Abstract
English anatomist William Harvey (1578–1657), and especially his De motu cordis (1628), played a prominent role in the rise of mechanical and experimental approaches to natural philosophy in the seventeenth century. Famously, he compares the expansion of the arteries to the inflation of a glove or the expansion of a bladder; the motion of the heart to that of interlocking gears and the firing mechanism of a gun; and the heart to a pump. Less well known, in unpublished notes he compares the digestive organs to chemical apparatus and devotes an entire section to the artificium mechanicum of the muscles. It is perhaps surprising, then, that Harvey’s was a self-consciously Aristotelian and Galenic approach to anatomy. He understood the goal of anatomy to be final causal Aristotelian scientia of the parts of animals articulated using the Galenic notions of the “actions” and “uses” of the parts. Furthermore, he was critical of Descartes’ mechanistic theory of the heart and, more generally, of the corpuscularianism associated with (e.g.) Descartes, Gassendi, and Boyle. He even criticizes his one-time teacher Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente (who was no mechanical philosopher!) for being overly influenced by the “petty reasoning of mechanics.” In this chapter, I explore the complex and varied uses of mechanics/mechanical in Harvey’s works. I argue that, despite the apparent diversity, Harvey’s attitude toward mechanism is consistent, stable, and creative, reflecting the seventeenth-century semantic ambiguities of “mechanics” and the “mechanical,” as well as his own Galeno-Aristotelian understanding of anatomy.
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Notes
- 1.
Hobbes 1655, Epistola Dedicatoria.
- 2.
Harvey is mentioned by name in the margins of the first edition of the Discourse; in the text he is referred to as a médecin d’Angleterre (AT VI 50). In Passions of the Soul (Article 7) he is credited and referred to by name in the text (AT XI 332). Descartes also credits Harvey for the discovery of the circulation in his posthumously published Description of the Human Body (AT XI 239).
- 3.
Though Boyle was, of course, familiar with Harvey ’s discovery of the circulation of the blood, he mentions and praises Harvey most frequently in the context of animal generation and Harvey’s later De generatione animalium. See Hunter and Macalpine 1958 for a catalogue and discussion of Boyle’s references to his much older fellow Englishman.
- 4.
- 5.
Harvey uses the word sypho, which could, it seems, mean a spout (any artificial tube-like passage from which water is forcefully ejected), a pump, a syringe, or a pump-driven fire-engine. Harvey uses the word four times in the text (Harvey 1649, 13, 51, 72, and 108). I follow the 1653 English translation in interpreting Harvey as referring variously to an unspecified spout (twice), a syringe, and a specific kind of pump-driven fire engine.
- 6.
“Praecaeteris autem, Aristotelem ex antiquis; ex recentioribus verò Hieronymum Fabricium ab Aquapendente, sequor; illum, tanquam Ducem; hunc, ut Praemonstratorem.”(Harvey 1651, 36). The translation is taken from Harvey 1653.
- 7.
In this way Harvey “follows” Aristotle and Fabricius in more than simply nomenclature (the immediate point of his comment).
- 8.
In his lecture notes on anatomy Harvey refers to Fabricius ’s work numerous times (Harvey 1964 76, 106, 120, 164, 216, 222, 230, 234, 238, 252, and 334). Even more conspicuously, Fabricius’s works on muscles and joints appear in Harvey’s working notes on muscle anatomy (Harvey 1959 42, 54, 68, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 86, 88, 90, 106, 110, 112, 114, 116, 132, 134, and 136.).
- 9.
This copy is held by the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington. I am grateful to the Lilly Library for a Helm Visiting Fellowship which funded a visit to examine the book.
- 10.
Roger French (1994) and Andrew Cunningham (2006) both appreciate Fabricius ’s importance for understanding Harvey . Andrew Wear (1983), in his effort to place Harvey in a specifically anatomical and Galenic context, chooses Andreas Laurentius (1600) as representative. Despite the prominence of Laurentius’s work, this seems an odd choice, given the relative prominence in Harvey’s work of references to Fabricius and scarcity of references to Laurentius. Perhaps under the influence of Cunningham’s emphasis on the Aristotelian and natural philosophical aspects of Fabricius’s anatomical project, Wear supposes that one has to look beyond Fabricius to find a distinctly Galenic and anatomical influence on Harvey. This is unnecessary and unlikely. Fabricius is unquestionably an anatomist and deeply influenced by Galen. Harvey, too, bears an unmistakable Galenic mark, but there is no reason to think this reflects in some special way a non-Fabrician influence.
