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La Forge, Louis de (1632–1666)
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- By Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, Université Paris-Sorbonne
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 429-430
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Summary
La Forge was born at La Flèche, where his father was a physician. He also became a physician, but nothing is known about his studies. He spent his life between La Flèche (the town where Descartes had studied at the Jesuit college) and Saumur (in the Loire Valley), where he died in 1666. Around 1650, he was known as a defender of Descartes’ physics. When Clerselier looked for someone to draw the illustrations in order to publish Descartes’ Treatise on Man (a part of The World, published posthumously), as mentioned in the second volume of Descartes’ Letters, La Forge offered to work on these illustrations. La Forge sent not only illustrations but also Remarques to clarify the ambiguities of the Cartesian text while claiming to remain faithful to Descartes.
La Forge's Remarks are footnotes and they often refer to his own forthcoming Traité de l'esprit de l'homme (Treatise on the Human Mind). So, these Remarks are not complete, the longest ones dealing with the structure and functions of the brain and with the “animal spirits,” important topics in Descartes’ text, while others comment on the mechanical explanations given by Descartes. Some of them defend Descartes against the “difficulties” raised by the physician Bartholin (Bartolin) in his Anatomia Reformata. As to the illustrations of the Treatise on Man, La Forge explains that he felt “committed less to representing things according to Nature than to rendering intelligible” what Descartes had to say. For instance, the pineal gland is figured much bigger than it is (see pineal gland, Figure 27).
The Treatise on Man, with Remarks by Louis de La Forge was published in Paris in April 1664, with a preface by Clerselier quoting Saint Augustine (De Trinitate, X, cap. X) and, at the end, a French translation of Schuyl's preface to the Latin translation of the Treatise on Man published in Leiden in 1662 (made from a copy of the French original), dealing with the “bêtes-machines” (see animal) and referring to Saint Augustine (De libero arbitrio, cap. VIII).
Pineal Gland
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- By Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 593-596
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In the Discourse on Method, Descartes writes that in order to constitute a real man, a rational soul cannot derive from matter. Nevertheless, it must be “closely joined and united with the body” (AT VI 59, CSM I 141). The expression “real man” echoes the Treatise on Man (AT XI 202, CSM I 108), and is also found later in the Sixth Meditation (AT VII 90, CSM II 62). In this meditation, Descartes writes that “the mind is not immediately affected by all parts of the body, but only by the brain, or perhaps just by one small part of the brain, namely the part which is said to contain the common sense” (AT VII 86, 90; CSM II 59, 62). The Discourse had mentioned the “common sense” (AT VI 55, CSM I 139), as had the Dioptrics, where its “seat” is located in a “small gland … in the middle of the concavities” in the brain (AT VI 129). In the Passions of the Soul, Descartes writes that this gland is the part of the body where the soul “ exercises its functions more particularly than in all the others.” Descartes is referring to the pineal gland or conarium, which he calls “the principal seat of the soul” (AT XI 351–52, CSM I 340).
This gland, already mentioned by the physician Galen and, owing its name to its pinecone shape (De usu partium, book VIII, ch. XIV), is denominated by the letter “H” in the Treatise on Man (AT XI, 176, CSM I 106) (see Figure 27). This letter identifies the pineal gland in a Vesalian-style anatomical plate dealing with the internal structure of the brain in Caspar Bauhin's treatise Theatrum anatomicum, a book that was of use to Descartes when he was writing the Treatise on Man and “was dissecting the heads of various animals” to “explain what imagination, memory, etc. consist of” (AT I 263, CSMK 40). Descartes clearly distinguishes this gland from the pituitary gland or hypophysis, located at the base of the brain (AT III 263, CSMK 162; AT XI 270, 582). He also rejects the “processus vermiformis” (or vermis) of the cerebellum to be a suitable organ devoted to the union (AT III 124).
Description of the Human Body
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- By Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, Université Paris-Sorbonne
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 190-192
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The Description of the Human Body (AT XI 223–86, extracts CSM I 313–24) was written in French in the winter of 1648 (see AT V 112, CSMK 329). The manuscript was published posthumously by Clerselier in 1664 with the Treatise on Man. It contains five unequal parts: a preface, a second part dealing with the movement of the heart and of the blood, the third with nutrition and aging, and the last two parts with the formation of the animal. The second part gives detailed anatomical and physiological explanations linked with the Treatise on Man and even more with the fifth part of the Discourse on Method, especially the relation to Harvey's demonstrations of the movements of the heart and of the blood in his Latin treatise of 1628. Some explanations are summarized in the first part of the Passions of the Soul. The Description was published with the subtitle “On the Formation of the Fetus,” with Clerselier pointing out the importance of embryology or, in seventeenth-century terms, of the generation of animals. Descartes had given up explaining this question in the Treatise on Man (AT I 254, CSMK 39) but returned to it later (see his Latin fragments, Thoughts about the Generation of Animals, AT XI 505–38).
At the beginning of the Description, Descartes evokes the usefulness of the ancient motto “Know thyself,” in order to cure illness and to prevent it, and also to avoid “attributing to the soul the functions which depend solely on the body and on the disposition of its organs” (AT XI 223, CSM I 314). After defining the human mind in terms of thought (AT XI 224, CSM I 314), an echo of the Meditations and of the Principles I.9, Descartes gives an account of “the entire bodily machine” that establishes a dissociation between reasoning about anatomy and physiology, on the one hand, and teleological or theological considerations, on the other, as shown by the study of the motion of the heart and of the blood (AT XI 226, CSM I 315).
Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626–1689)
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- By Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, Université Paris-Sorbonne
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
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- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 108-109
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Christina was the daughter of King of Sweden Gustavus II Adolphus Wasa and, from the day of her birth at Stockholm, was considered as the heir to the throne. In 1630 Protestant Sweden became involved in the Thirty Years’ War. In November 1632, at the battle of Lützen, a Protestant victory, King Gustav was killed, and, at nearly six, Christina inherited the throne. In December 1644, at eighteen, Christina was officially coronated Queen of Sweden, but refused marriage with Charles Gustav Palatine, one of her cousins. She helped to bring an end to the Thirty Years’ War by supporting a theological resolution that unified the Protestant religions.
The “Minerva of the North” began to question Descartes through letters written by Pierre Chanut, one of Descartes’ friends and a minister of France to the Swedish government. In February 1647, Descartes answered Christina's questions: “What is love? Does the natural light by itself teach us to love God? Which is worse if immoderate and abused, love or hatred?” (AT IV 601, CSMK 306). Then Christina asked Descartes how to reconcile Christian religion with the hypothesis of an infinite world. He replied with the distinction between the “infinite,” reserved for God alone, and the “indefinite” world (AT V 51, CSMK 320) (see infinite versus indefinite). In September and November 1647, Christina asked Descartes’ views about “the supreme good understood in the sense of the ancient philosophers.” With his answer to the queen, Descartes sent a letter to Chanut, including the copy of his letters to Princess Elisabeth on Seneca and the ancients, and a “little treatise on the Passions,” a forerunner of the Passions of the Soul (AT V 81–88, CSMK 324–27). Having begun to read the Principles of Philosophy in French, Christina invited Descartes to Sweden (February 27 and March 6, 1649), and Descartes left Holland on September 1, 1649.
Anatomy and Physiology
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- By Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, Université Paris-Sorbonne
- Edited by Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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- The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon
- Published online:
- 05 January 2016
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- 01 January 2015, pp 13-16
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From his first book published in 1637, the Discourse on Method, to his last book issued in November 1649, the Passions of the Soul, Descartes showed a constant interest in questions of anatomy and physiology. In Discourse V, he explains the difficult question of the movement of the heart and refers favorably to Harvey's recent discovery of the circulation of blood (1628). The Dioptrics discusses the eye, focusing on the optic nerve and explaining the structure and use of the nerves (discourses III and IV). The first part of the Passions contains a summary of Descartes’ mechanical physiology as detailed in posthumously published texts: the Description of the Human Body (AT XI 223–86, extracts CSM I 313–24), an updated version of the Treatise on Man (AT XI 119–202, extracts CSM I 99–108). In the Description of the Human Body, Descartes mentions the lacteal veins and the demonstration of their existence by Asellius (Aselli) (AT XI 267) in his study of the complex question of the formation of the animal, where he insists on the formation of the heart and on the importance of the blood and the animal spirits. The Meditations and the Principles also tackle medical issues. The First Meditation alludes to melancholia, an important pathology in the seventeenth century, as evidenced by the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth. The Sixth Meditation introduces innovations in the analysis of pain and of the phantom limb syndrome (see sensation), which in no way affects the unity of the soul. The Principles IV.196, echoing a letter to Plempius (AT I 420, CSMK 64), gives an illustration that expands on the analysis of sensation given in the Dioptrics.
After the publication of the Discourse, Descartes discussed medical issues with qualified physicians, as letters to Plempius, Regius, Meyssonnier, and Vorstius illustrate. Harvey himself acknowledged the Cartesian analysis of the motion of the heart and, invoking accurate observations, elegantly rejected it (Second Reply to Jean Riolan [the Younger], 1649). This is remarkable because Descartes did not study medicine in a university. But when, at the end of 1629, he decided to study anatomy to write the Treatise, a part of The World, he read several books on the subject and performed experiments on various animals.
2 - Monsters, Nature, and Generation from the Renaissance to the Early Modern Period: The Emergence of Medical Thought
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- By Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, Author Numerous publications in the history of philosophy
- Edited by Justin E. H. Smith, Concordia University, Montréal
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- The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy
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- 06 August 2009
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- 22 May 2006, pp 47-62
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One of the most striking features of the discussion of monsters in the sixteenth century lies in the variety of texts in which they were discussed. In the second part of the sixteenth century, illustrations of monsters were featured with increasing frequency in the new editions of the Cosmographia universalis of Sebastian Münster (first edition 1552), in the volumes of the Historia animalium of Conrad Gesner (first volume 1551; fourth volume 1558), in the 1557 edition of the Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon of Lycosthenes and in the enlarged editions of the Histoires prodigieuses of Pierre Boaistuau (first published in 1560). It would still be a number of decades, following the middle of the sixteenth century, before monsters and their causes were to become the specific subject of study by surgeons and physicians.
Jakob Rüff, a Zurich surgeon, and Ambroise Paré, a French surgeon, were the first to include studies of monsters in medical treatises. These treatises were reprinted and translated many times after their first editions, Rüff's in German in 1553 and Paré's in French in 1573. When describing and drawing monsters, Rüff and, to an even greater extent, Paré borrowed information on the subject from many sources.
Monsters were considered rare and generally were thought not to live long. Since very few doctors or surgeons directly observed the monsters they reported on, most rested content with gleaning as much information as they could from the works of physicians such as Hippocrates, philosophers such as Aristotle, and philosopher-theologians such as Augustine and Albertus Magnus, as well as from the books of historiographers such as Hartman Schedel, Conrad Lycosthenes, and Pliny the Elder; cosmographers such as Sebastian Münster, and even novelists such as Heliodorus and poets such as Ovid.