Overview
- Features 20 essays written by leading scholars that provide a detailed examination of L’Homme by René Descartes
- Examines the early reception of the work as well as its influence on contemporary accounts of the role of physiology in understanding human perception and cognition
- Offers readers an indispensible companion to early-modern physiology
Part of the book series: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (AUST, volume 43)
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Table of contents (18 chapters)
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Editions and Translations of L’Homme
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The Early Reception of L’Homme
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L’Homme and Early-Modern Anthropology
Keywords
About this book
This edited volume features 20 essays written by leading scholars that provide a detailed examination of L’Homme by René Descartes. It explores the way in which this work developed themes not just on questions such as the circulation of the blood, but also on central questions of perception and our knowledge of the world.
Coverage first offers a critical discussion on the different versions of L'Homme, including the Latin, French, and English translations and the 1664 editions. Next, the authors examine the early reception of the work, from the connection of L'Homme to early-modern Dutch Cartesianism to Nicolas Steno's criticism of the work and how Descartes' clock analogy is used to defend two different conceptions of the articulation between anatomical observations and functional hypotheses.
The book then goes on to explore L'Homme and early-modern anthropology as well as the how the work has been understood and incorporated into the worksof scientists, physicians, and philosophers over the last 150 years.
Overall, readers will discover how the trend over the last few decades to understand human cognition in neuro-physiological terms can be seen to be not something unprecedented, but rather a revival of a way of dealing with these fundamental questions that was pioneered by Descartes.
Editors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception
Editors: Delphine Antoine-Mahut, Stephen Gaukroger
Series Title: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46989-8
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing AG 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-46987-4Published: 24 January 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-83631-7Published: 17 July 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-46989-8Published: 16 January 2017
Series ISSN: 1871-7381
Series E-ISSN: 2215-1958
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VI, 304
Number of Illustrations: 28 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Science, History of Philosophy