- 11.
Gabbey 2004. My discussion of varieties of mechanics in the seventeenth century has benefited greatly from Gabbey’s work.
- 12.
Boyle 1772, vol. 3, 435. In our context, one thinks particularly of Borelli’s 1680–1681 De motu animalium. In the Dedicatory to Queen Christina Borelli invokes the Platonic idea that God geometrizes and insists that since animals are bodies and their operations are or require motions they are subject to geometrical study.
- 13.
Bertoloni Meli 2011, 12–16.
- 14.
See the opening line of their paper: “In many fields of science what is taken to be a satisfactory explanation requires providing a description of a mechanism .” (Machamer et al. 2000, 1)
- 15.
Machamer et al. 2000, 3.
- 16.
- 17.
Whitteridge shows convincingly that in the anatomy proper, after this methodological introduction, Harvey depends heavily on Caspar Bauhin’s Theatrum anatomicum (Bauhin 1605). However, Benjamin Goldberg argues that Harvey’s use of Bauhin is more creative than Whitteridge seems to imply (Goldberg 2012). Regardless, Harvey is more straightforwardly responsible for the content and structure of the methodological introduction. On the anatomical accessus in the middle ages see French 1979.
- 18.
1v. This and all transcriptions from the Prelectiones are my own. Transcriptions are made from the images of the manuscript provided in the 1886 transcription and reproduction (Harvey 1886). In making my transcriptions I have benefited greatly from consulting both the transcription provided in this edition and Whitteridge’s transcription (Harvey 1964). I provide the folio number for the quotations (e.g. “1v” signifies folio 1 verso and “3” signifies folio 3 recto). Translation is my own (I have consulted and benefited from Whitteridge’s translation).
- 19.
1v. Peritia aut divisionis dexteritas et praeparatio cadaveris conditio.
- 20.
4. Cutt up as much as may be in present ut cum historia peritia innotescat.
- 21.
1v. Anatomia est facultas quae occulari inspectione et sectione partium usus et actiones.
- 22.
Translation is Whitteridge’s (Harvey 1981, 18); emphasis added.
- 23.
Thanks to Cynthia Klestinec for stressing this point to me during the discussion period after my presentation of this material at a conference at the University of Pittsburgh. I suspect that Harvey is also concerned that Fabricius underestimates the possibilities in natural processes and reverses the order of the Aristotelian principle “Art imitates Nature.” Fabricius seems implicitly to think rather that nature imitates art.
- 24.
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
24v (Harvey 1964, 101; translation amended).
- 28.
See Aristotle, De motu animalium 703a28–703b2.
- 29.
91 (Harvey 1964, 313; translation amended).
- 30.
111v (Harvey 1959, 139).
- 31.
Galen 1968, 724.
- 32.
De naturalibus factultatibus I. The translation is A. J. Brock’s (Galen 1916).
- 33.
- 34.
- 35.
In fact, any tendency we have to group his glove, bladder, and wineskin analogies with his wheels of a machine and firing mechanism analogies as exemplifying a “mechanization” of the animal is due to our own hope or expectation to find in Harvey evidence of a “mechanical philosophical” rejection of faculties and occult powers. After all, gloves, bladders, and wineskins are hardly machines.
- 36.
I draw material here from a related discussion in Distelzweig 2014c.
- 37.
Actio translates Galen’s energeia (and sometimes ergon) and usus translates chreia.
- 38.
For a general introduction to Fabricius , see Adelmann 1942. For a more detailed discussion of Fabricius’ understanding of anatomy see Cunningham 1985; but see also Siraisi 2004 for a critique of Cunningham’s view. Distelzweig 2014a and 2014b attempt to provide a more nuanced discussion of the interplay between Galenic and Aristotelian resources in Fabricius’s work, building on insights from both Cunningham and Siraisi. For a brief, highly suggestive discussion of Fabricius’s influence on Harvey , see Cunningham 2006. See also French 1994. But, for a (brief) more deflationary view of Harvey’s relationship to Fabricius, see Klestinec 2011, 146, 164–70.
- 39.
Fabricius typically, but not always, prefers utilitas to usus. I have not found any systematic reason for his occasional use of usus.
- 40.
Galen 1968, 724.
- 41.
Galen 1984, 724.
- 42.
Galen 1984, 81.
- 43.
