Mechanism: A Visual, Lexical, and Conceptual History 0822945479, 9780822945475

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Mechanism

Mechanism A Visual, Lexical, and Conceptual History

Domenico Bertoloni Meli

University of Pittsburgh Press

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2019, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4547-5 ISBN 10: 0-8229-4547-9 Cover art: Valves in the veins. Harvey, Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis (1628). Courtesy of the Lilly Library. Cover design: Melissa Dias-Mandoly

Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix Chapter 1: Framing Mechanisms 3 Chapter 2: Mechanism and Visualization 25 Chapter 3: “The Very Word Mechanism” 79 Chapter 4: Mechanisms as Investigative Projects 109 Concluding Reflections 139 Notes 143 Bibliography 161 Index 183

Acknowledgments Material leading to the first three chapters of this book stems from the A. W. Mellon Distinguished Lectures in the History of Science I had the honor of delivering in March 2016 at the University of Pittsburgh. An earlier version of chapter four was presented in May 2015 at a workshop at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. I wish to thank Sophie Roux and the department of history and philosophy of science at Pittsburgh, especially Jim Lennox, as well as Abby Collier and all those who offered comments at my oral presentations. I also thank for useful discussions and comments Colin Allen, Tawrin Baker, Alison Calhoun, Tobias Cheung, Antonio Clericuzio, Daniel Garber, Ashley Inglehart, Roberto Lo Presti, Peter Machamer, Bill Newman, Evan Ragland, Bret Rothstein, Massimo Scalabrini, and Mark Wilson. I am grateful to the anonymous referees, who saved me from many inaccuracies and encouraged me to rethink structure and organization of my work. I am also very grateful to Bill Newman and Sophie Roux, who offered comments and criticisms to an earlier version of my manuscript. I claim sole responsibility for all remaining errors and inaccuracies.

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Introduction Over the last few decades there has been a considerable growth—perhaps an explosion—of interest in the notion of mechanism in contemporary science and the philosophy of science, notably in the life sciences and neuroscience. The number of recent philosophical studies may even justify talking of an industry, examining the definition of the term and different levels of mechanisms, from molecular to macroscopic, in a growing range of specific examples from the science literature. In their seminal paper “Thinking about Mechanisms,” Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver have also argued: “Thinking about mechanisms offers an interesting and good way to look at the history of science.” They claim that historians of science have already been writing, “albeit unwittingly,” as a history of the discoveries and applications of mechanisms, but they also advocate writing such a history in a more self-conscious way.1 However, their paper has been far more influential among philosophers than among historians of science. Mechanism is an attempt to take their claim as a starting point for a historical investigation based on the early modern period. Overall, the key focus of our term involved relying on instruments and machines to explain phenomena, excluding immaterial entities such as the soul and its faculties that had been prominent in previous accounts. The focus of my study is the time when the term mechanism started being commonly used and the mechanical philosophy emerged as a major intellectual player. This suggestive and ambiguous expression involved such different meanings that Helen Hattab has recently proposed to talk of the “mechanical philosophies.”2 In a letter of 1637 to the Louvain theologian Libertus Fromondus (1587– 1653), Descartes referred somewhat ironically to his own “Philosophie” as being “grossiere & Mechanique,” implying a philosophy explaining phenomena by relying on shapes, sizes, and motions: this is the first known occurrence of the expression. The letter was published in 1659,3 in the same year as The Immortality of the Soul, in whose preface the Cambridge Platonist and divine Henry More referred to a “Mechanick” or “Mechanical Philosophy”; unlike Descartes, More emphasized that natural phenomena cannot be explained by excluding immaterial principles.4 Finally, two years later, in Certain Physiological Essays (1661), and then in several influential works, Robert Boyle adopted and popularized the expression, which became a hallmark of the new philosophy later in the century.5 ix

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Although there is a vast intersection between the notion of mechanism and the mechanical philosophy, emphasis on the former is often centered on single problems. In particular, whereas in general the expression “mechanical philosophy” involves a worldview, the term mechanism in several instances shifts the focus to the explanation of individual phenomena; the latter was often local, whereas the former tended to be global, so much so that few natural philosophers accepted it in toto.6 In my perspective focus on the notion of mechanism should be seen as complementary rather than alternative to the study of the mechanical philosophy, providing a more detailed analysis: some who opposed the mechanical philosophy as a global intellectual program could and did account locally for specific processes in terms of mechanisms and, conversely, some who accepted large portions of the mechanical philosophy often found individual phenomena hard to reconcile with their overall views. Joining mechanism and the mechanical philosophy enables the historian to provide a fine-grain view, enriching and problematizing our understanding of early modern concerns and debates. While addressing the problem historically can be rewarding, it also presents specific problems that have to be carefully addressed. Reaching a satisfactory understanding of the notion of mechanism for the period I am studying and later ones is a challenging historical and philosophical task and is the goal rather than the presupposition of my work; our notion, together with those of living body and machine, took different connotations over time. Chapter one provides an introductory theoretical framework for reflecting on mechanisms in the early modern period. It emphasizes the need to examine the notion of mechanism in conjunction with a cluster of other problematic notions and terms employed alongside it at the time. Then, in order to provide a concrete historical example, it moves back in time to Galen, a central figure whose extensive output and its philosophical implications were thoroughly studied in the early modern period. Galen’s writings and approach highlight a number of issues relevant to later debates, such as the problematic nature of the notion of the soul and its faculties, whether it is material or not, and whether it is mortal or immortal, and the need to recognize that key ancient and early modern protagonists, from Galen to Robert Boyle, applied suspension of judgment when they lacked sufficient evidence to adjudicate the matter. Thus, in many cases mechanisms and mechanistic approaches were neither dogmas nor anathemas but working hypotheses and projects worth pursuing without necessarily a predetermined answer. Chapter two investigates the intersection between the notion of mechanism and the problem of visual representation. The verb to visualize is often used in the sense of making something, often of an abstract nature, visible to the mind or the imagination. However, it can also be used in the sense of making visible

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to the eye through several means, including conceptual analysis and technical devices, such as a microscope, for example. Here I use the verb in the latter sense, emphasizing the active intervention required to identify mechanisms and represent them visually. In the early modern period mechanisms were closely tied to mechanical devices and to the spatial arrangements of their parts: therefore, the issue of visual representation is closely intertwined with, though clearly not identical with, the very notion of mechanism. After briefly reviewing recent claims about the role of images in early modern Europe and the debate between David Edgerton and Michael Mahoney on the role of perspective, I focus on a crucial area, anatomy, in the long century between Andreas Vesalius and Robert Hooke. In terms of quality, size, and numbers of illustrations, Vesalius opened a new chapter in the history of anatomical representation; at the other endpoint of my narrative, Hooke investigated and represented microscopic mechanisms, and also used the very term mechanism to describe them. His usage of our term leads us to the following chapter. The third chapter shifts the focus to a lexical study of the emergence and usage of the term mechanism in seventeenth-century Britain, where its appearance occurred especially early in specific studies as well as in broader philosophical and theological debates. While of course the concept is not coextensive with the word, there is much to be learned from this investigation, besides the actual meaning of the term, including the contexts in which it was used, the identity and professional affiliations of those who used it, and its contrast class, or the evolving sets of notions which were seen in opposition to that of mechanism. In this chapter the chronological span shifts forward, focusing mainly on the period from circa 1660 to the 1680s and on figures such as Henry More, Robert Boyle, Henry Stubbe, and Edward Tyson. The term mechanism was employed by divines and natural philosophers in the context of detailed studies but also philosophical and theological discussions about the types of explanations offered. Later sections discuss usage and meaning of our term at the turn of the century in connection with the notion of organism, documenting their shifting meanings and a growing discomfort in using the term mechanism for the living body, and very briefly in mid-eighteenth-century France in the context of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. Chapter four discusses a specific problem instantiating many of the previous reflections; namely, the issue of fecundation and the early stages of generation in works by Marcello Malpighi and his contemporaries. Malpighi’s writings involve visual, lexical, and conceptual issues echoing those discussed in the previous chapters. His prominent position on the anatomical stage in the second half of the century, the exceedingly problematic issue of generation, and his outline of the emergence of a self-making machine make this study highly relevant to the

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previous discussion. I am especially interested in the bold attempts to provide mechanistic accounts of the processes involved, despite their being at the limit of what the microscope could reveal, and often beyond it, well in the realm of speculations. Such speculations, however, can be especially helpful in revealing contemporary perspectives and assumptions. In line with my previous reflections, I seek to offer an intellectual contextualization including contemporary scholars such as William Harvey, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Hooke, Boyle, and Malpighi’s Bologna rivals. A final section provides a synthetic analysis putting previous reflections under a sharper lens.

Mechanism

Chapter 1

Framing Mechanisms I wish to set out my investigation with some preliminary reflections on the meaning and usage of the notion of mechanism in the early modern period. Philosophical concerns related to the notion of mechanism present many conceptual problems in their own right, though addressing the topic historically adds several specific issues to do with the changing meaning and context of usage of the term and its place in the constellation of related notions and concepts current at a time. My concern in this chapter is with how we are to talk about mechanisms, machines, and the mechanical philosophy more broadly in a historically meaningful way, one that is sensitive to these changing horizons. Of course, in no way do my reflections cover the wealth of themes and debates emerging from the historical sources. However, I hope that they could be applied to larger domains and that others may find them helpful in their own investigations. I start from what I call the problem of labeling; namely, the study of how the term mechanism and its cognates can be used in historical narratives. I consider three strategies involving increasing nuance and sophistication: the first seeks to define the term accurately once and for all, providing normative conceptual clarity. This may be helpful in some respects; since meanings and contexts were in a state of flux, however, it may be helpful to adopt a more historically sensitive approach, involving not only the notion of mechanism in isolation, but also what we could call its contrast class, which shifted over time. A “mechanism versus nonmechanism” approach, too, however, while helpful in some regards, may work as a straitjacket, because over time our subjects held a range of views that is not best captured by simple dichotomies. Hence it may be appropriate to move away from a dichotomous approach and to consider both a broader spectrum of philosophical positions and a broader set of terms or notions, such as organism, for example. In order to provide a more concrete and especially rich historical example, I review the positions Galen of Pergamon held at different times in his life on a 3

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number of issues to do with the soul and its faculties, as well as the fundamental differences between art and nature, technē and physis. At first the move to Galen in an essay focusing on the early modern period may seem surprising. However, Galen was a prolific and profound investigator both in anatomy and philosophy and is a valuable source for our reflections; moreover, his works circulated widely and were the focus of extensive debates throughout our period. The last section identifies a number of tensions in the mechanistic program, notably between definitions and statements in principle versus practice and concrete accomplishments; between different levels of mechanistic explanations, whether limited to macroscopic dimensions or aiming at microscopic ones; in relation to shifting understanding of the term; and between imperfect human machines versus infinitely more complex and perfect divine ones. These tensions reinforce the move away from a simple dichotomous approach and point to the need for taking into account a wider spectrum of theoretical perspectives, paying attention to actors’ categories and practices. The Problem of Labeling Several philosophers of science have sought to provide a conceptually adequate definition of the term mechanism, one addressing systematic concerns and capturing at the same time scientific practice. In their classic paper, Machamer, Darden, and Craver have argued: “What counts as a mechanism in science has developed over time and presumably will continue to do so.” Their starting point is Galileo’s reliance on the Archimedean tradition and simple machines, leading to “the mechanical philosophy.” In later centuries chemical and electrical phenomena were added to the mix: “What counts as acceptable types of entities, activities, and mechanisms change with time,” and the trend continues even today.1 The problem with some philosophers seeking to project a timeless definition onto the past is that not only the sciences and available machines but also meanings and practices shift in subtle ways in relation to broader changes in philosophical perspectives and worldviews. Over time, all such transformations can result in dramatic differences: today explanations relying on mechanism, especially those found in the life sciences, are often contrasted with lawlike explanations, which are more commonly analyzed in the philosophy of physics. In the early modern period, however, this was not the case. While most scientists today would take it for granted that physiological processes would be of a chemical and physical nature, in the seventeenth century this was the key issue at stake and several physicians and natural philosophers would have been reluctant to accept, or would have flatly denied, that complex processes like generation would occur without some immaterial guiding principle or agent—whether located in the body or more broadly in nature.

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In one among his numerous publications on mechanism, Discovering Cell Mechanisms, philosopher William Bechtel provides a general definition of our term: “A mechanism is a structure performing a function in virtue of its components parts, component operations, and their organization. The orchestrated functioning of the mechanism is responsible for one or more phenomena.”2 Here the musical metaphor emphasizes the coordinated spatial and temporal organization of the components, though in most cases this orchestra would be playing without a conductor beating the time and ensuring the timely entry of its members. Earlier in the same work Bechtel states: “The key to the mechanistic approach was not the analogy of physiological systems to human made machines but the quest to explain the functioning of whole systems in terms of the operations performed by their component parts.”3 Bechtel has put forward a perfectly legitimate normative claim here. My concern is whether his contention is a useful starting point for a historical analysis. A few pages later Bechtel moves to some historical examples and provides the specific example of the heartbeat to exemplify his point. Bechtel seems to suggest that Harvey’s understanding of the heartbeat was mechanistic, because it relied on the heart’s component parts, such as ventricles and valves: “William Harvey had already offered his own mechanical pump model for the circulation of the blood. . . . Once Harvey established that the blood circulated, the need for a pump to move blood was recognized and the functioning heart was identified as the mechanism responsible for this phenomenon.”4 It is not clear from these passages whether Bechtel would attribute the notion that the heart as a whole is a mechanism to Harvey (1578–1657), or only that some aspects of its action can be seen as such. As is well known, Harvey believed in a “pulsative” faculty of the soul responsible for its contractions, which by his own standards was nonmechanical and immaterial.5 In a different passage Bechtel suggested a dichotomy: “Aristotelian philosophy in particular advanced an anti-mechanistic conception of nature. It emphasized telos, the end state to be achieved by entities of nature, and the form, which resided in bodies, and determined their nature and what they did.”6 Here mechanism is contrasted with teleology, though this dichotomy was typical of different times, such as the nineteenth century more than the early modern period, when—with the notable exception of Descartes and some of his associates— most mechanistic anatomists and natural philosophers, from Nicolaus Steno to Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle, accepted a teleological notion of mechanism seeing the body as a God-created machine. For Descartes laws of nature are due to God; the rest—including the elaborate organization of animals and the human body—follows from them.7 In a later passage Bechtel presents seemingly tortuous claims about the French anatomist Xavier Bichat (1771–1802):

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The significance of organization for biological systems was brought home in the nineteenth century by challenges from biologists who denied that mechanisms could account for the phenomena of life. These biologists, known as vitalists, highlighted ways in which biological systems function differently than non-biological systems. Xavier Bichat (1805) is an important example. In many respects, Bichat was pursuing a program of mechanistic explanation. He attempted to explicate the behavior of different organs of the body in terms of the tissues out of which they were constructed. He decomposed these organs into different types of tissues that varied in their operations and appealed to the operations of different tissue types to explain what different organs did. But when Bichat reached the level of tissues, he abandoned the mechanistic program.8

