In 1810, Gall and Spurzheim proposed the following diagnosis: the scant of knowledge of the cerebral substratum responsible for mental faculties must be attributed to the excessive subservience of anatomy to metaphysics. In this article, we examine this historic judgement with reference to Niels Steensen’s Discourse on the Anatomy of the Brain. By presenting the cerebral localisation “systems” of which Steensen is critical (those proposed by the “ancients”, by Thomas Willis and Descartes), we will firstly provide an overview of the different conceptions of the “seat of the soul” in the seventeenth century. We will then show how, in these three cases, the correlation between a lacunar brain mapping and a spatial representation of mental faculties leads to the postulation that a particular part of the brain is the seat of memory, imagination or common sense. Finally, we will show that it was in the name of anatomical science, limited to what can be evidenced by eyewitnesses, that Steensen rejected the very principle of cerebral localisation.

In 1810, Gall and Spurzheim proposed the following diagnosis: the scant of knowledge of the cerebral substratum responsible for mental faculties must be attributed to the excessive subservience of anatomy to metaphysics. In this article, we examine this historic judgement with reference to Niels Steensen's Discourse on the Anatomy of the Brain. By presenting the cerebral localisation "systems" of which Steensen is critical (those proposed by the "ancients", by Thomas Willis and Descartes), we will firstly provide an overview of the different conceptions of the "seat of the soul" in the seventeenth century. We will then show how, in these three cases, the correlation between a lacunar brain mapping and a spatial representation of mental faculties leads to the postulation that a particular part of the brain is the seat of memory, imagination or common sense. Finally, we will show that it was in the name of anatomical science, limited to what can be evidenced by eyewitnesses, that Steensen rejected the very principle of cerebral localisation.

My aim is to question the different finalistic approaches to the human body that underlie the theological justifications of anatomy. To do so, I analyze the references that Leibniz made to Galen’s On the Use of the Parts that had a strategic purpose in his campaign against materialism. I show that the new mechanistic conception that is endorsed by Leibniz leads him to contradict Galen’s method on two key aspects: 1/ the principle of the best, which, according to Leibniz, is grounded in God’s rationality, casts doubt on the Galenic taxonomy of the human body and precludes the identification of a biological function with the final cause of an organ; 2/ the infinite complexity of Leibniz’s ‘machines of nature’, i.e. living bodies, conflicts with the anthropomorphic representation of their creation as the molding of unformed materials. Accordingly, Leibniz agrees with Galen that a Creator did his best in making our bodies, but he disagrees profoundly on the exact implications of this very general claim.

Cet article s’attache à l’expression de la douleur dans l’une des rares monographies consacrées à cette question à l’époque moderne : les Caractères de la douleur, quatrième volume des monumentaux Caractères des passions publiés par le médecin Marin Cureau de La Chambre entre 1640 et 1662. En conjuguant les apports de la rhétorique à ceux de la philosophie scolastique et de la médecine, Cureau est conduit à donner une ampleur inédite à la description des signes de la douleur – qu’il s’agisse des mimiques, comportements, changements physiologiques ou des « façons de parler ». Il accorde à ces dernières une place de premier plan et les comprend comme des « hyperboles ». Le terme ne vise cependant pas à disqualifier la plainte, comme nous le montrons ici. Cureau justifie l’hyperbole par l’effet qu’elle cherche à produire chez autrui : compenser la sous-estimation habituelle de la douleur de l’autre afin de susciter un sentiment de compassion et un comportement d’entraide à la hauteur de la douleur ressentie.

En 1665, dans un discours qui fera date, Niels Steensen dresse un tableau severe de l’anatomie cerebrale : truffees d’erreurs topographiques, sources de confusions fonctionnelles, les descriptions du cerveau alors les plus en vogues ne permettent pas de comprendre les relations corps-esprit. Pour que l’anatomie du cerveau accomplisse enfin ses promesses, il faut selon Niels Steensen qu’elle amorce une reforme radicale, tout a la fois technique, lexicale et institutionnelle.

