The goal of this essay is to explore the meaning of experience in William Harvey’s work. I begin by expanding on Andrew Cunningham’s argument (2002, 2003) that for Harvey, anatomy was an experience-based science of final causes. Observation and reason are united through experience (experientia) for Harvey, that is, by the repeated exercise of these capacities. Thus through the training and use of these abilities, Harvey thinks he can learn the final causes of living things and their parts. Harvey thinks that anatomy is the skill (facultas) by which one is able to make justified inferences to these causes. Finally, such inferences are based on a large set of rationally organized anatomical observations (historia), not upon direct, singular observations alone.
...More
Thesis
Alex Benjamin Shillito;
(2019)
How the Heart Became Muscle: From René Descartes to Nicolas Steno
(/isis/citation/CBB933754293/)
Article
Distelzweig, Peter;
(2014)
“Meam de motu & usu cordis, & circuitu sanguinis sententiam”: Teleology in William Harvey's De motu cordis
(/isis/citation/CBB001451906/)
Book
Sarah Carvallo;
(2018)
L'Homme parfait: L'anthropologie médicale de Harvey, Riolan et Perrault
(/isis/citation/CBB399816677/)
Chapter
Fabio Zampieri;
(2021)
The University of Padua Medical School from the Origins to the Early Modern Time: A Historical Overview
(/isis/citation/CBB530598396/)
Article
Cunningham, Andrew;
(2003)
The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy before 1800. II: Old Anatomy---The Sword
(/isis/citation/CBB000300616/)
Chapter
Fabrizio Baldassarri;
(2023)
From the Analogy with Animals to the Anatomy of Plants in Medicine: The Physiology of Living Processes from Harvey to Malpighi
(/isis/citation/CBB896255641/)
Article
Alberto Vanzo;
(2015)
Introduction to Special Issue on Experience in Natural Philosophy and Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB898034340/)
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
Gabriele Marasco;
(2011)
Gerolamo Cardano: tradition classique et réalités nouvelles dans l'anatomie et dans la chirurgie à l'epoque de la Renaissance
(/isis/citation/CBB432415041/)
Article
Andreas Blank;
(2019)
Instrumental Causes and the Natural Origin of Souls in Antonio Ponce Santacruz's Theory of Animal Generation
(/isis/citation/CBB910133174/)
Article
Boris Demarest;
(2021)
Soul, Archeus, and Nature in van Helmont’s Medical Naturalism
(/isis/citation/CBB760138700/)
Book
Dario Generali;
(2008)
Antonio Vallisneri. La figura, il contesto, le immagini storiografiche
(/isis/citation/CBB623068781/)
Book
Maria Teresa Monti;
(2011)
La tradizione galileiana e lo sperimentalismo naturalistico d'età moderna
(/isis/citation/CBB803453847/)
Article
Regier, Jonathan;
(2014)
Kepler's Theory of Force and His Medical Sources
(/isis/citation/CBB001214306/)
Article
Doina-Cristina Rusu;
(2018)
Same Spirit, Different Structure: Francis Bacon on Inanimate and Animate Matter
(/isis/citation/CBB723943257/)
Chapter
Peter Distelzweig;
(2016)
“Mechanics” and Mechanism in William Harvey’s Anatomy: Varieties and Limits
(/isis/citation/CBB530151678/)
Article
Stefano Gensini;
(2017)
"E io in Napoli vidi un cane polacco…": ancora sui linguaggi animali, da Gesner a Campanella
(/isis/citation/CBB435419422/)
Book
Albarracín Teulón, Agustín;
(2001)
El Movimiento del Corazón y la Sangre: Harvey
(/isis/citation/CBB000358399/)
Article
Alan Salter;
(2017)
"Where it is Farer Written": William Harvey's Praelectiones Anatomiae Universalis Considered as an English Text
(/isis/citation/CBB131717886/)
Book
Elwick, James;
(2007)
Styles of Reasoning in the British Life Sciences: Shared Assumptions, 1820--1858
(/isis/citation/CBB000773747/)
Be the first to comment!