In fact, Bichat was opposed to what were generally seen as mechanistic explanations and distinguished among tissues based on their vital properties; physical properties are proper to matter, while vital properties disappear with death. At the time the doctrine of vital principles or forces, also called vitalism, and mechanism were routinely contrasted, so the claim that “Bichat was pursuing a program of mechanistic explanation” seems curiously anachronistic. Bichat thought that the activity of organs could not be understood simply by relying on the physical properties of their component parts without attending to the vital properties of those parts. He actively opposed the mechanistic program because he deemed it erroneous.9 By the same token, if the defining feature of a mechanism is that it operates “in virtue of its components parts,” Bechtel should argue that Aristotle and Galen too, despite their teleology, in crucial respects were “pursuing a program of mechanistic explanation” because they “attempted to explicate the behavior” of bodies in terms of the organs “out of which they were constructed.” While Bechtel’s approach may be adequate for systematic concerns and analyses of the role of mechanism in biology, more sophisticated tools are needed for a meaningful historical analysis. Although reaching a historically sensitive understanding of the notion of mechanism is the goal rather than the presupposition of my investigation, this may be an appropriate place to provide some general criteria and suggest a provisional working definition. The notion of mechanism acquired different connotations over time, first encompassing and then rejecting teleology, for example. If a definition has to be historically useful it has to be historically sensitive. The problem with Bechtel’s emphasis on components and dismissal of the analogy with artificial machines is that it does not reflect the historical actors’ perception. Take for example Steno’s discussion of the brain, in which the notion of machine is so intertwined with the idea of taking it apart in order to figure out how it and its components work that any idea of separating the two appears fraught with

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difficulties: “Now since the brain is a machine, we should not hope to find its artifice [artifice] by other ways than those one uses to find the artifice of other machines. There is therefore nothing left to do besides what would be done to any other machine, I mean to dismantle piece by piece all its components [ressors (sic)] and consider what they can do separately and together.”10 Moreover, in the tradition often characterized as “vitalist,” living organisms involve chemical and physical processes differing from those unrelated to life, but they still have components—such as tissues, for Bichat. But according to Bechtel organisms and even individual organs would invariably be mechanisms, while the historical actors would have firmly opposed such a view as they would have contrasted vital properties with mechanism. Moreover, the notion of ”vitalism” has a complex history deserving a careful study: the term entered philosophical discourse around 1800 and was used immediately afterward in a highly charged political, religious, and philosophical atmosphere making it ill suited to being employed unproblematically for earlier times—with regard to both the role of the soul and the existence of a unitary vital principle as opposed to a multitude of individual forces.11 In conclusion, in this respect—though not necessarily from a contemporary philosophical perspective—dismissing the analogy with machines seems highly problematic. For my present purposes, by mechanism I understand a material structure or an object, whether macro- or microscopic, whose operation depends exclusively on the spatial arrangement and motions of its component parts. Its mode of operation can be characterized as broadly mechanical, or akin to that of artificial machines, by which I include physical and chymical processes, as they were understood in the early modern period, provided they could actually or plausibly be given a mechanistic or machinelike account—though plausible and even widely accepted accounts could also be contentious.12 An actual mechanism would be a fish’s air bladder, whose operation would make it float or sink depending on the amount of air it contains according to Archimedean hydrostatics. A plausible mechanism would be the glomerulus in the kidneys, a structure whose operation would seemingly be the filtration of urine from arterial blood—though while the structure was identified through the microscope, its mode of operation was not proven empirically.13 A New Look at Mechanisms A first step in a new direction involves a more careful analysis of our term. In Discipline and Experience Peter Dear has reminded us of the historical nature of the art/nature distinction and that “such categories as ‘art,’ ‘nature,’ and ‘machine’ are mutually interactive: their meanings change as their relationships are reconfigured.” While discussing the statement “the world is a machine,” Dear

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refers to the work of philosopher Mary Hesse, among others, supporting her view “that a metaphor is not merely descriptive of one concept in terms of another, but becomes constitutive of the meaning of both.”14 In light of these comments, it seems appropriate to look at the notion of mechanism not in isolation but together with changing notions of nature and machine and also with what could be called its evolving contrast class, including: in the early modern period faculties of the soul stemming from a classical background relying on Aristotle and Galen; in the eighteenth century, especially from the second third, vital properties relying not on immaterial souls but specific of living matter, which would differ from standard chemistry and physics; teleological explanations for part of the nineteenth; and lawlike explanations from the mid-twentieth, inspired by a philosophical outlook dominated by physics. Each of these periods would be worthy of a specific study in its own right. This schematic and crude periodization is not meant to pinpoint philosophical positions with chronological accuracy but to highlight the shifting intellectual horizons within which our term was framed and conceptualized. Joining a definition of mechanism with that of its contrast class presents several advantages to a more historicist analysis while avoiding the pitfalls of adopting a definition and projecting it into the past with scant regard to the historical actors’ approach. However, also having recourse to the notion of contrast class could be problematic, especially in dealing with the early modern period. The danger is that of seeing a complex intellectual situation in dichotomous terms, lumping together a wide range of positions that should be carefully analyzed in their own right and distinguished from each other. I consider three issues: the first is the interpretation of a number of problematic notions intersecting the understanding and definition of mechanism; the second can be characterized as “suspension of judgment,” namely the recognition that on at least some occasions, some seventeenthcentury scholars expressed doubt and uncertainly over specific issues and saw mechanistic interpretations more like a project or even a question rather than like a settled matter; lastly, I will address the issue of what I call global versus local accounts, highlighting the need to consider both perspectives if we want to reach a balanced view. In some circumstances authors used ambiguous terms whose meaning was unclear and which may have been interpreted differently by their contemporaries; expressions like “active volatile particles” could mean very small particles that are very mobile in view of their diminutive size, but it could also mean particles qualitatively different from other forms of matter in that they cannot be brought to rest because they are endowed with a special activity. Likewise, the notions of “ferments” and “active principles” follow the ambiguity of chymical processes: one could interpret them strictly mechanistically, as Descartes did,

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but they could also have different connotations stemming from their Paracelsian and Helmontian origins and implying an intrinsic activity in matter or the presence of immaterial principles.15 Similarly, the expressions “seminal principles” and “plastic powers” could refer to an immaterial property related to the process of generation, but they could also be “mechanized,” as a shorthand for a series of mechanical processes associated with the motion and textures of portions of matter of different sizes, as we are going to see in the final chapter. Many natural philosophers had recourse to plastic powers in discussing the formation of living organisms and implying finality, though both aspects were missing in Robert Hooke’s usage of “plastick virtue” in discussing snowflakes.16 And lastly, even the notion of soul could refer to an immaterial principle, a material one, or a combination of the two.17 An additional interpretative problem stems from what could be characterized as “suspension of judgment.” Many early modern authors were painfully aware of the limitation of their knowledge and of the fact that in many instances plausible explanations, whether mechanistic or not, were unavailable. Of course, at times suspension of judgment could be a tactical move, though at least at times it seems legitimate to take it as genuine. In such circumstances a cautious author such as Robert Boyle, for example, could offer a general interpretative framework while “black-boxing” the specific problem until all the details had been clarified—if they could be; this is the strategy he employed with regard to atomism versus the infinite divisibility of matter, by refusing to adjudicate the issue and talking of the corpuscular philosophy instead, which often sufficed for the issues at hand. Moreover, suspension of judgment could have genuinely different implications: in some cases, authors had already accepted a mechanistic framework; therefore, the issue was one of determining which specific mechanisms were at play. Borelli, for example boldly affirmed the mechanical nature of several processes, such as the filtration of urine in the kidneys, even when he had no precise idea how they actually worked and could only propose plausible analogies.18 In other cases, however, the mechanistic framework was in question, perhaps even looked implausible; therefore the issue was to decide between a mechanistic and an alternative account, possibly based on the role of the soul and its faculties, or on the belief that nature followed different laws in processes occurring in living organisms, compared to those of standard physics and chemistry. Lastly, often historians have privileged authors’ general worldviews over their explanations of specific processes. The mechanistic program is meant to be comprehensive, involving all phenomena in nature and specifically bodily processes, rather than piecemeal, about this or that case; thus, if our authors reject that specific processes would occur mechanistically, they would be antimechanists. The issue of which natural philosopher would truly be a mechanist is a

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long-standing one in the history of philosophy; recently Daniel Garber has adopted this approach in assessing a number of major seventeenth-century figures.19 This approach, however, obscures the progressive identification of mechanisms in specific areas: after all, to offer a mechanistic perspective involves not only making a grand philosophical statement but also providing detailed accounts of specific phenomena—such as, just to mention a few notable cases in the history of mid-seventeenth-century anatomy, the operation of the valves in the heart and in the veins, the pulsation of the arteries, or the motion of chyle in the thoracic duct and of lymph in the lymphatics. Knowledge of unidirectional valves dates from antiquity, when Erasistratus described the valves in the heart in terms echoing those used for recent technological devices, such as a two-chambered water pump equipped with four sets of unidirectional valves invented by the engineer Ctesibius, as Heinrich von Staden has shown;20 the explanations of the role of the valves in the veins and the pulsation of the arteries were due to Harvey: in the former case, he compared the valves to sluices in rivers and performed experiments with a probe in a cadaver, showing their role in allowing unidirectional flow toward the heart; in the latter case, he repeated Galen’s difficult experiment of the reed in the artery—tying a portion of an artery to a reed inserted into it—and challenged his interpretation that the arteries pulsate because of a faculty transmitted by the heart, arguing instead that they have a purely passive mechanical role and expand because of the impulsion of blood like inflated bags or gloves. As Peter Distelzweig has recently reminded us, Harvey’s overall views were emphatically not mechanistic and his limited mechanistic accounts were part of an overall neo-Aristotelian and neo-Galenic approach: the example of the pulsation of the arteries “is not an instance of a systematic effort to eliminate Galenic Faculties.” In this specific instance, however, Harvey did refute Galen’s account based on the transmission of the heart’s pulsative faculty: here it is helpful to look at his philosophical views as a whole as well as at his explanation of individual local mechanisms.21 Unlike Harvey, Jean Pecquet was a mechanist anatomist who provided an account of the motion of chyle in the thoracic duct without having recourse to what he considered inexplicable attractions, relying instead on physical notions involving the “elatery,” or elasticity, of the fibers and vessels due to respiration and digestion. Thus, one could say that he envisaged a mechanism involving chyle moving from its receptacle between the kidneys, through the thoracic duct, to the subclavian vein, where it enters the bloodstream; valves throughout the thoracic duct prevent backflow, while valves in the jugular veins prevent chyle from entering the vena cava—thus those valves would relate to the chyliferous vessels.22 The risk of privileging the global approach over the local one is to overlook the substantive shift from accounts relying overwhelmingly on the faculties, as

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with many derived from Galen’s On the Natural Faculties, for example, to those relying largely or even overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, on mechanisms; both global accounts, strictly speaking, would be nonmechanistic, though this approach may hide a huge shift from faculty-oriented to mechanistic types of explanation. These reflections highlight the problematic nature of a strictly dichotomous perspective and call for a more nuanced approach. Moreover, while it is important to reconstruct an author’s overall perspective, it seems also rewarding to choose as one’s focus a specific problem and the way different investigators addressed it. I will revisit these claims, first by taking a look back at Galen’s opinions and then by examining a number of tensions in the early modern mechanistic program. Intermezzo: Galen of Pergamon In the early modern period Galen’s status was such that his views would have been widely known and highly influential on Harvey, for example, and the entire anatomical tradition; interpreting his writings was a crucial aspect of the dispute between Giovanni Girolamo Sbaraglia and Marcello Malpighi, which started around 1690 and ended after Malpighi’s death in the early 1700s.23 My aim here is not to offer novel perspectives on Galen but more modestly to survey some of his opinions in relation to some of the themes we have examined so far, so they can serve as a term of comparison for later views. We are going to encounter limited examples of mechanistic explanations, key terms whose meanings could shift in significant and perhaps even dramatic ways, and cases of suspension of judgment, when Galen—by no means a shy or modest man—candidly admitted that despite extensive investigations, he had no answer. Galen’s views were uncompromisingly teleological; he consistently opposed the atomists’ notion that chance played any significant role in nature: at times he refers to a demiurge, other times to nature, even in the same text, such as the last book of On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (De usu partium), leaving readers to wonder what exactly he meant.24 Galen also opposed mechanistic views, whereby nature would operate as in artificial machines; his understanding of bodily processes relied overwhelmingly on nonmaterial faculties of the soul or of nature. Even so, it is possible to identify in his writings examples of specific localized processes working mechanically, though admittedly they take a minor role. On the Natural Faculties (De naturalibus facultatis) is one of the most explicit attacks on the views of the anatomist Erasistratus (3rd century BCE) and the physician Asclepiades of Bithynia (1st century BCE), even by Galen’s rather brash and aggressive standards. In it, Galen attacks mechanistic views forcefully, arguing in favor of the notion that nature operates through the faculties of genesis, growth,

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and nutrition; her operations cannot be imitated by human art, and there is a radical distinction between nature’s and human productions. Galen presents two examples that at first seem to exemplify growth, though they do so only deceptively and ultimately unsuccessfully: children playing with pig bladders, heating them in the ashes of a fire to make them grow, do not produce real growth, because the bladders lose in thickness what they gain in surface. Similarly, weaving too might simulate growth, though in reality real growth involves what is already there, a liver is already a liver before growing; by contrast, a wicker basket is not a basket until it is completed.25 Yet even in On the Natural Faculties, Galen discusses instances of processes occurring without any action of the faculties, mechanistically, such as preventing the flow of fluids through mechanical obstruction, deglutition, or by purely physical means, such as attraction due to nature’s repugnance of empty space or horror vacui, as claimed by Erasistratus. In the case of the kidneys and ureters Galen adopts different types of explanation: in his opinion the kidneys draw urine not mechanistically through filtration but through the action of the faculties by sympathetic attraction; by contrast, the unidirectional flow of urine from the kidneys to the bladder is due to the mechanical arrangement of the parts, specifically the angle with which the ureters are inserted in the bladder and a membrane preventing reflux, with an arrangement that some seventeenth-century anatomists, including Harvey, described as being “like a valve.” Galen showed that urine flows from the kidneys to the bladder with a vivisection experiment in which he applied a ligature to the ureters, which led to the accumulation of urine between the ligature and the kidneys. He also proved that the reflux of urine to the kidneys occurred neither in a living nor in a dead body through an experiment in which he applied a ligature to the penis, showing that even in such circumstances urine did not flow back.26 In the case of deglutition Galen argued that the stomach has two types of fibers, straight and circular: straight fibers attract; circular fibers do not. The intestine and the esophagus have only circular fibers that exert no attraction. Galen supports this claim by a rather unpleasant experiment relying once again on a dead body: deglutition occurs “mechanistically,” as when matter goes through a narrow passage, as one can show by pouring water into the throat of a cadaver: For what alone happens, as Erasistratus himself said, is that when the upper parts contract the lower ones dilate. And everyone knows that this can be plainly seen happening even in a dead man, if water be poured down his throat; this symptom results from the passage of matter through a narrow / channel; it would be extraordinary if the channel did not dilate when a mass was passing through it. Obviously then the dilatation of the lower parts along with the contraction of the upper is

