconservación y la Medicina.Silvia Manzo - 2022 - Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 63 (151):99-119.details ABSTRACT Francis Bacon and René Descartes have traditionally been presented as leaders of opposed philosophical currents. However, more and more studies show important continuities between their philosophies. This article explores one of them: their perspectives on medicine. The dominion over nature and the instinct for self-preservation are the central elements of the theoretical framework within which they inserted their assessments of medicine. Medicine is valued as the most outstanding discipline for its benefits for the care of the human being. Departing (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
Descartes and the Dissolution of Life.Barnaby R. Hutchins - 2016 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (2):155-173.details I argue that Descartes is not a reductionist about life, but dissolves or eliminates the category entirely. This is surprising both because he repeatedly refers to the life of humans, animals, and plants and because he appears to rely on the category of life to construct his physiology and medicine. Various attempts have been made in the scholarship to attribute a principled concept of life to Descartes. Most recently, Detlefsen has argued that Descartes “is a reductionist with respect to explanation (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 8 citations
Does Descartes Have a Principle of Life? Hierarchy and Interdependence in Descartes’s Physiology.Barnaby R. Hutchins - 2016 - Perspectives on Science 24 (6):744-769.details At various points in his work on physiology and medicine, Descartes refers to a “principle of life.” The exact term changes—sometimes, it is the “principle of movement and life”, sometimes the “principle underlying all [the] functions” of the body —but the message seems consistent: the phenomena of living bodies are the product of a single, underlying principle. That principle is generally taken to be cardiac heat.1 The literature has, quite reasonably, taken this message at face value. Thus, Shapiro: “Descartes insists (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 2 citations
Obscurity and confusion: Nonreductionism in Descartes's biology and philosophy.Barnaby Hutchins - 2016 - Dissertation, Ghent Universitydetails Descartes is usually taken to be a strict reductionist, and he frequently describes his work in reductionist terms. This dissertation, however, makes the case that he is a nonreductionist in certain areas of his philosophy and natural philosophy. This might seem like simple inconsistency, or a mismatch between Descartes's ambitions and his achievements. I argue that here it is more than that: nonreductionism is compatible with his wider commitments, and allowing for irreducibles increases the explanatory power of his system. Moreover, (...) Download Export citation Bookmark

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