This chapter examines how the borderline cases pointed out by English naturalists and philosophers in the second half of the seventeenth-century call into doubt the common notion of life as a vegetative power. In the first part of this chapter, I focus on Nehemiah Grew’s notions of life and living beings by comparing his plant anatomy, in which he examines the cases of sponges and corals, with his physico-theology. In the second part, I confront Grew’s views on life to those of John Ray and Ralph Cudworth. My aim is threefold. First, I want to show that there was then no agreement on what a “vital phenomenon” is. Second, I want to emphasize the fact that what we would classify today as physical phenomena, such as gravitation, were then regarded as living phenomena. Third, and accordingly, I would like to challenge the view that the English naturalists and philosophers who then developed a physico-theology simply used empirical vital phenomena in order to refute Descartes’ metaphysics. In my view, there were no such things as “empirical vital phenomena.” Indeed, the very identification and description of the phenomena considered as “vital” was a matter of interpretation, and those different authors did not share the same set of assumptions regarding what kinds of beings are alive. At the very least, they do not share the set of assumptions that define what we regard as “vital.”

The study of the reception of Leibniz in 18th-century natural philosophy is one possible means of addressing the issue of the heuristic value of teleology. (...) Several of Leibniz’s commentators have recently proposed methodological distinctions between divine teleology and natural teleology . Their aim is to focus on the epistemological contribution of teleological principles in Leibniz’s natural philosophy and to set aside the much-discussed problem of theodicy. Julia Jorati distinguishes for example between intrinsic teleology (end-directedness due to intrinsic features of the agent) and extrinsic teleology (end-directedness that creaturely actions have in virtue of serving God’s ends). Glenn Hartz makes a similar, useful distinction between macro-teleology, which “inquires into the relationship between events in the world of mechanism and the purposes and goals God had in mind as he selected this”, and micro-teleology, which “aims at relating a delimited set of mechanical events to a set of goals and purposes of finite beings” . But the possibility of distinguishing between the intentional purposes of a divine creator and the intrinsic goals of created beings is challenged by the very “physico-theology” that Leibniz regarded as both epistemologically and theologically useful. Consequently, studies on 18th-century physico-theology may help us to clarify the different terms at issue: is the same kind of finality at stake in the “hymnus Galeni” concerning organic functions and in the architectonic use of the principle of optimum in physics? And how exactly do “the details of physics” instantiate the general harmony of the world? In order to shed new light on these kinds of questions, the present issue explores how Leibniz’s 18th-century readers embodied in their own philosophical doctrines multiple interpretative possibilities opened up by Leibniz’s texts.

La prise en charge de la douleur est parfois percue comme une nouveaute, une pratique negligee dans le passe. Pourtant, la douleur est deja un sujet de preoccupation aux 16e-18e siecles. Meme si la medecine de cette epoque est en partie impuissante a y remedier, les medecins la mentionnent souvent et cherchent toujours a la soulager. S’arreter sur la periode des 16e-18e siecles permet de depayser notre regard sur ce probleme : le detour par le passe contribue au renouvellement des questionnements et des pratiques actuelles. L’exposition, concue par Raphaele Andrault et Ariane Bayle, a d'abord ete organisee a la BU Sante - dec. 2019-fev. 2020- (BU Sciences Lyon 1, site de la faculte de medecine Lyon Est, co-organisation Florence Gaume et Livia Rapatel). Elle propose une deambulation autour de 12 panneaux, de documents d’epoque et d’entretiens video avec des neurologues specialistes de la douleur (Nicolas Danziger, Luis Garcia-Larrea et Patrick Mertens). Ce travail a ete realise avec la collaboration d'Elisa Andretta, Dominique Brancher, Pascal Luccioni, Nicolas Lechopier, Isabelle Moreau et Michele Rosellini. La mise en forme graphique a ete realisee par Damien Favier. Les fichiers multimedias ont ete produits par le service PAVM | DNUM de l'Universite Jean-Moulin Lyon 3.

Conclusion p. 150: Ce que nous avons appele l’ere du microscope, a savoir le second XVIIe siecle, coincide avec l’institutionnalisation d’academies scientifiques qui erigent le temoignage oculaire en principal critere epistemologique de validite . Elle coincide egalement avec la promotion de la visualisation des rouages internes du corps humain au rang d’explication de son mecanisme, tout comme la forme des rouages d’une horloge permet de comprendre son fonctionnement . On aurait pu s’attendre, pour ces deux raisons historiques, a ce que cette ere du microscope coincide egalement avec la multiplication des illustrations dans les dissertations anatomiques. Il n’en est rien. Plusieurs facteurs materiels et epistemologiques se conjuguent pour expliquer la relative penurie d’images des structures musculaires recemment mises au jour. L’un d’entre eux merite d’etre souligne : de facon peut-etre contre-intuitive pour nous, dont la culture est desormais saturee d’images imprimees et numeriques, c’est le texte, non l’image, qui assume alors un role mimetique par rapport au reel observe. C’est le texte qui a la charge d’exhiber minutieusement le detail visible, la topographie anatomique et ses voies d’acces empiriques. L’image, elle, schematise, universalise, explique ou invente, mais elle ne redouble ni l’observation premiere de l’anatomiste, ni sa description verbale qui constitue a son tour, via le texte, une veritable source visuelle pour les lecteurs. En bref, ce n’est alors pas l’image qui est naturaliste ; c’est le texte qui l’est. Contrairement a l’image, le texte permet de promener son regard sur differentes strates anatomiques qui se masquent les unes les autres, sous plusieurs points de vue inconciliables, sur plusieurs circonstances incompatibles, sur plusieurs moments interrompus. Il est en cela plus a meme de traduire l’experience autoptique de l’anatomiste.