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common both to dead bodies, when anything whatsoever is passing through them, and to living ones, whether they contract peristaltically round their contents or attract them.27

The dead body retains its basic structure for some time, enabling Galen to use it not simply in order to investigate the arrangements of the parts, as in anatomy, but as an experimental apparatus to show that certain processes are not necessarily associated with life and the faculties—in this case attraction—but result from the conformation and features of the parts. The cadaver appears here as an object sui generis with an ambiguous status, because it is no longer a human body, yet it is not artificial either, like a human-made machine; thus, in some very specific respects creations of nature and art can behave similarly.28 In a later passage Galen argues that there are two types of attraction: that of bellows, which is based on the notion of horror vacui whereby a vacuum gets filled and which can be seen as mechanical; and that of the magnet, which is due to the “appropriateness of quality” and is more akin to selective attraction typically found in bodily processes. Despite obvious differences with living bodies, Galen finds the magnet an especially appealing example of selective attraction, one that cannot be explained by means of Epicurean atoms but that provides powerful empirical evidence of the processes he envisages in the body. The scarce attraction of food by the arteries which go to the stomach and the intestine is an example of the process based on horror vacui, this being the reason why so little nutriment goes from the stomach to the arteries, because this type of attraction works only with lighter matter; namely, only the scarce, more refined nutriment: These arteries cannot get anything worth speaking of from the thick, heavy nutriment contained in the intestines and stomach, since they first become filled with lighter elements. For if you let down a tube into a vessel full of water and sand, and suck the air out of the tube with your mouth, the sand cannot come up to you before the water, for in accordance with the principle of the refilling of a vacuum the lighter matter is always the first to succeed to the evacuation. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that only a very little [nutrient matter] such, namely, as has been accurately elaborated—gets from the stomach into the arteries, since these first become filled with lighter matter. We must understand that there are two kinds of attraction, that by which a vacuum becomes refilled and that caused by appropriateness of quality; air is drawn into bellows in one way, and iron by the lodestone in another.29

Here Galen accepts that the horror vacui of Erasistratus does occur in the body in special circumstances, though Erasistratus would wrongly generalize such limited examples to all types of attraction. As Sylvia Berryman has pointed out, there are

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further comparisons between body parts and artificial machines, such as tendons and threads used in marionettes, articulation joints and pulleys, the spine and a ship’s keel, the skull and a helmet, and connecting bones with serrated saws.30 If we now move to some of Galen’s key notions, we see that in some instances they present major ambiguities. The term dunamis, for example, usually translated as “faculty,” plays a fundamental role in Galen, despite the fact that some of its defining features are problematic and mysterious. The term was used by Aristotle in relation to the soul, understood as the form of living bodies, both animals and plants: faculties would indicate the powers, activities, or capacities of the soul. In Aristotle’s time the nervous system had not been properly identified and Aristotle attributed a key role to the heart, the brain being mainly a refrigeration system, larger in humans than animals, and in men than women, because humans are hotter than other animals, and men than women.31 The situation changed with the anatomical discoveries made in the third century BCE at Alexandria. Galen relied on these transformations: On the Natural Faculties distinguished between faculties of the soul, related to perception and motion—which would pertain to animals endowed with a nervous system— from the natural faculties, which are not related to the soul and pertain to plants as well. Besides genesis, nutrition, and growth, Galen discussed the attractive, repulsive, retentive, and transformative faculties, all relating to the previous ones. A faculty of the soul would be located in the animal; by contrast, it seems plausible to consider the natural faculties as dependent on the properties of matter of living organisms in general, thus located in nature more broadly. Galen seems to be developing Stoic themes here, adopting a tripartite approach whereby some processes are common to all bodies, whether living or not; some low-level activities are characteristic of living bodies but depend only on general properties of living matter; and, finally, some activities, such as sensation and motion, depend on the soul attached to individual animals. In the late work On My Own Opinions (De propriis placitis), however, Galen underplays the significance of the shift from faculties of the soul to faculties of nature and suggests instead that in On the Natural Faculties he had referred to nature rather than the soul only because the tract was addressed to ordinary doctors (medicis popularibus).32 These issues are tied to broader interpretative problems to do with the nature of the soul and its faculties. Although Galen patiently explored different alternatives and seemingly shifted his allegiances over time, he often left his views on these matters undetermined. Overall, he saw an unbridgeable difference between human artifacts and nature’s productions; however, while he repeatedly stated his confidence in the existence of the soul, he was unsure whether the soul was material or immaterial, mortal or immortal. While from a strictly medical standpoint such views may not be of central importance, they certainly are

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from a philosophical perspective focusing on life and its properties. Despite the abstract nature of these issues, Galen sought to answer at least some of them through empirical means. For example, in his major treatise On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis), he debates whether pneuma (a mixture of air and fire) is the soul or its instrument. From a gruesome vivisection experiment, cutting and damaging an animal’s brain, Galen observes that the loss of pneuma leads to the loss of sensation and motion, though not of life, since the animal can recover. Hence, he could conclude that pneuma is not the substance of the soul, because its loss would lead to death, but only the soul’s first instrument—whatever the soul may be.33 Similar interpretative problems involve not only the nature of the soul but also its faculties. The mixture, or krasis, of the humors and their qualities could be responsible for processes that cannot be produced by us; in this sense the faculties, whether of nature or the soul, could be due to such mixtures. Mixtures play a key role in a range of physiological processes; they could be made only by nature or the demiurge, not by us. Thus, the issue is whether the faculty is the actual krasis or whether the krasis is its instrument, much like pneuma and the soul. At times, as in On Mixtures (De temperamentis), Galen suggests that there is something more to the construction of our body than the humoral qualities, however combined; those qualities would be the instruments of a higher, more divine, cause: A second mistake is the failure to regard the natural cause of our construction as a craftsmanlike faculty [dunameos], whereby the parts are formed in a way suited to the characters of our souls. This was a point on which even Aristotle was in some doubt: should this faculty not be attributed to some more divine cause, rather than just to hot, cold, dry, and wet? Those who rush to make simplistic statements of this greatest of issues, and explain construction purely in terms of the humoral qualities, seem to me to be in error. The latter are surely only the instruments, whereas the cause responsible for construction is something different from them.34

However, in one of his last works, The Capacities [or Faculties] of the Soul Depend on the Mixtures of the Body (Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur), Galen returns to the topic; following Plato, he accepts a tripartite soul located in the liver, heart, and brain, and claims that the first two are mortal. He leaves undecided whether the third is mortal—though in fact he strongly suggests that it is; he also strongly suggests—without, however, formally committing himself to this opinion—that the tripartite soul and its faculties are precisely the krasis of the four qualities, hot, cold, dry, and humid. As Galen puts it: Now, if the reasoning form of the soul is mortal, it too will be a particular mixture, [namely] of the brain; and thus all the forms and parts of the soul will have their

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capacities dependent on the mixture—that is, on the substance of the soul; but if it is immortal, as is Plato’s view, he would have done well, himself, to write an explanation as to why it is separated when the brain is very cooled, or excessively heated, dried or moistened—in the same way that he wrote the other matters relevant to it. For death takes place, according to Plato, when the soul is separated from the body. But why great voiding of blood, the drinking of hemlock, or a raging fever, causes this separation, I would have certainly have wanted to learn from him, if he were himself alive.35

Thus, the rational soul too joins a list of problematic and ambiguous notions that could be used and interpreted in radically different ways, especially whether it is a mortal mixture of qualities, hot, cold, dry, wet, or of bodies with those qualities, or how it could be immortal and yet crucially dependent on bodily processes. The Galenic corpus is among the largest extant in ancient Greek; my account does not even begin to do justice to its richness and complexity. Nevertheless, even from our limited perspective, we have seen examples of his reliance on limited physical/mechanical explanations within an emphatically nonmechanistic framework, conceptual and terminological problems and ambiguities, and his extensive reliance on suspension of judgment on major philosophical issues. Interpretative Tensions Returning to the early modern period after this brief Galenic excursus, we identify a number of tensions affecting the mechanistic program not entirely unrelated to some of the problems we have just encountered. Both early modern authors and their recent interpreters have struggled with definitions, projects, and practices; as we are going to see, these issues are profoundly interrelated. While in some cases mechanistic accounts were discussed in the abstract, here I focus on more concrete and specific practices. In some instances, the problem was to make sense of the same devices that could be seen in a different light by different people and over time, as living or mechanical, for example, as Vera Keller has reminded us in the case of Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel. At times just naming such devices—a perpetual motion machine, a cosmoscope, or a thermoscope, for example—would frame them within a different interpretative system. Magnetic devices had an especially ambiguous status since Galen, but even watches could be seen as alive by someone unfamiliar with their construction, as Boyle had argued polemically against Henry More: “If I had / been with those Jesuites, that are said to have presented the first watch to the King of China, who took it to be a living Creature, I should have thought I had fairly accounted for it, if, by the shape, size, motion, &c. of the Spring-wheels, balance and other parts of the watch I had shewn, that an

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Engine of such a structure would necessarily mark the hours, though I could not have brought an argument to convince the Chinese-Monarch, that it was not endowed with Life.”36 A major topic in contemporary debates involves the level of mechanical explanation, an issue with problematic implications also in the early modern period. Some very strict interpretations of the mechanical philosophy would involve only the size, shape, and motion of particles. This would be a rather narrow set of tools on the basis of which it would be exceedingly difficult to explain even some basic properties of matter, such as its solidity, let alone more special ones, such as those associated with chymical properties, for example, or elasticity, one stemming from antiquity and which Leonardo also explored but which rose to prominence in the second half of the seventeenth century. We are so used to it that we take it for granted; yet elasticity is a strange and complex property affecting solid bodies, such as a piece of coiled metal, rebounding billiard balls, and gases bound in a container; in either case, matter seems to have a memory of its previous state and a tendency to return to it. Despite its ubiquity, even today few people would be able to provide a vague account of why a bent metal bar seeks to return to its original position, let alone explain it. Elasticity relates to anatomy too, since the arteries and other body parts are elastic, as Jean Pecquet pointed out in 1651.37 How would seventeenth-century natural philosophers try to explain it in terms of size, shape, and motion of particles? Descartes boldly attempted to explain elasticity through the motion of particles—but Descartes boldly tried to explain most things that way. However, as Barnaby Hutchins has recently argued, even Descartes was far from adopting this approach consistently.38 Finding a way to account for elasticity was a challenge: was it mechanical, if no empirically based explanation in terms of the size, shape, and motion of particles and components was forthcoming? In De potentia restitutiva (1678), for example, Hooke puts forward a hypothesis to account for elasticity in terms of the “congruity and incongruity” among bodies, by which he understands “an agreement or disagreement of Bodys as to their Magnitudes and motions.”39 We may approach the matter from a different perspective, not in terms of the component parts and internal organization of an elastic body but rather in terms of plausibility and analogy with mechanical devices. In the 1670s both Hooke and Christiaan Huygens designed spring-regulated watches, relying on the notion that the oscillations of a spring are isochronous—that they occur in equal times regardless of their amplitude. In Horologium oscillatorium (1673) Huygens had shown that the oscillations of a pendulum clock constrained by cycloidal cheeks were also isochronous: in both cases at each point the force was proportional to the displacement. Thus, a spring-regulated watch behaved like, or was

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Fig. 1.1. Spring-regulated watch. Huygens, “Extrait d’une letter” (1675). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

equivalent to, a pendulum clock, an updated version of an archetypal mechanical device that was explicitly described in the review of Horologium oscillatorium in the Philosophical Transactions as a “Mechanism” (fig. 1.1). Arguably, once springs entered the design of the archetypal mechanical device, the question of whether elasticity was mechanical appeared in a different light. Similarly, in referring to water fountains operating by the spring or elasticity of the air, Hooke mentions the “great number of uses that are and may be made of Springs in Mechanic Contrivances.”40 Thus, the situation in those decades was evolving in such a way that practices, analogies, and inferences, in addition to attempts at detailed explanations of microcomponents, affected the plausibility of mechanistic accounts and the very domain of mechanics. The Jesuit Claude François Milliet Dechales (1621– 1678), for example, devoted the eighth book of Cursus seu mundus mathematicus (1690) to elaterium, or elasticity: after seven preliminary propositions debating its physical nature, he produced thirty mathematical theorems on the collision of bodies. The entire book, however, is part of a section on mechanics, sandwiched between one on the force of percussion and one on statics: whatever account one could give of the internal organization of bodies, elasticity had become part of mechanics.41 Elasticity plays an important role in Boyle’s work as an example among others of a mechanical affection of matter. Boyle put matters this way in the 1666 On

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the Origine of Forms and Qualities According to the Corpuscular Philosophy, a text Henry Oldenburg presented as an “Introduction to the Principles of the Mechanical Philosophy”: That then, which I chiefly aime at, is to make it Probable to you by / Experiments, (which I Think hath not yet beene done:) That allmost all sorts of Qualities, most of which have been by the Schooles either left Unexplicated, or Generally referr’d, to I know not what Incomprehensible Substantiall Formes; may be produced Mechanically, I mean by such Corporeall Agents, as do not appear, either to Work otherwise, then by vertue of the Motion, Size, Figure, and Contrivance of their own Parts, (which Attributes I call the Mechanicall Affections of Matter, because to Them men willingly Referre the various Operations of Mechanical Engines:) or to Produce the new Qualities exhibited by those Bodies their Action changes, by any other way, then by changing the Texture, or Motion, or some other Mechanical Affection of the Body wrought upon.42

In a recent essay Garber cites the same passage but then curiously he focuses only on motion, size, and figure, omitting to discuss explicitly the notion of contrivance. Arguably contrivance could be accounted for in terms of motion, size, and figure, yet it is intriguing that Boyle lists it together with the other three, as if the relation between contrivance and the other notions was problematic. Later in the same text Boyle argues that engines perform their operations by virtue of the material properties of their parts, emphasizing once again his dislike of substantial forms and preference for a body’s four mechanical affections: “And if several Active Qualities convene in one Body, (as that which in our Hypothesis is meant by Forme, usually comprises several of them,) what great things may be thereby perform’d, may be somewhat guess’d at by the strange things we see done by some Engines which, being, as Engins, undoubtedly devoid of Substantial Forms, must do those strange things they are admir’d for, by virtue of those Accidents, the / Shape, Size, Motion, and Contrivance, of their parts.”43 Boyle is traditionally very guarded: he states that he makes it “probable” that “almost all” qualities “may” be produced mechanically. Here, as in the previous passage, he includes “contrivance” together with shape, size, and motion among the “Mechanicall Affections of Matter.” At the time this notion was closely tied to that of mechanism, especially in Hooke’s Micrographia (1665), which appeared the year before Boyle’s Origine. This notion plays an important part in Boyle’s account: at times he seems to imply the macroscopic arrangement of the parts of an object, as in a clock; other times he has in mind their internal microscopic arrangement, determining their texture. In the latter case, however, how one could explain the cohesion, elasticity, and similar properties of bodies was a problematic matter.44 Arguing against Henry More’s hylarchic principle, which

