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Treatise of Man (Great Minds Series), by Rene Descartes
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Besides his more famous works of philosophy - Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy - Descartes devoted a great deal of time and thought to the study of physiology and anatomy. An account of his activities in 1629 reports that he visited butcher shops on an almost daily basis to study specific animal organs, and he practiced dissection and even vivisection to explore the workings of major organ systems. In the 1630s, he assisted in the dissection of human cadavers - all to satisfy his intense curiosity about how bodies, animal and human, work. The fruits of this research can be found in his Treatise of Man, a work that he decided not to publish for fear of suffering the same fate as Galileo. Consequently, this fascinating treatise did not appear until twelve years after his death.
Among its many intriguing features are his detailed descriptions of the nervous system and its interactions with the muscles to create movement in response to stimulus. Though we now know that many of these details are wrong, Descartes' understanding that much of the body functions as a machine was a stroke of genius. He is the first to describe the reflex arc, anticipating Pavlov and the behaviorists by almost 300 years. The idea of the body as a kind of animal machine that functions according to physical laws was an immense advance over the previous scholastic notions based on Aristotle, which merely begged the question of how the various organs of the body work by stating that it is in their nature to perform their specific functions.
This is a landmark work that students of history, medicine, biology, and the history of science will find richly rewarding.
- Sales Rank: #1806991 in eBooks
- Published on: 2003-07-01
- Released on: 1972-01-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
Language Notes
Text: English, French
About the Author
Ren? Descartes, known as the Father of Modern Philosophy and inventor of Cartesian coordinates, was a seventeenth century French philosopher, mathematician, and writer. Descartes made significant contributions to the fields of philosophy and mathematics, and was a proponent of rationalism, believing strongly in fact and deductive reasoning. Working in both French and Latin, he wrote many mathematical and philosophical works including The World, Discourse on a Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Passions of the Soul. He is perhaps best known for originating the statement I think, therefore I am.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Descartes' "Treatise of Man"
By mp
Ren� Descartes' 1629 "Treatise of Man" is a piece of natural philosophy worth noting and reading for a few reasons. Know that I have a long standing antipathy for Descartes for my own personal reasons. In the "Treatise," Descartes attempts to explain the workings of the human body by drawing an explicit comparison between a hypothetical "machine" which operates, ostensibly, "like we do". Descartes spends the best part of the "Treatise" outlining the ways that this machine's senses are informed by the singly material operations of the cardiovascular and nervous systems.
Working on what basically amounts to as a heat-model, Descartes discusses how blood in the heart, and what he calls animal spirits in the brain cause the human machine to function just "as we do" - without the supposed necessity of the soul. He does not dispense with the idea of the soul, however - after all that would get him excommunicated faster than he could have said "cogito ergo sum" - he merely dances around the issue by saying that the major difference between the human machine and "us" is that we have a soul located in its seat, the brain. His purpose, again, is to show how a soul is not necessary to the bodily functions of man - that our bodies all operate the same, and according to rational physical principles.
Descartes can be seen in the "Treatise" as a major contributor to late 17th and early 18th century notions of human passions. To this he contributes the omnipresent image of the filaments with which he says our nervous systems are comprised. Certainly we have all heard phrases like, "tugging on your heartstrings" - this popularly arises out of philosophies like Descartes, who proposes that our physical reactions - to pain, pleasure, etc. - are all the results of these filaments, or cords, within our bodies, which external stimuli act upon, sending messages to our brains. This affects not only reaction, but perception, and even the manifestations of our emotional responses to the external world.
Sight and Touch are Descartes' major focuses in the realm of human sensory perception. Noteworthy in the "Treatise" are Descartes' many example illustrations, scattered generously throughout the text and abundantly provided in this Prometheus Press edition of the "Treatise". From the mundane illustration showing how a person becomes aware of the pain of a fire, to the more unusual visual perception illustrations of a person in profile with one eyeball on top of the other, to the most interesting illustrations of the central "Gland H" in the brain, which becomes erect and points around in response to stimuli - Descartes' illustrations are, for me, the most fascinating part of the "Treatise."
One problem I have with Descartes' "Treatise," is the absolutely arbitrary way he delineates human perception. In Descartes' machine-logic, our perceptions follow and focus on whatever most immediately presents itself to the mind. In this schema - one could be talking to a friend, and completely forget about the friend if a butterfly crosses our line of vision - the ability to focus on one thing for a sustained period of time is something Descartes does not discuss. It leaves the reader, or at least this one, wondering if sustained focus is the province of the soul, which he does not discuss in this work, or if not - how he managed to write so much with the perpetual threat of distraction.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Not a fun read.
By Neil
Got this for a class. Not a fun read.
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