This article concerns the notion of living bodies that Spinoza develops in the Ethics (published posthumously in 1677). While commentators have emphasized the relevance of Spinoza’s works for contemporary physiology, they have neglected to study Spinoza’s own views on this topic. My aim is to draw attention to the specific parti pris that underlies Spinoza’s passages on anatomy. To do so, I first compare Spinoza’s claims on human body with the conceptions developed in his immediate historical environment. Then, I propose to draw a parallel between Lakatos’s notion of “negative heuristics” and the high level of generalization Spinoza demonstrates in his propositions on the human body. This parallel allows me to show how Spinoza’s critical remarks on our knowledge of human body have heuristic value.

Cet article s’attache a l’usage des romans de Cyrano de Bergerac dans la philosophie de Leibniz. A plusieurs reprises, Leibniz convoque un meme passage des Etats et empires du soleil, celui ou “l’imaginatif Cyrano” decrit les aptitudes singulieres de creatures solaires qui ne connaissent pas la douleur, et dont les corps peuvent se regenerer a loisir. Une telle fiction est utilisee par Leibniz pour montrer que le corps humain n’est pas le meilleur des corps possibles.

How are we to connect the mechanist methodology used by Baglivi in his physiological treatises with the apparently strict empiricism that he promotes in his therapeutic work entitled Practice of Physick, reduc’d to the Ancient Way of Observations? In order to answer this question, we examine the methodological implications of the “history of diseases” that Baglivi promotes by using Bacon’s recommendations in the Novum organum. Then, we compare this result with the place that historians generally gave to Baglivi in the medical context of that time: the place of a dogmatic and “iatromechanist” physician who was far from practical and therapeutic concerns. This confrontation allows us first to apprehend the polemical origin of the so-called “iatromechanism” as a historiographical label, and second, to question the preeminence of the role of observations in the shaping of the classical distinction between “rational” physicians and “empirical” ones. When Early Modern physicians use the dichotomy between “empirical” and “rationalist” in order to discredit what they perceive as oversimplification or dogmatism, there is most often a third group at stake: a group which is depicted as the providential and intelligent solution to sectarianism. For Baglivi, this third group would be an “Empirick rational sect.” The distinction between a medicina prima and a medicina secunda allows us to understand such an apparently paradoxical category.

Translation by Pedro H. G. MunizNo one has yet determined what the body can do. Some readers of the Ethics have understood this enigmatic sentence as the expression of Spinoza’s mistrust concerning medical knowledge. According to this reading, Spinoza would regard the human body as being endowed with plastic abilities or innovation skills for which the narrow Cartesian framework of the medical sciences of his time would be unable to account. In this article, I argue against such a reading by taking into consideration the anatomical dissections that Spinoza attended and the medical books that he read. The purpose of this article is twofold: 1/ to give a historicized reading of the analytic representation of complex bodies that Spinoza endorsed; 2/ to contribute to the discussion about the possible relationships between the semantic interpretation of philosophical texts and the historical study of their cultural milieu.

Translation by Pedro H. G. Muniz No one has yet determined what the body can do. Some readers of the Ethics have understood this enigmatic sentence as the expression of Spinoza’s mistrust concerning medical knowledge. According to this reading, Spinoza would regard the human body as being endowed with plastic abilities or innovation skills for which the narrow Cartesian framework of the medical sciences of his time would be unable to account. In this article, I argue against such a reading by taking into consideration the anatomical dissections that Spinoza attended and the medical books that he read. The purpose of this article is twofold: 1/ to give a historicized reading of the analytic representation of complex bodies that Spinoza endorsed; 2/ to contribute to the discussion about the possible relationships between the semantic interpretation of philosophical texts and the historical study of their cultural milieu.

‘I am insisting on the supreme value of working out things under the inspiration of the texts. As philosophers, we have an obligation to try out tentative answers to the questions we find urgent an...