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was an incorporeal agent allegedly explaining Boyle’s hydrostatic experiments, Boyle explicitly counted “spring” and “weight” among the mechanical affections of matter: “Such Mechanical Affections of matter, as the Spring and Weight of the Air, the Gravity and Fluidity of the water and other Liquors, may suffice to produce and account for the Phaenomena without recourse to an Incorporeal Creature.”45 We face here the first tension concerning what we could call the transition across different levels of mechanistic explanation: seventeenth-century discussions differ from more recent ones because at the time it was unclear and also contentious whether the different levels would be amenable to mechanistic explanations at all. In a remarkable passage from The Excellency of Theology Compar’ d with Natural Philosophy (1674), Boyle states: And though Nature (or rather its Divine Author) be wont to work with much finer materials, and employ more curious contrivances than Art, (whence the Structure even of the rarest Watch is incomparably inferiour to that of a Humane Body;) yet an Artist himself, according to the quantity of the matter he imploys, the exigency of the design he undertakes, and the bigness and shape of the Instruments he makes use of, is able to make pieces of work of the same nature or kind of extremely differing bulk, where yet the like, though not equal, Art and Contrivance, and oftentimes Motion too, may be observ’d.46

After providing some specific examples, Boyle continues with a passage echoing one from Hooke’s Micrographia: “And therefore to say, that, though in Natural Bodies, whose bulk is manifest and their structure visible, the Mechanical Principles may be usefully admitted, that are not to be extended to such portions of Matter, whose parts and Texture are invisible; may perhaps look to some, as if a man should allow, that the Laws of Mechanism may take place in a TownClock; but cannot in a Pocket-Watch.”47 As Hooke had put it in Micrographia: “We know there may be as much curiosity of contrivance, and excellency of form in a very small Pocket-clock, that takes not up an Inch square of room, as there may be in a Church-clock that fills a whole room.”48 Boyle is very forthcoming here in arguing that “Mechanical Principles” or the “Laws of Mechanism” can be extended from known visible structures to unknown invisible ones. Overall, however, such a move was seen as problematic at the time and more recently has been hotly debated by historians.49 In some cases, the issue was not even one of moving across levels of mechanistic explanations but to provide some form of a mechanistic account in the first place. Despite the huge increase in the mechanical devices available in the seventeenth century, the range of conceptual and material tools available was comparatively limited, as Malpighi lamented. How could investigators hope to

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account for complex processes formerly seen as related to the natural faculties of nutrition, growth, and generation, or processes of secretion, muscle contraction, and sensory perception? At times anatomists could provide only partial and limited explanations. In the case of secretion, for example, the precise mechanism involved eluded Malpighi; however, in some cases he provided some partial explanations by identifying what he called “glands,” or structures within a number of organs where the process would occur. Some, as in the cerebral cortex, proved to be artifacts of his preparation techniques; others, as in the kidneys, proved fertile for further studies. In the case of growth, Malpighi envisaged a process analogous to weaving, and identified structures resembling textiles in bone and plants.50 An aspect related to the level of explanation concerns the role of macroscopic versus microscopic components. In the preface to Micrographia Hooke outlines the mechanistic program he associated with instruments enhancing the senses, and especially the microscope. Referring to members of the Royal Society, he states: By this means they find some reason to suspect, that those effects of Bodies, which have been commonly attributed to Qualities, and those confess’d to be occult, are perform’d by the small Machines of Nature, which are not to be discern’d without these helps, seeming the meer products of Motion, Figure, and Magnitude; and that the Natural Textures, which some call the Plastick faculty, may be made in Looms, which a greater perfection of Opticks may make discernable by these Glasses; so as now they are no more puzzled about them, then the vulgar are to conceive, how Tapestry or flowred Stuffs [textile fabrics] are woven.51

Here Hooke ties the ability of instruments to enhance vision to an explicit antiAristotelian agenda, uncovering behind occult inexplicable qualities and plastic faculties nothing but motion, figure, size, and textures or the material conformation and arrangement of the constituent parts; he argues that the learned would be no more puzzled by those natural textures than common people are by the woven structure of fabrics. Although his simile in this passage seems purely rhetorical, in fact it was quite adroit because weaving was a common mechanical analogy in the study of plants and animals stemming from antiquity, at least from Erasistratus. Hooke himself identified the structure of some leaves as resembling a textile: “the smooth surfaces of other Plants are otherwise quilted, Nature in this, as it were, expressing her Needle-work or imbroidery.” Malpighi too repeatedly adopted similar views relying on textile analogies in trying to grasp nature’s operations, such as growth, for example.52 In a recent essay dealing specifically with generation, Karen Detlefsen has put the matter thus: “For my purposes, I define mechanism as the belief that all changes at the phenomenal level—that is, all changes we experience—are due to

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the lawful motion and contact of sub-visible matter that is inherently inert and quantitatively, not qualitatively, defined.”53 Detlefsen’s definition fits well with Hooke’s claim. However, her requirement is very strict: in the seventeenth century many mechanisms (such as the valves in the veins and milky veins, and the components of a clock or a mill) involved macroscopic components and did not require descending to a subvisible level. In Origine of Formes and Qualities Boyle put the matter thus with regard to a lock: That was onely a Piece of Iron, contriv’d into such a Shape; and when afterwards he made a Key to that Lock, That also in it self Consider’d, was nothing but a Piece of Iron of such a Determinate Figure: but in Regard that these two Pieces of Iron might now be Applied to one another after a Certain manner, and that there was a Congruitie betwixt the Wards of the Lock and those of the Key, the Lock and the Key did each of them now Obtain a new Capacity and it became a Main part of the Notion and Description of a Lock, that it was capable of being made to Lock or Unlock by that other Piece of Iron we call a Key, and it was Lookd upon as a Peculiar Faculty and Power in the Key, that it was Fitted to Open and Shut the Lock, and yet by these new Attributes there was not added any Real or Physical Entity, either to the Lock, or to the / Key, each of them remaining indeed nothing, but the same Piece of Iron, just so Shap’d as it was before.54

In some respects Boyle’s passage echoes Hooke’s Micrographia, which had been published the previous year. While Hooke emphasized miniaturization, however, Boyle emphasized the spatial relations between lock and key, which taken together could be seen as a contrivance or mechanism. This rather complex passage has attracted considerable attention to Boyle’s views on relations; my interests here are centered on Boyle’s reliance on macroscopic objects to account for qualities. To be sure, Boyle goes on to provide other examples involving microscopic effects; nevertheless, Detlefsen’s emphasis on the shift from a visible to a subvisible level, while appropriate to her topic, seems too restrictive for a wider study.55 Finally, I wish to address the tension between human artifacts and nature’s or God’s creations. It was a common rhetorical trope to compare the two, as we have seen in the previous passage by Boyle, except that the latter were deemed superior, perhaps incomparably so, to the former: even within the limitations of matter, God worked with a perfection that humans could not imitate for any size, and of course those levels were severely limited for humans, while God operated freely with them. In A Discourse of a Method, for example, Descartes argues that many motions of the human body can occur without the consent of the will, and then continues: “Which wil seem nothing strange to those, who knowing how many Automatas or moving Machines the industry of men can make, imploying but

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very few pieces, in comparison of the great abundance of bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and all the other parts which are in the body of every Animal, will consider / this body as a fabrick, which having been made by the hands of God, is incomparably better ordered, and hath more admirable motions in it then any of those which can be invented by men.”56 Here, as in other passages by Descartes and his contemporaries, God’s creation is presented as “incomparably better ordered” than not only human actual creations but also any that “can be invented” by us. Thus, while in some respects a plant or an animal would resemble a human-made machine, because it would lack a soul and the faculties, in other respects there would be an unbridgeable gap of complexity between the two. Presenting matters this way raises the issue of whether it makes sense to compare human and divine/natural productions; the point of establishing a parallel between them is to show their similarity. However, introducing a distinction between such different artisans as humans and God runs the risk of transforming a quantitative into a qualitative difference, one potentially reinforced by having recourse to the notion of infinite perfection. Leibniz argued along these lines, raising the question as to whether an infinitely complex and perfect God-created machine, one that therefore cannot be imitated by human hands, would still be a machine in any meaningful way. The language of infinite complexity and perfection reintroduces troubling differences that the talk of machines was meant to erase.57 Concluding Reflections The extensive reflections and investigations on the notion of mechanism in the early modern period require careful handling. I have argued that it is helpful to consider the notion of mechanism not only in isolation, or even together with its shifting contrast class, but also in a not-dichotomous fashion in relation to the meaning and usage of a cluster of other potentially related key terms. We have seen that a number of terms and expressions, such as “volatile active particles,” “fermentation,” “plastic powers,” “seminal principles,” and “soul,” could be ambiguous and had shifting meaning. Moreover, the intellectual world was not divided in a Manichean fashion: it is necessary to consider a range of positions both within the mechanical philosophy and, more broadly, intersecting it. At times authors, from Galen in antiquity to early modern ones, adopted suspension of judgment as a cautious strategy when they knew no better, leaving matters undecided; for some, mechanistic accounts offered plausible explanations within a limited domain in a broader nonmechanistic framework; for others the mechanical philosophy raised legitimate and genuine questions—as Dennis Des Chene has convincingly argued, it was an investigative project rather than an ontological dogma.58

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I have also identified a cluster of problems associated with a discourse on mechanism. An account based exclusively on the identification of mechanisms, ignoring the broader intellectual horizon within which anatomists operated, would be one-sided and misleading and would present history as a progressive linear march of successive mechanical interpretations. However, focusing exclusively on that intellectual horizon would also be misleading because it would ignore the progressive shift toward mechanistic explanations in investigative practices, in the form of solving specific problems relying on the available tools. In recent decades we have come to recognize that the mechanical philosophy was not a monolith molded by Descartes in terms of the size and shape of particles in motion and left unchanged for decades but a set of evolving and problematic views and projects whose contents and boundaries were puzzling and contested and which could be adopted piecemeal and shaped by different authors according to their needs and intellectual inclinations. We can make sense of the notion of mechanism within this fluid framework rather than by setting fixed and anachronistic criteria. I hope that these reflections and hermeneutical strategies may prove useful to historians and philosophers investigating similar problems in different periods, and to those studying the notion of mechanism in contemporary scientific practice. The notion of mechanism is deeply embedded in the intellectual texture and debates of successive periods; the historian wishing to make sense of our notion at a certain time cannot study it in isolation but needs to reconstruct the intellectual world of that time.

Chapter 2

Mechanism and Visualization The visual representation of mechanisms is one among many problems at the intersection between graphic conventions and conceptual issues that philosophers have studied. My main focus in this chapter is on a time when mechanisms were relying on mechanics and on a spatial understanding of the world, making them especially suited to visual representation. My concerns echo and develop both contemporary practices and opinions, from early beautifully illustrated books of machines to Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia (1728), whose entry on the “Mechanical Philosophy” states: “It is frequently found helpful to decypher, or picture out in Diagrams, whatsoever is under consideration.”1 This chapter focuses on the representation of mechanisms in the anatomical literature, broadly conceived. This large area spans from classic mechanical devices, like levers accounting for muscular motion, to floating bodies, explaining the role of air bladders in the floating of fish, for example. I shall focus on select cases that I find especially intriguing and thought-provoking. The extensive connections between anatomical mechanisms and human artifacts, old and new, however, make a narrow disciplinary approach problematic; therefore, I shall not refrain from discussing images outside anatomy.2 While discussing several images and identifying some general areas for reflection, I am not seeking to provide a comprehensive analysis. I hope that prospectively my work could be developed both chronologically and conceptually. Here I wish to investigate a few episodes and questions in the long century between Andreas Vesalius and Robert Hooke. In his monumental De humani corporis fabrica (1543), Vesalius established a new visual language, perhaps even a range of languages, for representing the human body. At the other endpoint of my narrative, Hooke was a master of mechanical thinking whose Micrographia (1665) was one of the most visually striking books ever produced: many of its images show structures of insects and plants based on microscopic observations detailing a wealth of mechanisms. A brief coda discusses a few images from Anatomia huma25

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ni corporis (1685) by the Dutch anatomist Govert Bidloo, whose work enriched and problematized previous visual traditions but also highlighted the difficulties in representing microscopic structures requiring elaborate and problematic techniques to be made visible. I examine individual images and their specific implications as well as their authors’ philosophical views: it will not surprise readers at this stage that even anatomists who were opposed to an overall mechanistic understanding of the body, from Vesalius to William Harvey, could accept mechanistic interpretations in limited domains and represent them visually. Conversely, some anatomists firmly in the mechanist camp, such as Marcello Malpighi, for example, produced images challenging specific mechanistic accounts in contrast with the anatomical evidence—although Malpighi would have welcomed alternative mechanistic explanations. Let me start by briefly considering the problem of visual representation of mechanisms from a contemporary perspective. Today we are used to visual representations of mechanisms in many forms, though perhaps the most common ones involve a combination of different levels and temporal stages, traditionally indicated by blow-up diagrams, arrows, boxes, plus and minus signs for electric charge, color coding, abstract symbols for different components, and other graphic conventions. We have tacitly learned to identify in visual representations of mechanisms a combination of conceptual tools and conventions capturing key elements of the process, involving the spatial and temporal evolution of both structures and their related activities.3 In the simplified representation of the mechanism of taste shown in fig. 2.1, for example, a gustatory cell or bud is shown in the center; on the left, a blowup diagram shows in greater detail a lipid bilayer with different types of tasteinducing particles. Taste is determined by electric potential signals, which are represented by a curve at bottom left with a double arrow to indicate the changing voltage difference and the degree to which differently shaped particles penetrate the lipid bilayer. On the right, a network of neural transmitters carries the signal to the brain, a process indicated by a series of arrows both from the taste cell to the neural transmitters and from one neural transmitter to its contiguous ones. My description may sound pedantic, such is the level of familiarity we have with this type of schematic representations; they have become so much part of our visual experience that we tend to take them for granted. This, however, would be unjustified historically. Visual representations of mechanisms were not always the same: they have a history that we need to uncover if we want to understand their role. My aim is to explore some early examples of those visual representations.

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Fig. 2.1. Mechanism of taste. Courtesy of Taste and Aroma Institute, Japan.

