There is an interesting historical detour in the dissemination of one of the seventeenth century’s most praised discoveries: the reception of Harvey’s account of the circulation of the blood is closely intertwined, especially in the Low Countries, with Descartes’ account of the origin of the heartbeat. Descartes was one of the first figures to support the circulation of the blood and to give credit to Harvey for it, although he presumably arrived at the same conclusion independently through his own anatomical (...) experiments. He did so while vocally rejecting Harvey’s views on the muscular nature of the heart and his explanation of cardiac motion, to promote his own mechanistic solutions instead. Although Descartes’ .. (shrink)

This paper presents Duns Scotus’s theory of mixture in the context of medieval discussions over Aristotle’s theory of mixed bodies. It revisits the accounts of mixture given by Avicenna, Averroes, and Thomas Aquinas, before presenting Scotus’s account as a reaction to Averroes. It argues that Duns Scotus rejected the Aristotelian theory of mixture altogether and that his account went contrary to the entire Latin tradition. Scotus denies that mixts arise out of the four classical elements and he maintains that both (...) the elemental forms and the elemental qualities are lost in the mixture. Consequently, he denies the distinction between the process of mixture and that of substantial change through generation and corruption. The reassessment of Scotus’s account modifies the current historical representation of this discussion, inherited from Anneliese Maier. (shrink)

A few months before his death, Leibniz wrote to Des Bosses, My doctrine of composite substance seems to be the very doctrine of the Peripatetic school, except that their doctrine does not recognize monads. But I add them, with no detriment to the doctrine itself. You will hardly find another difference, even if you are bent on doing so.1 It is tempting to take Leibniz’s profession of Aristotelian orthodoxy as circumstantial: the entire correspondence he had with the Jesuit Father Bartholomew (...) Des Bosses is based on a project of reconciliation between his “system” and the dogmas of the Catholic Church, mediated by Aristotelian philosophy.2 But even so, this circumstantial... (shrink)

This paper investigates Péter Pázmány’s theory of mixtures from his exegesis of Meteorologica IV, in the context of sixteenth-century scholarship on Aristotle’s Meteorologica. It aims to contribute to a discussion of Anneliese Maier’s thesis concerning the incompatibility between hylomorphism and the theory of elements in the Aristotelian tradition. It presents two problems: the placement of Meteorologica IV in the Jesuit cursus on physics and the conceptualization of putrefaction as a type of substantial mutation. Through an analysis of these issues, it (...) shows how sixteenth-century exegesis imposes the hylomorphic thesis onto the subject matter of meteorology and how the hylomorphic theory of substantial change can be adapted in order to accommodate the theory of elements. The case being made is that Meteorologica is a privileged place where hylomorphism and the theory of elements meet and that the late Aristotelian theory of mixtures sought to accommodate both theories of material substance. (shrink)

This essay presents Descartes’s anti-hylomorphism in The Meteors published in 1637 and in the unpublished works that precede it, The World (Treatise on Light) and the Rules for the Direction of the Mind.

Special issue of the Journal for Early Modern Studies (4.1., Spring 2005) Guest Editor: Lucian Petrescu. -/- .