Article ID: CBB001211264

Cardiocentric Neurophysiology: The Persistence of a Delusion (2013)

unapi

Aristotle is well known to have taught that the brain was a mere coolant apparatus for overheated blood and to have located the hegemonikon in the heart. This teaching was hotly disputed by his immediate successors in the Alexandrian Museum, who showed that the brain played the central role in psychophysiology. This was accepted and developed by the last great biomedical figure of classical antiquity --- Claudius Galen. However, Aristotle's cardiocentric theory did not entirely disappear and this article traces its influence through the Arabic physicians of the Islamic ascendancy, into the European Middle Ages where Albertus Magnus' attempt to reconcile cardiocentric and cerebrocentric physiology was particularly influential. It shows how cardiocentricity was sufficiently accepted to attract the attention of, and require refutation by, many of the great names of the Renaissance, including Vesalius, Fernel, and Descartes, and was still taken seriously by luminaries such as William Harvey in the mid-seventeenth century. The article, in rehearsing this history, shows the difficulty of separating the first-person perspective of introspective psychology and the third-person perspective of natural science. It also outlines an interesting case of conflict between philosophy and physiology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Authors & Contributors
Hyun Sok Chung
Wang, Xiaona
Viniegra, Marco Antonio
Goldberg, Benjamin Isaac
Giglioni, Guido
Zittel, Claus
Concepts
Aristotelianism
Philosophy
Transmission of ideas
Medicine
Arab/Islamic world, civilization and culture
Medicine, general histories
Time Periods
Medieval
Early modern
Ancient
17th century
Renaissance
Modern
Places
Europe
Mediterranean region
Florence (Italy)
Italy
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