Physiologia
Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought
- Publisher
- Cornell University Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2000
- Category
- Medieval, History, Renaissance
- Recommended Age
- 18
- Recommended Grade
- 12
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Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780801486876
- Publish Date
- Oct 2000
- List Price
- $75.95
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780801430725
- Publish Date
- Feb 1996
- List Price
- $80.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Sixteenth-century Aristotelianism was the culmination of four centuries of commentary and criticism. Physiologia is one of the first books to provide an accessible and comprehensive guide to that tradition in natural philosophy. In an incisive and readable treatment, Dennis Des Chene illuminates the continuities and disruptions between medieval and modern philosophy and promotes a new understanding of the philosophical setting in which modern notions of science emerged.
About the author
Awards
- Winner of the 1997 Morris D. Forkosch Prize (Journ
Contributor Notes
Dennis Des Chene is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in Saint Louis.
Editorial Reviews
A very impressive body of research.... Des Chene provides much thought-provoking discussion.... For the growing number of scholars with a serious interest in late scholasticism and its relationship to early modern philosophy, the book should be very stimulating and a rich source of information.
Philosophical Review
Des Chene successfully shows that these philosophers were fully aware of the problems in Aristotle's notion of the soul. He also shows that the questions fundamental to the Aristotelian psychology were not so much answered by Descartes and his followers as mooted.
Bryn Mawr Review
This rangy and precise book deserves to be read even by those historians who think they are bored with Descartes. While offering surprising and detailed readings of bewildering texts like the Description of the Human Body, Des Chene constructs a powerful, sad narrative of the Cartesian disenchantment of the body. Along the way he also delivers provocative views on topics as various as teleology, the role of illustrations in the history of mechanism, theories of the sexual differentiation of the foetus, and problems of simulation in scientific method.
British Journal for the History of Science