Preamble: New Forms of Visual Representation Several historians of art and science have emphasized the key role of images in the Renaissance world of learning, especially in the aftermath of the emergence of the printing press from the second half of the fifteenth century. Recently Susan Dackerman’s rich exhibition Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe and its sumptuous catalog of the same title have provided one of the most extensive and detailed formulations of this thesis, documenting the usage of prints in areas as diverse as the study of nature and the construction of mathematical instruments, arguing that prints served not only as records of the natural world but also as conceptual and material investigative tools.4 Although Dackerman does not dwell specifically on this issue, it is clear that strategies to render three-dimensionality, from linear perspective to chiaroscuro, emerged as key components of the visual language of Renaissance prints. This is a dimension worth exploring for its connections with the study and representations of machines and mechanisms. Over the last few decades historians of art and of science have debated the role of new forms of visual representation in engineering, the mathematical, and natural sciences, notably the development of geometrical and representational techniques known as linear perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), and their

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contemporaries. Art historian James Elkins has argued that perspective is best seen not as a single “invention” based on a unified visual space that occurred in the Renaissance attributable to Brunelleschi or Alberti but rather as a cluster of representational and mathematical techniques for depicting objects that took shape and were applied over a long period, culminating in the Enlightenment. Besides novel forms of visual representation, linear perspective also led to particular attention being paid to subjects especially suited to being represented that way, in architecture and nature alike.5 Such comments enrich and problematize theses about perspective and engineering drawings put forward long ago by such notable art historians as Erwin Panofsky, Samuel Edgerton, and Martin Kemp, among others, though this is a complex matter, as we will see. Some historians of art and science have argued that the impact of those new forms of representation from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries played a major role not only in the visual arts and the related fields of geometry and optics but also in the transformations of knowledge of the seventeenth century commonly referred to as the Scientific Revolution.6 By contrast, others have questioned one or several aspects of this thesis, such as the claim that the emergence of linear perspective was a single or unified development, or that it played a significant role in the seminal works in rational mechanics and the science of motion. In recent years our understanding of the transformations in the investigations of nature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has broadened to include not only the classic fields of theoretical mechanics and astronomy but also other areas, such as practical mechanics and the science of machines, natural history, chymistry, and anatomy, for example. My aim here is briefly to review this debate by looking at different areas and their specific features.7 Edgerton has been a vocal advocate of the crucial role of perspective and images more broadly in different contexts. One, very localized, area concerns Galileo’s ability to detect features on the moon’s surface based on his firsthand experience with chiaroscuro painting techniques: his trained eye recognized the motion of dark and bright spots as the result of sunlight moving across mountains and valleys, something his English contemporary Thomas Harriot (1560– 1621)—admittedly working with a somewhat lesser telescope—failed to do. Here the issue was not primarily with the mathematical theory of perspective but rather with chiaroscuro painting techniques enhancing three-dimensional spatial perception though the observation of moving light and shade.8 Edgerton’s broader claim is bolder, less precise, and more problematic. By looking at the manuscript works of Sienese engineers such as Mariano di Jacopo, called Taccola (1382–1453), who was personally acquainted with his Florentine contemporary Brunelleschi, and Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1501), Edgerton identified new forms of representation in engineering and technical

Fig. 2.2. Water-raising machine. Agricola, De re metallica (1556), 155. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 2.3. Weapons sharpener and legumes grinder. Zonca, Novo teatro (1607).

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drawings largely, though by no means exclusively, inspired by perspective. In addition, those drawings display a remarkably wide range of representation techniques, such as “exploded,” “transparent,” and also “cutaway” views, showing the spatial relationships and order of assembly of the component parts, as well as components or features in outline, light shading, or even removed altogether, allowing the viewer to see behind them. A number of broadly contemporary German texts show that these developments were not limited to Italy. Many of them remained in manuscript form, but in the sixteenth century several treatises lavishly illustrated with woodcuts and then engravings appeared in print, such as De la pirotechnia (1540), by the Sienese metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio (1480–1539); De re metallica (1556), by the German physician and metallurgist Georgius Agricola (1494–1555); and Le diverse et artificiose machine (1588), by the military engineer Agostino Ramelli (1531–ca. 1600), among others. To these one could add Spiritalium liber (Book on pneumatics, or pneumatic devices; 1575) by the engineer Heron of Alexandria (1st century CE), with many later editions and translations. Early in the seventeenth century the Padua architect and Galileo contemporary Vittorio Zonca (1568–1602) published Novo teatro di machine et edificii (1607), partly relying on works by Agricola and Francesco di Giorgio documenting a wealth of contemporary machines with remarkable engravings.9 A typical woodcut from Agricola’s treatise, for example, offers a perspectival view of an elaborate water-raising machine operated by two men walking inside a wheel (fig. 2.2). The next engraving, from Zonca’s work, shows a device serving two purposes: the nearly horizontal man at bottom right is sharpening weapons, whereas the round device above him at the top of the stairs is for grinding legumes (fig. 2.3). Notice that the wheel to which the horse is attached is below ground. In a rectangular insert at the top of the plate Zonca shows the crucial pieces of machinery or mechanisms of his device; this technique for highlighting the key parts was not uncommon at the time. In the text he also provides the dimensions and key features of those crucial parts.10 At times Edgerton seems to assume that such works and images were used in practice by technicians and engineers. A study of their intended audience and usage, however, is a complex matter. While some drawings were used as a form of communication between engineers designing machines and technicians building them, or as tool for investigation and research to be kept in private archives, others are best seen in terms of patronage moves or as elucidating the theoretical basis on which machines operated. In this light it seems reductive and potentially misleading to look at images of machines as if they could be placed in a linear progressive trajectory from “primitive, erroneous, and ineffectual” medieval representations to increasingly accurate ones based on perspective and related conventions. David

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McGee has identified Edgerton as “perhaps the worst example” in this regard and has convincingly argued that technicians and engineers familiar with the construction of machines would have made sense of medieval drawings, while the introduction of perspectival techniques may have had more to do with patronage motivations than an increase in accuracy, however defined, for its own sake.11 Edgerton has adopted a comparative approach, arguing that the “objective power” of the techniques of representation adopted was peculiar to the West and that a Chinese translation of Ramelli’s work, for example, failed to understand the graphic conventions adopted and therefore produced an image that bore no relation to the actual operation of the machine. It is worth adding, however, that the difficulties in making sense of Ramelli’s diagram do not imply that the Chinese or other Asian cultures were unfamiliar with automata or unable to build them. On the contrary, automata and other elaborate machines from a range of Asian sources reached Europe, where they were largely unknown, in medieval times. Edgerton has also argued that these new forms of visual representation were instrumental to developments in the first half of the seventeenth century: “It may have been of no small significance to their later contributions that the first generation of ‘modern’ scientists like Francis Bacon, Galileo, William Harvey, and Descartes were also the first to have before them as schoolboys scientific textbooks illustrated in the new Renaissance chiaroscuro and linear perspective style.”12 While one may wish to know which “scientific textbooks” Edgerton has in mind here, his comments raise the question of the genre of the publications in which images appeared and of their intended audience. But even if one considers that relevant images would have become widely available, whether they appeared in textbooks or other publications, questions remain. In a pointed rejoinder, for example, the historian of mathematics Michael Mahoney has questioned Edgerton’s assumptions and conclusions. While Edgerton believes that images of machines and mechanical devices, not only drawn but possibly also conceived and designed through perspectival techniques, played a central role in the Scientific Revolution, Mahoney privileges diagrams and graphs helping to visualize abstract parameters that previously could be seen only with the mind, such as those involving time and velocity, for instance. One may add here that some forms of graphs representing abstract variables date from medieval times, as with the doctrine of the intension and remission of forms in which several variables, such as speed, time, heat, or even “whiteness” are tabulated on the horizontal and vertical axes. In addition, according to Mahoney, the seventeenth century witnessed the rise of powerful and abstract algebraic techniques involving parameters and equations: those techniques, not perspectival drawings of machines, truly would have played the key role.13

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The disagreement between Edgerton and Mahoney concerns not only the role of perspective in seventeenth-century investigations of nature but also to some extent the nature of those investigations and the identity of their protagonists. Edgerton mentions Bacon, Galileo, Harvey, and Descartes, whereas Mahoney focuses on the protagonists of the mathematical study of nature: Galileo, Huygens, and Isaac Newton. Some of Edgerton’s choices appear questionable— Bacon, for example, is not noted for his reliance on visual material, apart from allegorical title pages; in fact, he privileged experiments investigating natural processes over visual representations. Harvey explicitly questioned the usefulness and reliability of images and refrained from using them; in his opinion each visual representation of the same object is slightly different from the other, thus they all introduce subtle errors. Apart from a title page featuring Jupiter enthroned opening an egg, his published works include one image only, in four parts, admittedly an important one that we will discuss below, though hardly a match to major classics in the anatomical tradition.14 While Mahoney is right in pointing to vagueness in Edgerton’s thesis and to shortcomings in its formulation, I suspect that there may be more to the claim that visual and specifically perspectival renderings played a significant role in early modern investigations of nature than is claimed by Edgerton. Mahoney provided a serious challenge, though one wonders whether at times he may have overstated and overextended his case. The profound transformations of knowledge in the early modern period touched on different areas, the growth of abstract thinking, algebra, and equations being only some of them that, moreover, developed rather late. If one were to follow Mahoney’s thesis, one would have to question the role of images in general, not only of linear perspective, in the transformations of knowledge of the early modern period. Edgerton and Mahoney, however, share at least one feature: the largely overlapping emphasis on seventeenthcentury developments. Throughout the long sixteenth century, however, visual representations, specifically relying on a range of perspectival techniques, played a major role in many areas. As Pamela Long has recently argued regarding Francesco di Giorgio and Leonardo, “their writings contributed to a culture of knowledge in which instrumentation, tools, machines, and indeed, drawings, came to play a crucial role in legitimating knowledge claims about the world, including its natural and mechanical components.”15 Whether drawings were intended as private studies or as elaborate gifts to powerful patrons, as largely decorative elements or as cognitive tools for designing machines or representing nature, they characterized large portions of the world of learning in the Renaissance and beyond. In fact, one may question whether in many cases it is helpful or even possible to draw a sharp line between patronage, social, and cognitive motivations. Wolfgang Lefèvre listed approxi-

Fig. 2.4. Great equatorial armillary sphere. Brahe, Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (1602). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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mately two dozen presentational manuscript and printed treatises of machines for the two long centuries from physician Guido da Vigevano († ca. 1349) and military engineer Konrad Keyser († ca. 1405), through Agricola and Ramelli in the sixteenth century, to Zonca and Huguenot hydraulic engineer Salomon de Caus (1576–1626) early in the seventeenth; in these works, patronage and cognitive motivations were closely intermingled, perhaps deliberately so. As we are going to see, the same applies to De humani corporis fabrica, the epochmaking anatomy treatise that Andreas Vesalius dedicated to Emperor Charles V in 1543.16 In the art and science of war, for example, mathematical drawings—whether in perspectival form or “decomposed” in ground plan and elevation—played a key role in triangulating a terrain, designing fortifications and bastions, or investigating the trajectory of cannon balls. Many published on these matters, from the Italian mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia (1499–1557) and Spanish military engineer Diego Ufano (†1613) to Galileo, who investigated and lectured on such topics as professor of mathematics at Padua. Instruments and devices of various sorts, too, for both measuring and representing nature, played a key role throughout the early modern period and in many domains, from astronomy and the science of motion to hydraulics and pneumatics. Perhaps no set of instruments was more wondrous than the one Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) built and described in Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (1598; 1602). The woodcut of the great equatorial armillary instrument gives an effective perspectival view of the extraordinary device, with a small human figure at bottom left providing an idea of its scale (fig. 2.4).17 Renaissance astronomical instruments, whether actually built or merely designed, were not used exclusively as measuring devices but also for representing the cosmos or some of its features. Johannes Kepler’s model of the Copernican universe in his Mysterium cosmographicum (1596) was not widely accepted; nevertheless it has attained iconic status with its three-dimensional representation drawing the viewer’s eye deeper into the nested Platonic solids separated by spheres, proving in Kepler’s opinion the mathematical necessity of the Copernican system (fig. 2.5). A careful rendering of perspective and shading is central to this striking image, whose role was significant precisely because a physical model was not built.18 Later in the century the air pumps designed by Otto von Guericke and Robert Boyle were depicted in elaborate three-dimensional format. But images—besides Galileo’s moon drawings—played a significant role even for the authors considered and indeed singled out by Mahoney, such as Huygens. Huygens’s magnum opus, Horologium oscillatorium, relies on geometric diagrams, graphs, proportions, and algebraic techniques, as Mahoney has shown. However, the issue for

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Fig. 2.5. Planets and Platonic solids. Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum (1596). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Huygens was not only to determine the exact shape of the cheeks constraining the pendulum so its oscillations would be isochronous, the center of oscillation of a compound or physical pendulum, or other mathematical properties but also to construct a viable clock sufficiently accurate to determine longitude at sea. The book was written in Latin, was addressed to a learned audience proficient in higher mathematics, and was dedicated to Louis XIV. However, Huygens also es-

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Fig. 2.6. Marine pendulum clock. Huygens, Horologium oscillatorium (1673). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

tablished extensive and at times fractious collaborations with several instrument makers in the attempt to produce reliable timekeepers on land and at sea, a topic also discussed by Mahoney. Huygens’s work included several images, such as the one showing the details of a marine pendulum AB that can be kept upright on a moving ship by rotating around C and FG (fig. 2.6): the perspectival view is required here to see the double motion. Incidentally, the spring-regulated watch we have seen in the previous chapter (fig. 1.1) is also shown in perspective in order to display the coiled spring in relation to the other moving parts. Thus, here we see a meaningful link between higher mathematics and the spatial representation of the components of the pendulum clock and spring-regulated watch in the visual engineering tradition studied by Edgerton and other historians. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the anonymous reviewer in the Philosophical Transactions called Huygens’s clock a “Mechanism,” using a term that was becoming increasingly common at the time.19 Thus, I believe we could and should reconcile Mahoney’s astute analysis with a new emphasis on the key role of visual representation: in some respects they can be seen as two sides of the same coin. The transformations of knowledge of the early modern period cannot be reduced to rational mechanics. In many areas

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visual representations, especially spatial perspectival renderings, played an important, possibly even crucial, role. Those transformations extended also to other subjects besides instruments and machines, to which they offered cognitively crucial visual elements. In natural history, representations of the spatial arrangement of plants, animals, and fossils, for example, enabled scholars to identify specimens and debate their nature, as Sachiko Kusukawa has recently argued. In mid-sixteenth-century anatomy visual representations of the body and the disposition of its parts became of central importance, at times together with the notion of mechanism, as we are about to see. While some representations were mainly descriptive, others offered an operational understanding too, with wider implications for the movement known as the mechanical philosophy. Linear perspective provided a visual language for representing the world and also a novel way of viewing it.20 Revisiting Vesalius’s Fabrica There is no better place to start this investigation than the epoch-making work of Andreas Vesalius. The range of techniques and conventions Vesalius and his artists adopted in De humani corporis fabrica was very wide; in no way does my study do justice to the richness and complexity of his visual language. Yet even Vesalius had to admit the limitations of visual representations, especially in the medium of woodcut he was employing. In his attempt to show the differences in the nature and texture of the three tunics of the stomach, for example, he warns about those limitations when he states: “In so far as we can achieve by an image.”21 But why include anatomical images in the first place? From our perspective, the question sounds redundant; after all, anatomy for us is a visual science par excellence. From a Renaissance standpoint, however, matters looked different and the question was worth asking; although there were early precedents to the Fabrica, such as treatises by Johannes de Ketham and Hans von Gersdorff, many anatomical works in the early sixteenth century did not contain illustrations and focused on recovering and interpreting ancient sources and reconciling apparent differences and contradictions among them. Vesalius’s Paris teacher Jacobus Sylvius, for example, objected to the usage of images, preferring direct visual experiences and the feeling of touch.22 There is no single answer to our question: Vesalius used images for a variety of purposes, some of which may sound paradoxical, as we shall see, and seemingly relied on different artists, including himself. The over two hundred images in Vesalius’s work would require a close analysis: they display a range of graphic conventions and techniques, such as showing surfaces and cross sections, for example, or, following an ancient tradition without showing the body as it would appear on the dissecting table but reconstructing it by separating different systems, skeletal, muscular, vascular, etc.

