Within the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, humanism, empiricism and liberalism thrived. This social and intellectual liberty allowed for numerous studies on sex, from anatomical treatises on generation to philosophical tracts about lust, published by Reinier de Graaf, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Jan Swammerdam, Johannes van Beverwijck, Hadriaan Beverland and Bernhard Mandeville. This article compares the main intellectual traditions in which sex became a popular topic, natural philosophy and medical works versus theological and moralistic treatises, and demonstrates that the Dutch Republic boasted a fertile environment for the science of sex owing to its tolerant intellectual setting and social freedom regarding sexual behaviour.
...MoreArticle Darren N. Wagner; Joanna Wharton (2019) The Sexes and the Sciences. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (pp. 399-413).
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