Defining experiment was particularly vexed in the realm of anatomical dissection and vivisection. Was dissection merely descriptive, or something more? Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood and Aselli's discovery of the so-called lacteal veins shaped much anatomical research between the late 1620s and the 1650s. While the techniques of dissection and vivisection gained wide use, there was much debate on the validity of the circulation in particular, and its relationship to the lacteal veins. Critics, particularly the French anatomist (...) Jean Riolan, but also the natural philosopher Pierre Gassendi, focused on the lack of causation in Harvey's method and the lack of medical use and not on his use of vivisection. Jean Pecquet's discovery of the thoracic duct in 1651 changed the terms of the debate by definitively connecting the circulation with the lacteals. Riolan's critiques of Pecquet in the 1650s show profoundly differing notions of the purpose of dissection. While Gassendi eventually accepted Harvey's concept of the circulation, Riolan never did. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to explore the meaning of experience in William Harvey’s natural philosophy. I begin with Cunningham’s argument that, for Harvey, anatomy was an experience-based science of final causes. But how could one experience final causes? I answer this by first articulating Harvey’s conception of anatomy, before turning to his understanding of experience.What did anatomia mean in the early seventeenth century? Consulting dictionaries, the texts of anatomists, and following Cunningham, we can assert that anatomists conceived of (...) their work as both a manual art and a rational science.1 Medicine had long proved problematic, failing to fit into disciplinary.. (shrink)

The articles in the special issue "Experience in natural philosophy and medicine" discuss the roles and notions of experience in the works of a range of early modern authors, including Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, the Dutch atomist David Gorlaeus, William Harvey, and Christian Wolff. The articles extend the evidential basis on which we can rely to identify trends, changes and continuities in the roles and notions of experience in the period of the Scientific Revolution. They shed light on the longstanding (...) influence of traditional views and the emergence of early modern experimental philosophy. This introduction highlights the benefits of considering medicine in connection with natural philosophy when studying early modern views on experience and summarizes the articles. (shrink)

In this paper, we show how the discovery of the circulation of the blood by William Harvey sheds new light on traditional models of creativity in science. In particular, the example illustrates where both the enlightenment and the romantic view on creativity go astray. In the first section, we sketch the two views and present a list of problems for both. In the remainder of the paper, we demonstrate how William Harvey’s discovery, as a historical case study of creativity in (...) science, gives firmer ground to these objections. (shrink)

Following the exploration of the disciplinary identity of physiology before 1800 in the previous paper of this pair, the present paper seeks to recover the complementary identity of the discipline of anatomy before 1800. The manual, artisanal character of anatomy is explored via some of its practitioners, with special attention being given to William Harvey and Albrecht von Haller. Attention is particularly drawn to the important role of experiment in anatomical research and practice-which has been misread by historians as physiological (...) experiment. Although scientific status was claimed by some practitioners for the discipline, the knife remained the tool of the discipline. Finally the differences between the teleological assumptions underlying anatomy, and the 'argument from design' or natural theology are explored. (shrink)

Throughout the sixteenth century, learned physicians across Europe performed a diverse array of “trials” of phenomena and published reports about them. This essay traces the phrase “periculum facere” (“to make a trial”) and related terms through natural history investigations, drug testing, chymical analysis, and anatomical discoveries. Physicians used ancient precedents, their learned expertise, and pedagogical authority to anchor the epistemic status of their trials and incorporated the historical narratives of their trial-making within arguments to factual and causal knowledge, even philosophical (...) scientia. Developed from engagement with things, ancient texts, other healers, and students, this lively tradition of contrived, first-person empirical trials flourished in some academic institutions, especially the University of Padua. The frequency and visibility of sixteenth-century medical trials, especially in the education of hundreds of students annually, is essential evidence for understanding how experimentation came to be widespread in early modern Europe. (shrink)

William Harvey's famous quantitative argument fromDe motu cordis about the circulation of blood explained how a small amount of blood could recirculate and nourish the entire body, upending the Galenic conception of the blood's motion. This paper argues that the quantitative argument drew on the calculative and rhetorical skills of merchants, including Harvey's own brothers. Modern translations ofDe motu cordisobscure the language of accountancy that Harvey himself used. Like a merchant accounting for credits and debits, intake and output, goods and (...) moneys, Harvey treated venous and arterial blood as essentially commensurate, quantifiable and fungible. For Harvey, the circulation of blood was an arithmetical necessity. The development of Harvey's circulatory model followed shifts in the epistemic value of mercantile forms of knowledge, including accounting and arithmetic, also drawing on an Aristotelian language of reciprocity and balance that Harvey shared with mercantile advisers to the royal court. This paper places Harvey's calculations in a previously underappreciated context of economic crisis, whose debates focused largely on questions of circulation. (shrink)