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Fig. 2.7. Fictitious structure of the kidneys. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

The first two books are devoted to the bones and muscles; while some woodcuts show individual preparations, usually in small size and mainly focusing on anatomical accuracy, the celebrated skeletons and muscle-men display the entire body, often in expressive poses showing motions and emotions. The woodcuts of veins, arteries, and nerves in books III and IV can be divided into portraits of individual preparations and representations of the entire body. In this case, however, the vein-, artery-, and nerve-men show no motions or emotions. At a time when injection techniques were primitive at best, veins and arteries of the entire body were not visible as was the skeleton; they had to be reconstructed by the anatomist and the image had to be assembled piecemeal. Paradoxically, one could argue that those reconstructed images were shown precisely because they were not immediately accessible to the investigator—they were not portraits of the visible but elaborate reconstructions of what lay concealed. Many, though by no means all, of the woodcuts in book V on the viscera, as Glenn Harcourt has shown in a now classic essay, show the inside of the body encased in classical statuary, while images of the brain in book VII are indebted to Anatomia capitis humani (1536), by Johannes Dryander, who studied anatomy in Paris at the same time as Vesalius. Unlike images of the veins, arteries, and nerves, they show successive cross sections of the brain as they would appear on the dissecting table.23 One of the most intriguing woodcuts in the Fabrica raises issues relevant to mechanism. In book V Vesalius seemingly shows kidneys in cross section, with a pierced membrane in the middle; the membrane would work mechanically like a filter, separating blood from urine, which would then fall downward. Suspiciously, we see two possible alternatives (fig. 2.7). In fact, Vesalius makes it quite clear

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Fig. 2.8. Real structure of the kidneys. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

that neither image provides a faithful representation of the kidneys’ interiors but rather both present fictitious structures. What was he up to? Vesalius was critical of those who had argued that the kidneys separated urine mechanically rather than through selective attraction—the Galenic nonmechanical interpretation he favored. Thus, he tried to refute a mechanistic account by showing an implausible structure: what we could call a mechanism, a structure in the form of a pierced membrane allegedly acting mechanically through filtration, looks patently inadequate—this is not how real kidneys look to anyone who has inspected them. An accurate representation of the kidneys’ interior would look rather different, as Vesalius shows in another woodcut (fig. 2.8). This is not the only image in the Fabrica in which he presents features based on erroneous opinions only to highlight their implausibility: he does so for the heart and vena cava too.24 Although Vesalius opposed a mechanistic understanding of the body, he also displayed extensive mechanical experience and ingenuity, if nothing else, through dissection. Just examine the well known and often reproduced panoply

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Fig. 2.9. Heart ventricles in cross section. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543), 567. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

of implements he employed, casually displayed on a table, from sturdy saw, knife, and mallet to the more delicate straws used for insufflation; or look at the cobbler’s awl “for sawing soles on to shoes,” as he put it, that he adapted for boring holes in hard bones so they could be mounted with copper wire.25 But what about nature? Vesalius studied both surfaces and cross sections. In book VI, on the heart, for example, he includes a woodcut of its cross section, shown as if it were hinged in the middle, highlighting the differences between the ventricles, the right having a thin side, the left a very thick one (fig. 2.9). Overall, Vesalius’s emphasis was on the fabrica—the edifice, or structure—of the human body, rather than on the way the body works: this is true for the text and especially the images. The real image of the kidneys, for example, does not convey any information on how they work; since Vesalius believed that they functioned not as filters but by selective attraction operating at a considerable distance, it would have been almost inconceivable to show their mode of operation, especially with the visual tools and conventions available at the time. However, Vesalius did not include images showing the mode of operation of body parts also in cases when this would have been feasible. Take what we call the valves in the heart, for example. Vesalius counts eleven “membranes” in the four major vessels connected to the heart and states that they “prevent matter from flowing back,” though neither the images nor the text offers a sense of how they operate (fig. 2.10). They are compared to a triangular spike used by the Turks and, for that with only two membranes, a bishop’s mitre—hence the later

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Fig. 2.10. Membranes in the heart. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543), 565. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

name “mitral valve.” Both names could be characterized as structural rather than functional.26 In a few rare instances, however, Vesalius adopts a different approach and shows how the mechanical arrangement of human artifacts, such as the serrated edge of our implements, hinges, and boxes could elucidate anatomical structures: here a marginal annotation links interlocking seams between wooden planks, at the bottom, to the bone sutures of the human skull, thus providing a mechanical analogy (fig. 2.11). In the related image the skull is shown from the most advantageous angle, from the side and slightly above, to highlight the similarity between the two structures (fig. 2.12). Here the arrangement of joints serves a mechanical purpose, to keep the two parts locked together without rotating or sliding, as what could be called a static as opposed to a moving mechanism. Similarly, Vesalius discusses several types of joints among bones; some he compared to hinges (fig. 2.13). The plates I have selected illustrate the joint between hip bone and femur: Vesalius specifically refers to both plates as being related, with the head of the femur fitting in the acetabulum or socket of the hip (figs. 2.14–15). The plate showing the pelvis from three different angles is especially remarkable in its attempt to render a complex three-dimensional shape. In Tabulae anatomicae sex (1538), Vesalius and his artist, Jan Stephen von Kalkar, had shown the skeleton from three different angles, front, side, and back, in the spirit of what Leonardo had done in different instances a few decades earlier, with two views of the heart, for example. However, here Vesalius’s usage in the three images of consistent lettering for the same portions of the bone goes beyond static representations, inviting and guiding the viewer to visualize a rotation of the bone.27

Fig. 2.11. Serrated edges, joints, and hinges. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 2.12. Bone sutures in the human skull. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 2.13. Hinge. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 2.14. Pelvis from three different angles. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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Fig. 2.15. Side views of femur. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Although both skull sutures and the pelvis articulation show what one may call mechanisms, the images highlight a tension between stasis and motion: some structures show interlocking bones, so as to prevent motion and to offer protection, as with the skull; others are arranged so as to enable rotation, as in the leg joints. While static structures can be represented rather straightforwardly, those implying motion pose greater conceptual and representational problems. Here the plate privileges the structure of the pelvis seen as in rotation, rather than attempting to show the actual motions of the bones of the articulation.

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Motion and Directionality: Little Doors and Valves Key early modern structures relating to fluid motion in the body were “little doors,” or valves, those in the veins and in the newly discovered chyle and lymphatic vessels, and in the thoracic duct. These structures resemble the valves in the heart, though the issue of directionality in the veins was more problematic. In 1603 the Padua anatomist and surgeon Hieronymus Fabricius published De venarum ostiolis (On the Little Doors in the Veins). In a revealing passage, Fabricius spells out a parallel with artificial devices: he argues that natura machinata, or machinelike nature, crafts ostiola, or little doors, much like artifices, or technicians, craft sluices (septa) and dams (claustra) in order to divert and store water for the usage of mills. Another anatomist active in the Veneto, Alessandro Benedetti (1450–1512), had used the term claustra for the flaps in the heart’s valves. By slowing down the motion of blood, the ostiola would regulate blood flow by performing a dual task, preventing excessive accumulation in the limbs and depletion in the upper parts. The parallel Fabricius establishes relies on flow regulation to prevent excess or defect of water or blood, or, in his own words: [Marginal note:] Similarity between the little doors [ostiola] and the obstructions that hold back the water in mills. [Main text:] Machinelike nature [natura machinata] operates soundly with a similar purpose here and through artificial means in mills, in which technicians, in order to hold back a large quantity of water, so that it is preserved for the use of mills and machines, apply some obstructions called sluices [septa] and dams [claustra] in Latin, chiuse [clausas] and roste [rostas] in the vernacular, in which, as in a suitable venter, a large amount of water, and finally that which is required, is collected. Nature operates in the same manner in the veins, which are like the canals of the rivers for the little doors [ostiola], whether single or double.28

A rosta, a term used in the Veneto, would divert and regulate water from a river or canal to mills or related machines. Although a chiusa would be manually operated, Fabricius gives no indication that the ostiola in the veins would require any intervention to function besides that of pressing blood.29 Fabricius had recourse to innovative forms of representation (fig. 2.16): he shows the valves in the veins inside out in two branches of veins from the legs (labeled “figura ii”); in the top one the valves are filled with cotton wool, in the one below they are not. Further, he compares the valves as they appear in the vein inside out to the knots of the plant called verbena, which he shows with the side branches cut off (figura iii) and also whole (figura iiii); Fabricius wanted to highlight that valves, much like “flowers, leaves, and branches grow successively from opposite sides of the stem.”30 Thus this arrangement would delay, though not block, the passage of

Fig. 2.16. Little doors in the veins. Fabricius, De venarum ostiolis (1603), plate II. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 2.17. Little doors in the veins. Fabricius, De venarum ostiolis (1603), plate V. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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Fig. 2.18. Water sluices (detail). Zonca, Novo teatro (1607).

blood downward. A later plate (fig. 2.17) shows the actual structure of the little doors in situ, with each ostiolum formed by two slightly folded membranes. It is well known that although Fabricius and his erstwhile student William Harvey observed the same anatomical structures and established parallels with artificial machines, they interpreted their operation differently: for Fabricius their main purpose was to regulate water or blood flow by delay and storage, though they did not block that flow. Harvey compared the same anatomical structures to sluices allowing the unidirectional flow of water in rivers, or valves (“valvularum, quibus cursus fluminum inhibentur, in morem”), thus enabling blood flow in the opposite direction to the one Fabricius had envisaged. Harvey confirmed his views by ligature experiments during a vivisection and by inserting a probe in the veins of a cadaver.31 Both, however, seemingly saw them as selfoperating mechanisms. Images of earlier sluices built following a design from Leonardo da Vinci’s Atlantic codex illustrate what Harvey had in mind. Another image, this time from Novo teatro (1607), by Zonca, provides additional evidence. In Zonca’s image the sluices are operated manually to allow water to flow from the bottom up (fig. 2.18); by contrast, following Harvey, similarly shaped valves in the veins would allow blood to flow only in the opposite direction. In the 1628 Latin text Harvey described their shape as sigmoidal; the 1653 English translation, published when Harvey was still alive, shows a capital ∑, effectively rendering visually the mechanism Harvey wanted to represent.32

Fig. 2.19. Valves in the veins. Harvey, Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis (1628). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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Harvey’s reinterpretation of Fabricius’s views involved different graphic conventions. Harvey relied on an image—the only one he ever published—and adopted a form of representation that is relatively rare in the anatomical literature: a sequence of snapshots representing a series of operations illustrating a process (fig. 2.19). Harvey’s plate echoes the one used by Fabricius, also showing a human arm with a ligature highlighting the ostiola. Both borrow from the surgical literature because the ligature applied to the arm was standard in bloodletting and because surgery manuals often depicted procedures. Fabricius’s forms of investigation and representation highlight the structure he had newly discovered. By contrast, Harvey’s images are designed to clarify the mode of operation of valves and the direction of blood flow by showing that venous blood cannot be pushed away from the heart past a valve. As Jerry Bylebyl has shown, applying a ligature to a vein could be interpreted in different ways: many anatomists before Harvey would have seen the ligature as a device that draws blood because it generates pain, or it produces heat, or it creates a vacuum, or it weakens the distal portion, thereby causing Nature to direct venous blood to it in a way that is not necessarily mechanical. By contrast, for Harvey the ligature simply blocked the backward flow of venous blood toward the heart in a purely mechanical fashion and therefore the ligature in his plate unambiguously depicts a mechanism: “But this is the manifest cause of attraction beneath the ligature, and of swelling beyond measure in the hand and fingers, to wit, that the blood does enter forcibly and apace, but cannot get out again.”33 The visual connections between Fabricius’s and Harvey’s plates are well known. Despite their similarity, however, Fabricius’s and Harvey’s plates differ conceptually and serve different purposes. Further, there are other links tying Harvey’s plate to conventions adopted by his teacher. Harvey’s plate raises the issue of the visual representation of directionality through a process occurring in time: how does one represent such a process and the direction of flow in the early modern period?34 It was not uncommon to represent time flow in art through different conventions. We have learned to identify different temporal stages in visual representations of earlier times, such as the crucial moments of a saint’s life in a Renaissance predella, for example. Arguably the most obvious area involving time in anatomy is the process of generation, which Fabricius investigated in a range of animals and specifically for the chick in the egg. Harvey would have found in Fabricius’s plates on generation an additional visual source for his work on the valves in the veins. Unlike Harvey’s plates, each of Fabricius’s figures on the formation of the chick is based on the destruction of an incubated egg; therefore, the visual representation of a temporal sequence they provide is an illusion, because all they show is as many eggs at different stages of development as there are figures.35

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Fig. 2.20. Lacteal with ligatures and valves. Walaeus, “Epistolae duae de motu chyli et sanguinis,” in Institutiones anatomicae (1641). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Ducts and Valves: The Body as a Hydraulic System While valves were compared to sluices and dams, vessels were compared to rivers and canals. These may seem rather simple mechanisms, although in some cases they required careful handling in several respects. I consider three cases in particular, with an appendix; they are well known, but in reviewing them I hope to highlight the significance of the mechanical arrangement of the parts. In ancient Alexandria the anatomist Erasistratus described unidirectional valves in terms echoing those used for contemporary technological devices, such as a water pump invented by the engineer Ctesibius; his account, however, was limited to the heart.36 In the seventeenth century anatomists expanded similar mechanistic explanations to fluid flow in the chyle and lymph vessels, often without having recourse to attractive, retentive, and repulsive faculties, which were the staple of Galenic explanations of bodily processes. Some images transferred visual conventions across fields: in 1641, for example, Dutch anatomist Johannes Walaeus introduced ligatures, highlighting directionality by the accumulation of chyle on one side in the milky veins or lacteals recently discovered by Gasparo Aselli, whose De lactibus sive lacteis venis (On the Lacteals or Milky Veins; 1627) was reprinted in Leiden in 1640 (fig. 2.20). Walaeus’s visual technique demonstrated the presence of valves as well, clearly shown in the portion intercepted between

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Fig. 2.21. Thoracic duct. Pecquet, Experimenta nova anatomica (1651). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

the ligatures, shown as tiny bows, and the intestine; his valves are shown as small enlargements of the vessels and closely resemble the valves in the veins as depicted by Fabricius and Harvey. Although Harvey had relied extensively on ligatures of vessels in his vivisection experiments to investigate directionality of blood flow, it was Walaeus who exploited the technique visually by actually showing a ligature and its effect on chyle flow.37 The discovery of the thoracic duct by French anatomist Jean Pecquet challenged the traditional purpose of the liver in making blood from digested food. Pecquet’s duct simply bypassed the liver, the largest internal organ of the body, seemingly depriving it of its crucial role. His finding also raised the problem of how chyle would move within the duct, whether purely mechanically or through some form of attraction—in his letter to Bartholin, Walaeus had endorsed attrac-

