Anatomical revolution and cosmological revolution: Reflections on the reading of “L'homme de Vésale dans le monde de Copernic” (“Vesalius’s man in Copernicus’s world”)
Crignon, Claire
Anatomical revolution and cosmological revolution: Reflections on the reading of “L'homme de Vésale dans le monde de Copernic” (“Vesalius’s man in Copernicus’s world”) - 2014.
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Through an analysis of Canguilhem's commemorative conference entitled “L'homme de Vésale dans le monde de Copernic: 1543,” this paper tries to show that two questionable assumptions play a major role in the author's argument: first he tends to use the same temporal criterium to evaluate anthropological consequences of both the exploration of the human body and of the universe. Second, he uses the mechanistic physical model borrowed from Descartes and Galileo to assess progress in anatomy and physiology. So as not to see in the “anatomical revolution” merely an “inversion of the cosmological revolution,” the article envisages the necessity of an elongation of time in the reception of medical discoveries. Our point is to try and demonstrate that Harvey's discovery of blood circulation marks the beginning of a reflection on the necessity of a renewal in one's approach to human beings, one that would be able to take into account the complexity of the human body. This reflection nourishes a specific literary genre: medico-philosophical poetry, used by poets (John Donne), physicians (Thomas Willis), and metaphysicians (Henry More). They use imagination as a means to remedy the limits of a rationality inherent to an anatomic exploration of the body. Focusing on these texts allows us to show how a profound consciousness of what Canguilhem called the “powers and limits of rationality in medicine” emerged during the modern period.
Anatomical revolution and cosmological revolution: Reflections on the reading of “L'homme de Vésale dans le monde de Copernic” (“Vesalius’s man in Copernicus’s world”) - 2014.
42
Through an analysis of Canguilhem's commemorative conference entitled “L'homme de Vésale dans le monde de Copernic: 1543,” this paper tries to show that two questionable assumptions play a major role in the author's argument: first he tends to use the same temporal criterium to evaluate anthropological consequences of both the exploration of the human body and of the universe. Second, he uses the mechanistic physical model borrowed from Descartes and Galileo to assess progress in anatomy and physiology. So as not to see in the “anatomical revolution” merely an “inversion of the cosmological revolution,” the article envisages the necessity of an elongation of time in the reception of medical discoveries. Our point is to try and demonstrate that Harvey's discovery of blood circulation marks the beginning of a reflection on the necessity of a renewal in one's approach to human beings, one that would be able to take into account the complexity of the human body. This reflection nourishes a specific literary genre: medico-philosophical poetry, used by poets (John Donne), physicians (Thomas Willis), and metaphysicians (Henry More). They use imagination as a means to remedy the limits of a rationality inherent to an anatomic exploration of the body. Focusing on these texts allows us to show how a profound consciousness of what Canguilhem called the “powers and limits of rationality in medicine” emerged during the modern period.
Réseaux sociaux