Etenim utilitates semper ad actionem referuntur, eamque respiciunt, quae a similari parte prodit: propter quam causam in quoquo organo perpetuo datur una pars, quae est praecipuum instrumentum actionis, ut puta a qua action proficiscitur, aliae vero ad ispam, ut ministrae & utilesreferuntur. Translation is adapted from Adelmann 1942, 276.
- 44.
In this regard I follow May’s analysis in her translation of De usu partium (Galen 1968, 9). For other treatments, see the discussion in Wilkie and Furley 1984 (58–69) and in Hankinson 1989. I agree with Hankinson that chreia is not always best translated “usefulness” in Galen’s texts; however, I think that with attention to the distinction between the chreia of parts and that of actions, and the possibility of more and less technical uses of the term, much of the diversity of uses in Galen appear coherent. Regardless, in his introductory discussion of the general approach to studying the chreia of parts (using the hand as example) opening book 1, it seems clear that what he is seeking to isolate is indeed the fittedness of parts to their actions.
- 45.
Quoniam finis Anatomae est scire vel cognoscere partes et scire per causas et hae in omnibus animalibus cuius gratia et propter quid, ergo propter quid: 1. actio, 2. usus. (6)
- 46.
For a discussion that further relates this final causal knowledge to definitional knowledge of the parts, see Goldberg 2012.
- 47.
This preoccupation with all animals is also reflected in Harvey ’s criticism, at the beginning of Chapter 6, of anatomists who look only at human anatomy . This approach is characteristically Aristotelian (see Lennox 1987, 1991). On its role in Harvey’s De generatione animalium, see Lennox 2006; Goldberg 2012.
- 48.
Emphasis added.
- 49.
In the Prelectiones, Harvey lists motion as one of the features to be studied in the historia of a part (5).
- 50.
- 51.
- 52.
My suggestion here is best understood as a refinement of Bylebyl’s analysis of the structure of the De motu cordis (Bylebyl 1973 and especially Bylebyl 1977). Bylebyl sees two structures, one (chapters 8 through 16) inserted into and distorting and obscuring the other (Prooem, chapters 1 through 5, chapter 17). Bylebyl, however, seems not to notice that Harvey presents the circulation as the action of the heart. This identification determines where in the text the argument for the circulation must appear and provides the overarching unity of the work, a unity centered on articulating scientia of the heart. Recognizing this weakens (at least in part) Bylebyl’s argument that the De motu cordis was written in two stages. Once we see that the circulation is presented as the action of the heart it becomes less clear that Harvey’s heart-centric descriptions (in the Prooemium and Chapter 1) “hardly do justice to the full treatise” (Bylebyl 1973, 446). Of course, more would need to be said to evaluate fully the evidence and arguments Bylebyl employs in his insightful work on this issue. Regardless, even if the De motu cordis was composed in two stages, Harvey still chose its final structure and was pleased enough with it to publish.
- 53.
See, e.g., Parts of Animals I.5 645b15-20.
- 54.
Tertiam partem eam esse, quae utilitates persequitur, tum totius, tum partium organi, jam & vulgo notum, & a me propositum est, quae sane utilitates perpetuo laryngis actionem, hoc est, vocem respiciunt, & contemplantur, in eamque tanquam in finem diriguntur. (Fabricius 1687, 290) Translation and emphasis are my own. See also the opening of Part 2 of De formato foetu discussed above.
- 55.
- 56.
Si nihil admitteretur per sensum, sine rationis testimonio, aut contra quandoque rationis dictamen, jam nulla essent problemata disputanda. (Harvey 1649, 97)
- 57.
Whitteridge has provided a transcription and (free) translation of these notes in Harvey 1959. The transcriptions and translations from these notes here are my own from a microfilm reproduction of the manuscripts. Both my transcriptions and translations have benefited from Whitteridge’s.
- 58.
He also calls the first simply actio as distinguished from repassio, which refers to the second.
- 59.
He also lists an additional category, but then connects it to one of the others by a line, suggesting he decided it was equivalent. This additional category is difficult to decipher, but Whitteridge reads “compositione, connexione” and Harvey lists under it tunicis, capite, cauda; ansulis, theca (tunics, head, tail, retinacula, theca). This he (understandably) identifies with the fourth category, location and positioning of the parts of the muscle.
- 60.
- 61.
Aubrey 1898, 300.
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Distelzweig, P. (2016). “Mechanics” and Mechanism in William Harvey’s Anatomy: Varieties and Limits. In: Distelzweig, P., Goldberg, B., Ragland, E. (eds) Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7353-9_6
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