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Fig. 2.22. Valves in the lymphatics. Ruysch, Dilucidatio (1665). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

tion as causing motion in the milky veins. Pecquet devoted considerable attention to this matter and added an entire section on physicomechanical experiments to his anatomical treatise. He argued that elasticity (“elatery”) played a key role, but he also identified small valves preventing the backflow of chyle; they are visible in fig. 2.21 under the letters “m” as tiny flaps in the figure on the left, showing the thoracic duct free from other body parts and slightly enlarged compared to the figure in situ in the dissected dog on the right.38 In the following decade the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch provided images of the valves in the tiny lymphatic vessels and milky veins, which he had

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been able to inject thanks to a novel sophisticated technique involving special syringes. The part of the image labeled “C” shows a tiny milky vein with the valves (fig. 2.22). His images break with tradition by showing in detail the internal structure of valves with two coalescing flaps. Ruysch’s images explain how valves work from their configuration, accounting for the direction of flow of lymph from the smaller to the larger branches.39 Valves were not the only focus of attention in the burst of interest in the body as a hydraulic system. At times even seemingly simple ducts could reveal surprises. The anastomoses among the arteries at the base of the brain identified by the Oxford anatomist Thomas Willis (1621–1675) date from 1664, one year before Ruysch’s work on the valves in the lymphatics; the system of anastomoses—later known as the circle of Willis—enables the arterial system to properly mix the blood going to the brain and especially to provide the brain with a constant supply of blood even if some obstruction were to occur: “But there is another reason far greater than this of these manifold ingraftings of the Vessels, to wit, that there may be a manifold way, and that more certain, for the blood about to go into divers Regions of the Brain, laid open for each; so that if by chance one or two should be stopt, there might easily be found another passage instead of them.”40 Willis and his collaborator Richard Lower became aware of the significance of this structure from the pathological case of a man who had died of an unrelated condition, whose right carotid artery was almost obstructed, “bony or rather stony,” yet his entire brain was perfectly functional until the end of his life. Subsequently they performed animal experiments on dogs with ink injections, showing that the entire blood supply system in the brain is a connected network: “Hence it plainly appears that there is a communication between the Vessels watering the whole Head; and although every Artery is carried to one only Region, as its peculiar Province, and provides for it apart, yet, lest any part should be deprived of the influence of the blood, more ways lye open to every part by the ingraftings of those vessels; so that if the proper vessels by chance should be wanting in their office, its defect may presently be compensated by others neighbouring.”41 This mechanism is unusual because it does not involve clearly distinct component parts: the arterial anastomoses form a loop, if an artery becomes obstructed or damaged, the remaining arteries compensate for the defective part by supplying the entire brain with blood (fig. 2.23). Thus, the circle of Willis is a safety or self-preservation mechanism that becomes active in injuries or disease by supplying the entire brain with blood. In an earlier passage Willis discusses the inosculation of the carotid arteries: “And here we cannot sufficiently admire so provident (and to be equalled by no mechanical Art) a  dispensation of the blood within the confines of the

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Fig. 2.23. Circle of Willis. Willis, Cerebri anatome (1664). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Brain.” His claim emphasizes the argument for design and his admiration for the “Divine workmanship of the Deity” more than it takes a genuinely antimechanistic stance. In fact, arguably the design of many fountains found in the exactly contemporary work Architectura curiosa nova (1664) by the Nuremberg architect Georg Andreas Böckler (ca. 1617–1687), relies on not entirely different principles, whereby separate water jets descend by gravity from a common reservoir—instead of blood being pushed up by the heart (fig. 2.24, especially the top level).42

Fig. 2.24. Böckler, Architectura curiosa nova (1664), plate 72.

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Fig. 2.25. The eye as a camera obscura. Scheiner, Rosa ursina (1626), 30.

Mechanisms between Representation and Idealization René Descartes attributed great significance to visualization and relied on it extensively in his works, starting from Discours de la méthode and Dioptrique (1637). By that time there existed a vast literature on mechanical devices from antiquity to de Caus’s more recent Les raisons des forces mouvantes (1615). De Caus’s work included images of the French king’s grottoes that Descartes compares to a statue resembling the human body in the opening of Treatise on Man, where he also explicitly refers to “clocks, artificial fountains, and mills.” Descartes also compares the nervous system to a church organ, where the heart and arteries correspond to the bellows, the nerves to the pipes of the organ, the fingers of the organist to the external objects. Descartes relied on the growing

Fig. 2.26. The eye as a camera obscura. Descartes, La dioptrique (1637). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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body of increasingly complex machinery and probably on the relevant illustrated literature as well.43 Here I wish to focus on a few examples concerning visual perception, the valves in the heart, and the transmission of visual—and other—sensations to the brain; as we will see, these topics lent themselves to especially instructive representations. In Dioptrique Descartes explicitly compares the eye to a camera obscura, a device that was gaining increasing attention in several circles in those years. A few years earlier Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner (1573–1650) had proceeded along similar lines in Rosa ursina (1626–1630): notice in fig. 2.25 the camera obscura marked as “Ars” on the left and the eye marked as “Natura” on the right, both accompanied by a system of lenses. Descartes’s figure shows a man looking behind a human or bovine eye and seeing the image reflected on the retina, thus using the eye like an investigative device (fig. 2.26).44 Although Descartes had a sustained interest in anatomical matters, carried out anatomical investigations and dissections, had epistolary exchanges with anatomists, and collaborated with them, he was no trained anatomist, as he himself implied. While many interested parties could engage with dissection, vivisection was a different matter, requiring much greater skills. At a time when vivisection was becoming increasingly central, as in the structural works by Aselli and Pecquet on the milky veins and thoracic duct, for example, or in the study of bodily actions, as with Harvey, Descartes shows notable weakness in this area. In his eagerness to find mechanistic explanations, he notoriously failed to appreciate fully the implications of Harvey’s identification of the active phase as systole in the heartbeat, one Harvey had painstakingly demonstrated on the basis of vivisections of cold-blooded and of warm-blooded animals just before death. According to Descartes’s implausible account both in Discours de la méthode and in the posthumous Treatise on Man, the heart would normally be in what Harvey took as its systolic state; periodically the heart would inflate as a result of blood expanding due to the heart’s heat. This expansion was Harvey’s diastole, or relaxation, the state observed in dead animals, which therefore could not possibly be one of expansion due to heat. Moreover, the Cartesian account seems ill suited to the muscular structure of the heart.45 By contrast, Descartes’s younger contemporary and to some extent fellow mechanist Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679) fully grasped the power of Harvey’s demonstration. Much like Descartes, Borelli was not a trained anatomist, though he too had deep and long-standing interests in the field, collaborated and corresponded with several anatomists, and authored an influential treatise, De motu amimalium (1680–1681). In discussing the merits of a range of possible explanations for the heartbeat, Borelli did not question Harvey’s analysis and identified the active phase as systole and the passive one as diastole, present-

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ing various explanatory accounts. For example, he compared nerves to leaky taps whence an irritating nervous fluid exudes, inducing contractions. Borelli also hypothesized that the heart could move not because of a mechanical necessity but by an animal faculty acting by mere habit, as when we blink if someone moves a hand close to our eye, or like that of trained musicians playing their instruments without consciously thinking about it. Thus, Borelli envisaged a tripartite distinction for muscular motions: some occur with a mechanical necessity, others are due to the conscious action of the soul, while some intermediate ones are still due to the soul but by habit and “sine advertentia.”46 Treatise on Man is especially complex because almost all of its images were lost and had to be recreated in order to make portions of the text fully intelligible. The 1662 Latin translation by Florentius Schuyl and the 1664 edition in the original French by Claude Clerselier are based on vastly different forms of representation: those in Schuyl’s edition were mostly copper engravings, those in Clerselier’s were woodcuts Clerselier had commissioned to Louvain anatomy professor Gérard van Gutschoven (1615–1668) and Saumur physician Louis de la Forge (1632–1666).47 A case relevant to our previous discussion involves the valves in the heart in Schuyl’s edition. Unlike Vesalius, who simply called them membranes and represented them without providing any sense of how they operate, Schuyl sought to bring together structural and what we may call functional concerns. He also used the terms “valvula” and “pellicula,” while the original French has “petit portes” (the French for “little doors”) and “peaux” (membranes). His plate includes movable flaps showing the inside of the heart with its eleven membranes in four valves and four pins inserted so as to highlight the direction of blood flow, seeking to show how they operate, much like we would use arrows today (fig. 2.27). While Harvey had used four snapshots and Walaeus had shown a ligature with a bulge of chyle on one side, Schuyl employed the orientations of the pins to show directionality, much like the Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin had done in Anatomia reformata (1651). However, here only two pins are shown going through the corresponding valves (tricuspid, marked 1, 2, 3; mitral, marked 10, 11), in the other two cases the pins still show the direction of blood flow but valves and pins appear disjointed.48 Unlike most plates we have seen so far, several figures in Descartes’s Treatise on Man seek to offer visual renderings of mechanisms as schematic diagrams with no pretense to anatomical accuracy. An especially interesting case involves Descartes’s account of muscular motion, specifically the muscles moving the eye: besides the plates in Schuyl’s edition (fig. 2.28) and in Clerselier’s, by both van Gutschoven (fig. 2.29, marked G) and de la Forge (fig. 2.30, marked F), here we also find a rare example of Descartes’s own image (fig. 2.31, marked D). His account relies on antagonistic muscles, one of which would overpower the other,

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Fig. 2.27. Heart valves. From Latin translation by Florentius Schuyl of Descartes, De homine (1662). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

depending on the influx of animal spirits—a subtle fluid flowing through the nerves responsible for motion and sensation—through a “valvula” (Schuyl’s edition) or “une certaine petit peau” (Clerselier’s edition), a small membrane HFI or Hfi, visible in all the images. Descartes’s ingenious arrangement is an attempt to tie an anatomical structure to its mechanical operation.49 Further, Descartes refers to tubes and filaments in the nerves responsible for external sensation and muscular motion; while the motions and vibrations of

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Fig. 2.28. Eye rotation. From Latin translation by Schuyl of Descartes, De homine (1662), 20. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

those filaments would transmit external sensory experiences to the brain, the tubes enclosing them would convey animal spirits to the muscles, thus explaining muscular motion in a hydraulic fashion. Thus, in this case one structure would serve a dual purpose because the same nerves would account for motion and sensation, depending on whether they convey a fluid or their inner filaments shake and vibrate. Not surprisingly, the Latin edition by Schuyl uses the same plate to represent motive and sensory nerves (fig. 2.32). Descartes distinguished sensory and motor functions, though he did not consider that different nerves perform those functions, and in fact he explicitly denies it in the fourth part of

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Fig. 2.29. Eye rotation. Plate by van Gutschoven, from Descartes, L’ homme (1664), 16. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Dioptrique. The hypothetical structure of the nerves gestures toward an account of how images would be transmitted from the retina to the brain according to Descartes, as interpreted in Schuyl’s and Clerselier’s editions (fig. 2.33).50 Undoubtedly Treatise on Man should be treated with care because it was an unfinished posthumous work that Descartes felt needed longer investigations if it were to represent his considered views, as Gideon Manning and Cindy Klestinec have recently reminded us. In their opinion Descartes wished to check his statements and was therefore careful in the publications that appeared in his lifetime, displaying “a caution that ought to be praised.” His account of the heartbeat,

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Fig. 2.30. Eye rotation. Plate by de la Forge, from Descartes, L’ homme (1664), 18. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

however, was not the only problematic topic Descartes put forward in his lifetime, both in Discours de la méthode as well as in Les passions de l’ âme (1649), his last publication that appeared the year before he died. In fact, in Passions Descartes discussed several anatomical matters with words precisely echoing Treatise on Man.51 In the case of the internal structure of the optic nerve and the transmission of visual sensations, for example, we can be confident that Treatise on Man closely echoes Descartes’s pondered views because he had put forward very similar opinions throughout his life, from his early publication, Dioptrique (1637), to Les passions de l’ âme: And I have made it evident in the Diopt[r]icks, how all the objects of the sight are not communicated to us any way but thus; they move locally, (by mediation of transparent bodies between them and us) those little thredds of the Optick nerves,

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Fig. 2.31. Eye rotation. Plate by Descartes, from L’ homme (1664), 17. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

which are at the bottome of our eyes, and after them, the places of the brain from whence those nerves come: they move them, I say, as many severall kinds of wayes, as there are diversities of objects in things; nor are they immediatly the motions made in the eye, but in the brain, that represent these objects to the Soul.52

It was this account of an anatomical structure and its mode of operation, clearly representing Descartes’s considered opinion, that Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) challenged in 1665, when he showed that the optic nerve of the swordfish consisted of a membrane enveloping not a bunch of tubes with isolated threads free to shake and vibrate but something entirely different, resembling a folded cloth, thus challenging Descartes’s hypothetical mechanism of nervous perception (fig. 2.34). Malpighi assumed from the uniformity of nature that various organs would be structured and work in similar ways in different animals.

