Main description:

This volume emphasizes the diversity and fruitfulness of early modern mechanism as a program, as a concept, as a model. Mechanistic study of the living body but also of the mind and mental processes are examined in careful historical focus, dealing with figures ranging from the first-rank (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Cudworth, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Kant) to less well-known individuals (Scaliger, Martini) or prominent natural philosophers who have been neglected in recent years (Willis, Steno, etc.). The volume moves from early modern medicine and physiology to late Enlightenment and even early 19th-century psychology, always maintaining a conceptual focus. It is a contribution to a newly active field in the history and philosophy of early modern life science. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of medicine and the development of mechanistic theories.

Contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1 Guido Giglioni (Macerata) Scaliger Bacon Harvey: A Trajectory in the Early Modern History of Vegetative Life

Chapter 2 Andreas Blank (Klagenfurt) Jacob Martini on Vegetative Powers and the Question of Emergence

Chapter 3 Oana Matei (Arad/Bucharest) Particles, universal spirit, and seeds: John Evelyn's matter theory in Elysium Britannicum

Chapter 4 Riccardo Chiaradonna (Roma Tre) Plotinus and Ficino in Ralph Cudworth's philosophy of nature

Chapter 5 Emanuela Scribano (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) Battles for nature: from Descartes to Boyle via Harvey

Chapter 6 Barnaby Hutchins (Klagenfurt) Mechanism as a non-exhaustive ontology: Descartes and irreducibles

Chapter 7 Delphine Bellis (Paul Valery University, Montpellier) Animal Life and the Human Mind in Gassendi's Philosophy

Chapter 8 Antonio Clericuzio (Rome) Mechanisms of Muscular Motion in 17th Century England

Chapter 9 Claire Crignon (Paris) Does the soul always think ? Observing partial insanity (Willis and Locke)

Chapter 10 Antonio Nunziante (Padova) Nested Machines, Rule-Governed Series: Leibniz's Integrated Model of Life

Chapter 11 Raphaele Andrault (CNRS-ENS Lyon) The diachronic mechanism of Spinoza's friends

Chapter 12 Luca Tonetti (Sapienza, Rome) Irritating drugs and affected solids: The notion of "stimulus" in Baglivi's pathology

Chapter 13 Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) Psychology and Mechanism: Christian Wolff on the Soul-Body Analogy

Chapter 14 Marco Storni (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) Mechanism, Matter and Force in Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis's Embryology

Chapter 15 Cecilia Bognon-Kuss (Paris-Diderot) Intussusception, vital mechanisms and the ontology of life

Chapter 16 Charles Wolfe (Ghent) Expanded mechanism or heuristic vitalism?

Chapter 17 Federico Boccaccini (Brasilia) Mental Machinery and active powers from Hartley to Ward

Chapter 18 Liesbet De Kock (VUB Brussels) Mechanism and Teleology in Psychological Explanation: On Causes, Motives and the Methodological Versatility of Wilhelm Wundt's Scientific Psychology

Chapter 19 Paolo Pecere (Roma Tre) Mechanism and "organisation of the mind" from Kant to Helmholtz

Chapter 20 Lydia Patton (Virginia Tech) Vital Forces and Mental Activity: The Physiology of Perception and the History of the Qualia Debate