Ekholm, Karin Jori (Author)
The generation of animals and humans posed some of the most intractable challenges to mid-seventeenth-century efforts to supplant Aristotelian and Galenic natural philosophy and anatomy. Two major projects of the period--eliminating vital principles and investigating the functions of anatomical parts through vivisection--met with significant problems when anatomists tackled conception and fetal formation. I examine these struggles by focusing on the work of two English physicians, William Harvey and Nathaniel Highmore, who experimented together but published surprisingly different theories of generation. Robert Boyle cites the incongruities between their accounts as an exemplary case of anatomists examining the same phenomena, yet arriving at different conclusions. Their disparate explanations pose major philosophical problems that I explore in their cultural and intellectual contexts. I identify and analyze reasons why Harvey and Highmore provide strikingly different accounts despite their use of largely the same methods. They had fundamentally different views on the nature of principles responsible for organizing and maintaining living bodies. Harvey clung to an Aristotelian conception of vital forces and denied that the substructure of matter could shed light on living processes. At the same time, he disagreed with Aristotle at every step of the generative process. Highmore rejected traditional faculties of souls and appeals to atoms and alchemical procedures to explain life processes. Highmore's work is intriguing because it shows difficulties involved both in abandoning Aristotelianism and provides a contemporary critique of attempts to eliminate immaterial forces. Their methods and techniques demonstrate a broad range of problems unique to studying living beings, and they greatly enrich our understanding of early modern experimentation. Their investigations discern patterns amidst variations in the structure and actions of plants and animals. Challenges inherent in observing nascent living beings led Harvey and Highmore to rely heavily on analogies and anomalies from which they deduced very different conclusions. Their accounts thus reveal how generation served as a crucial site in negotiations of central metaphysical and epistemological problems of the mid-seventeenth century.
...MoreDescription Focuses on the work of two English physicians, William Harvey and Nathaniel Highmore. Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. . ProQuest Doc. ID 915229151.
Article
Roberto Lo Presti;
(2014)
Wissenschaftliche Revolution und Embryologie: Ablehnung oder Transformation der Antike? Ein Vergleich zwischen den Zeugungslehren Cesare Cremoninis, William Harveys und René Descartes
(/isis/citation/CBB324939224/)
Article
Keller, Eve;
(2000)
Embryonic Individuals: The rhetoric of seventeenth-century embryology and the construction of early-modern identity
(/isis/citation/CBB000110287/)
Article
Ekholm, Karin J.;
(2008)
Harvey's and Highmore's Accounts of Chick Generation
(/isis/citation/CBB000850590/)
Chapter
Bäumer, Änne;
(1989)
Christian Aristoteliansim and atomism in embryology (William Harvey, Kenelm Digby, Nathaniel Highmore)
(/isis/citation/CBB000055429/)
Article
Benjamin Goldberg;
(2017)
Epigenesis and the Rationality of Nature in William Harvey and Margaret Cavendish
(/isis/citation/CBB373320588/)
Thesis
Goldberg, Benjamin Isaac;
(2012)
William Harvey, Soul Searcher: Telelogy and Philosophical Anatomy
(/isis/citation/CBB001567394/)
Book
Andrew Cunningham;
(2022)
'I Follow Aristotle': How William Harvey Discovered the Circulation of the Blood
(/isis/citation/CBB254990423/)
Article
Bäumer, Änne;
(1987)
Zum Verhältnis von Religion und Zoologie im 17. Jahrhundert (William Harvey, Nathaniel Highmore, Jan Swammerdam)
(/isis/citation/CBB000062379/)
Chapter
Kassler, Jamie Croy;
(2001)
The Ovum As Initial Datum: Harvey, Starting Points and Creativity
(/isis/citation/CBB000330026/)
Article
Smith, C. U. M.;
(2013)
Cardiocentric Neurophysiology: The Persistence of a Delusion
(/isis/citation/CBB001211264/)
Article
Presti, Roberto Lo;
(2014)
The Theory of the Circulation of Blood and (Different) Paths of Aristotelianism. Girolamo Franzosi's De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus pro Aristotele et Galeno adversus anatomicos neotericos libri duo: Teleology versus Mechanism?
(/isis/citation/CBB001451907/)
Thesis
Distelzweig, Peter M.;
(2013)
Descartes's Teleomechanics in Medical Context: Approaches to Integrating Mechanics and Teleology in Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, William Harvey, and Rene Descartes
(/isis/citation/CBB001567537/)
Article
Xiaona Wang;
(2019)
By Analogy to the Element of the Stars: The Divine in Jean Fernel's and William Harvey's Theories of Generation
(/isis/citation/CBB848009397/)
Article
Lo Presti, Roberto;
(2014)
Informing Matter and Enmattered Forms: Aristotle and Galen on the “Power” of the Seed
(/isis/citation/CBB001202231/)
Book
Smith, Justin E. H.;
(2006)
The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB000741550/)
Article
Gregory, Andrew;
(2014)
William Harvey, Aristotle and Astrology
(/isis/citation/CBB001214220/)
Article
Hirai, Hiro;
(2007)
Atomes vivants, origine de l'âme et génération spontanée chez Daniel Sennert
(/isis/citation/CBB001031731/)
Chapter
Lennox, James G.;
(2006)
The Comparative Study of Animal Development: William Harvey's Aristotelianism
(/isis/citation/CBB000771970/)
Chapter
Brockliss, Laurence;
(2002)
Harvey, Torricelli and the Institutionalization of New Ideas in 17th-Century France
(/isis/citation/CBB000320059/)
Article
Li Qi Peh;
(2022)
Dispassionate Dissections and Their Emotional Rewards: Reading William Harvey and Richard Blackmore
(/isis/citation/CBB653669882/)
Be the first to comment!