Fig. 2.32. Nervous tubules. From Latin translation by Schuyl of Descartes, De homine (1662), 19. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 2.33. Nervous tubules. DescartesClerselier, L’ homme (1664), 15. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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The swordfish was especially useful because of the large size of its optic nerve; this is a classic example of what Johann Conrad Peyer (1653–1712) called the “microscope of nature,” or the notion that in some instances nature shows some structures much enlarged. Although his finding questioned Descartes’s structural and functional account, Malpighi would have welcomed an anatomically sound mechanistic explanation of sense perception, not the fanciful one envisaged by Descartes.53 There are interesting parallels and tensions between Descartes and Malpighi. Both shared a mechanistic framework: Descartes played a key role in setting the agenda for a mechanistic anatomy putting forward a plethora of hypothetical structures and modes of operations. As Evan Ragland among others has recently argued, Descartes was seen by his anatomically savvy contemporaries and immediate successors as hopelessly doctrinaire, especially with regard to his defective understanding of the heartbeat and arterial pulse, and with vivisection more broadly. By contrast, Malpighi made major contributions to anatomy but only rarely was he able to tie his mechanistic program to his anatomical findings. For example, Malpighi identified in many organs what he called “glands” as the key microscopic filtration devices mechanically separating fluids without having recourse to faculties or special powers and qualities; his glands involve a relation between the shapes of openings and particles—like a simpler version of Boyle’s lock and key—combined with Hooke’s emphasis on miniaturization. In some cases, as with the glomeruli in the kidneys, for example, he detected them and described their external appearances as resembling apples on an apple tree, though he was unable to grasp from that their internal structure and mode of operation, which he had to infer a priori based on his mechanistic worldview.54 Visualization of Microscopic Mechanisms The writings of Marcello Malpighi and Robert Hooke include extensive discussions of microscopic structures. Hooke was less daring and interventionist, whereas Malpighi pushed microscopy to the limits it could reach at the time. It was Hooke, however, who produced some of the most memorable images in this domain. Indeed, while Malpighi’s work on plant structures was generously illustrated, his animal anatomy was not. One of the few images he produced showed a preparation of the tongue with its sensory receptors, presenting them as mechanical tools receptive to differently shaped particles rubbing on them (fig. 2.35).55 In his posthumous work, Malpighi relied on these findings to put forward a detailed mechanistic view of sense perception, thus returning to the issue he had addressed in his 1665 critique of Descartes. Although his account differs in the details from the one provided by Descartes, it closely echoes Cartesian themes

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Fig. 2.34. Optic nerve of the swordfish. Malpighi, De cerebro (1665), in Opera omnia. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

he had challenged approximately thirty years earlier, highlighting the difficulties faced by mechanistic anatomists with their limited toolkit. Malpighi relied on the available anatomical evidence, such as the existence of nervous fibers, the long-standing belief in the existence of animal spirits, which were thought to flow through the nerves, and the existence of glands in the cerebral cortex filtering those spirits. He believed that with the help of mechanics the operations of the senses and memory could be grasped: It is certain that the structure of the brain is a composition of pierced ropes, which continuously receive a fluid, which can make them more or less taut; and being these taut and placed with skill like the strings of a lyre, it follows that in having a small movement in the organs of the external senses, which are the extremities of

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Fig. 2.35. Sensory receptors on the tongue. Malpighi, De lingua (1665), in Opera omnia. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

the nerves, from the agitation of light in the eye, of air in the ears, of salts on the tongue, of solids on the skin, and from the internal fluids on the roots of the nerves, necessarily there originates a tremor in the body of the nerves, and subsequently in their endings, where they are disposed, and taut. And this will be the physical motion of the internal senses, whose properties can be discussed with probable reasoning by analogy to mechanics.56

Much like Descartes, Malpighi too has recourse to a musical analogy: this time it is to a lyre whose strings whose tension and vibrations are regulated by the amount of nervous fluid they contain and the external stimuli they receive. Despite Malpighi’s cautious optimism, the boundary between reliable anatomical investigations and a mechanistic interpretation was not clearly defined—witness the reference to “probable reasoning” at the end of the passage and the adverb “necessarily” slightly above, highlighting a tension and a form of a priori reasoning. Many among his contemporaries and successors found such accounts unconvincing. On the basis of elaborate injections, for example, Ruysch questioned the existence of secretory glands in the cerebral cortex, let alone explanations of cerebral functions based on them.57 Although Hooke broadly shared in a mechanistic agenda, his techniques of microscopic investigation and representation differed from Malpighi’s. While Malpighi “tortured” his specimens by staining, boiling, peeling, and injecting them, Hooke compared microscopy to innocent peeping through a window, contrasting it with brutally interventionist vivisection. Hooke’s images at times magnify and offer structures visible with the naked eye in somewhat greater detail; other times they highlight features in the immediately subvisible realm. In both cases images were expected to reveal hidden mechanisms explaining macroscopic features, a hope shared by Malpighi.58

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Hooke was a better draftsman than Malpighi and his images were generally larger, a statement applying also to some images that Malpighi had drawn by an artist, such as that of the tongue. Here I wish to discuss two related images showing offensive parts in stinging nettle and bees. There are striking parallels but also differences between them, as Hooke makes clear. Both plant and insect are endowed with a stinging apparatus hollow on the inside and functioning like a syringe, whereby an irritating fluid is injected into the victim; the thorns and sting appear especially menacing enlarged by the microscope, as evidenced by the minute details of those structures. However, Hooke also identifies significant differences: the thorns of stinging nettle consist of a hard needle and a softer portion resembling green leather bags (fig. 2.36); the apparatus empties an irritating fluid while stinging—as Hooke experienced firsthand while observing under the microscope. In addition, the aculeus of the bee includes hooks preventing it from being extracted from the flesh once it has entered (fig. 2.37); thus, a portion is left inside the wound, increasing the victim’s discomfort.59 Stinging nettle and bees do not irritate simply because they have an irritating property—like opium having a dormitive property; in both cases, Hooke provides compelling visual evidence in the form of mechanisms working like syringes both injuring our skin and injecting an irritating fluid. While the sensation produced by the irritating fluid may be difficult to explain in a mechanistic framework, the purely mechanical one of injuring the skin was not. Thus, Alan Gabbey’s claim, “No physical construction can represent the five sensory qualities” (my emphasis), is problematic for touch—with the sensations of smoothness or roughness, for example—which, not surprisingly, provided the exemplar for other ones, such as taste, as we have seen with Malpighi’s tongue.60 One may well wonder to what extent it is legitimate to call some of the structures we have been reviewing “mechanisms.” In this case, however, we are on rather solid ground because Hooke himself employs the term mechanism in the discussion of the bee sting and, by his own analogy, nettles. He does so not in the main text of the observation on the bee’s sting but in the index, where he states that Observation 34 provides “a description of its shape, mechanisme, and use.” This is one of the first occurrences of the term, perhaps the first accompanied by an image.61 Hooke’s brief characterization frames the mechanism of the bee’s sting between its shape and use, seemingly bridging structure and purpose. A closer study of the occurrences and meanings of the term mechanism in seventeenth-century England requires a different type of investigation, one I shall carry out in my next chapter. Here I wish to add another instance to the visual evidence we have been exploring. There are a number of other instances in Micrographia in which Hooke presents images he explicitly associates with mechanisms, including insects, plants,

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Fig. 2.36. Stinging nettle. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme XV. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

and even rock formations and snowflakes. Some of the most memorable images come from the world of insects; Hooke identified “mechanisms” in the feet of flies, for example (fig. 2.38). Here his insatiable curiosity, mechanical ingenuity, and graphic skills joined forces in uncovering structures and explaining their operations, thus shedding light on the peculiar behavior of flies. Why do they climb up vertical sheets of glass or hang upside down from ceilings? Do their feet exude a substance enabling the flies to stick to surfaces? If this were the case, how could they disentangle themselves? Or are they so light as to require no support? “They cannot make themselves so light, as to stick or suspend themselves on the under surface of a Glass well polish’d and cleans’d; their suspension therefore is wholly to be ascrib’d to some Mechanical contrivance in their feet; which, what it is, we

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Fig. 2.37. Bee sting. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme XV. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

shall in brief explain, by shewing, that its Mechanism consists principally in two parts, that is, first its two Claws, or Tallons, and secondly, two Palms, Pattens, or Soles.”62 Hooke describes in detail the many mechanisms involved in enabling flies to climb vertical walls and hang from ceilings; he compared some of those mechanisms (such as those marked ee in Figure 1) to “Wire teeth of a Card used for working Wool” (fig. 2.39).63 A Brief Coda: Govert Bidloo’s Anatomia The monumental Anatomia humani corporis (1685), by Govert Bidloo (1649– 1713), provides probably the most extensive visual documentation of the human body of the seventeenth century. The 105 folio plates by renowned neoclassi-

Fig. 2.38. Feet of flies. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme XXIII. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 2.39. The most famous seventeenth-century wool-carding implement. Courtesy of the Lilly Library. Descartes, Homme, 1664, 76.

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cal artist Gerard de Lairesse present the human body in a radically different way compared to Vesalius, emphasizing what one could call a ”view from the morgue”; they deserve a closer study going well beyond the scope of the present work. However, a brief analysis of some of these plates seems appropriate to the present discussion for a number of reasons: they are among the most striking examples of spatial representations of the human body, highlighting the role of perspective and shading; they purport to illustrate several microscopic mechanisms, especially those put forward by Malpighi, although here too, as with Descartes, there is a tension between representation and idealization; and, lastly, they echo in creative ways some of the plates we have seen thus far.64 For example, at the bottom of a full plate devoted to the heart, Bidloo includes the figure of a sectioned heart pierced by four pins. While some plates in his Anatomia, such as those of the skeleton, for example, clearly echo Vesalian motives, others have been praised for their striking naturalism or realism. The present figure (fig. 2.40), however, highlights in addition the dialogue with older sources even for a seemingly naturalistic plate: Bidloo’s heart combines elements from the corresponding figures in Vesalius’s Fabrica (fig. 2.10) and Schuyl’s edition of Descartes’s De homine (fig. 2.27). Although there are no movable flaps here, the angles between the two halves of the heart and among the pins enhance the three-dimensional effect.65 Although “glands” occupy a key place in his mechanistic architecture of the body, Malpighi did not include images of them in his key works on the topic, De viscerum structura (1666–1668) and De structura glandularum conglobatarum (1689). Bidloo was less shy and routinely showed the structures Malpighi had described. Malpighi’s “glands” included some that were shown about the time of his death to be artifacts of his preparation techniques. He also believed he had detected in fish brains nervous fibers, which he compared to an ivory comb. As Luigi Belloni has shown, Bidloo produced an image as if he had seen Malpighi’s glands and nervous fibers through the microscope; the image seemingly relies on the verbal description of the cerebral structures Malpighi had provided.66 A recent study of the representation of the skin has highlighted a tension between figures relying on microscopy in Bidloo’s work and the “new materiality” of many plates: in one case the tiny microscopic portion of the skin is shown as being held by two pins appearing to be grossly out of proportion with the diminutive size of the object under investigation, thus raising questions as to Bidloo’s agenda and practices. There are several instances in which Bidloo apparently shows images based on Malpighi’s text and his own fantasy rather than the microscope. For example, it stretches credulity that Bidloo would had seen under the microscope the “glands” D in a portion of the kidney with an uncanny resemblance to an egg whisk (fig. 2.41): CC represent blood vessels; E and

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Fig. 2.40. Sectioned heart. Bidloo, Anatomia corporis humani (1685), plate 22.9. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

F urinary vessels whole and cut, respectively; G and H portions of the papillary body and ureter. Those who followed Malpighi’s instructions, as Luigi Belloni has shown, saw something very different. Most of the original drawings by de Lairesse for Bidloo’s Anatomia have survived, although they significantly do not include one for glands in the cerebral cortex nor one for glands in the kidney.67 Concluding Reflections Regardless of whether early modern anatomists advocated an encompassing mechanistic approach to the study of nature, many explained specific processes by relying on mechanisms and represented them visually. Even those opposed to overall mechanistic interpretations, from Vesalius to Harvey, relied on mechanistic accounts in specific cases and included images of mechanisms. While it would be misleading to present a history focusing exclusively on problem solving applied to individual cases, ignoring our authors’ wider philosophical perspectives, it would be equally misleading to focus exclusively on those wider perspectives while ignoring the specific solutions offered to individual problems. Such an approach would focus on what we may call “intellectual purity” while ignoring the progressive shift toward mechanistic explanations that occurred in the seventeenth century, even with investigators who did not subscribe to the mechanical philosophy. Anatomical illustrations constitute a vast domain relying on a wide range of graphic styles and conventions developing over time: some images were eminently descriptive, without any pretense of rendering actions and functions. However, others pointed to operations, as with hinged and interlocking bones;

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Fig. 2.41. Renal glands. Bidloo, Anatomia corporis humani (1685), 43.5. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

unidirectional valves in the heart, veins, and chyliferous and lymphatic vessels; ducts conveying fluid without attraction, as with Pecquet’s thoracic duct; vascular anastomoses, securing a blood supply to the brain as in the circle of Willis; nettle’s thorns and bee’s stings, as seen by Hooke; and no doubt many others. Anatomical features were compared to human artifacts, old and new, from hinges to sluices and syringes.68 Not surprisingly, seventeenth-century anatomical images do not rely on more modern graphic conventions involving boxes and arrows, blow-up diagrams, geometric shapes, plus and minus signs, color coding, and time lapse snapshots. Rather, they instantiate mechanisms within graphic conventions of the time that have not attracted the attention they deserve. This state of affairs is doubly un-

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satisfactory: on the one hand, seemingly simple and straightforward anatomical illustrations conceal mechanisms that have largely escaped scholarly attention; on the other hand, many anatomical illustrations across the entire chronological span I explored here, from Vesalius to Hooke, may appear deceptively traditional from today’s standards, but were in fact remarkably novel and creative by the standard of the time. There is nothing routine or traditional in Vesalius’s skull sutures and pelvic bones, Harvey’s operational sequence on the valves in a human arm, Walaeus’s ligatures, Pecquet’s in situ and isolated thoracic duct, Ruysch’s injected valves, Willis’s anastomosed vessels, and Malpighi’s microscopic structures, not to mention Hooke’s stunning plates. The images we have seen involved elaborate and sophisticated techniques of both investigation and representation. There are interrelations between visual representations and mechanisms in the early modern period, when mechanisms where primarily mechanical devices: if a process could be rendered visually, then it was a candidate for a mechanistic interpretation. Hydraulics, pneumatics, and especially subtle fluid often played a crucial role in mechanistic explanations, though even the subtlest of fluids often has to go through material pipes and valves. By contrast, the operations of Aristotelian and Galenic faculties cannot be represented visually in principle. While it is tempting to see mechanistic approaches and visual representations as going hand in hand, we cannot ignore that their relations were complex and problematic: fictitious or real representations could refute mechanistic interpretations, as with Vesalius’s kidney or Malpighi’s optic nerve of the swordfish, for example. Nevertheless, an argument could be made about the existence of a link between the rise of visual representation both in anatomy and in the world of mechanical devices, and the development of a way of seeing and interpreting the world mechanistically: both supported each other and relied on a spatial understanding of the world. Images, especially printed ones, played a major role in the study of nature in the early modern period. Some historians of art and science have singled out the emergence of perspective and a cluster of techniques of representations enhancing three-dimensional effects associated with it as a key development. Although some of their claims have been rightly challenged in areas such as theoretical mechanics, some of their intuitions contain fertile insights. My argument revisits some of those intuitions: I focus less on pinpoint perspectival accuracy than on a broader focus on the interplay between spatial rendering and mechanical understanding of the role of devices and their component parts, and visualization evident in the works of early modern technicians, artisans, and scholars, as Pamela Smith and Pamela Long, among others, have recently argued.69 Some images rely on the microscope, though even here there are significant differences with more modern ones. Arguably, the majority of mechanisms in

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contemporary biology relate to microscopic entities at the cellular or molecular level. In the seventeenth century most microscopic investigations revealed either structures visible with the naked eye in greater detail or structures immediately below the visible level, mostly insects and plants. Malpighi was the leading microscopic anatomist of the time who relied extensively on visual representation, especially in his works on the silkworm and plants, although in both domains he did not emphasize mechanisms. Hooke emerged as a key figure, the one who identified and represented a range of mechanical devices, from pendulums and hooks to syringes and spikes: the “English Leonardo” had a brilliant mechanical intuition, was a talented draftsman, and a pioneering microscopist at the same time. He usage of the term mechanism calls for a study of the usage and meaning of this key term in the seventeenth century.

Chapter 3

“The Very Word Mechanism” As we have seen in chapter one, the meaning of the term mechanism shifted over time. Its usage is not coextensive with the concept, since the latter could be implied without the former being employed. Debates and controversies provide a context for interpreting our term, which, reciprocally, contributes to shedding light on a changing intellectual terrain. I am especially interested in the original meaning of the term, the contexts in which it was used, and the intellectual affiliation of the authors who used it, as well as the set of notions and beliefs contrasted with it. A focused investigation, both geographically and chronologically, can be useful in several respects. I wish to study the early usage of the term mechanism especially in published sources from the second half of seventeenthcentury Britain, English being the language in which the term was used with notable frequency from an early time.1 I focus on the time from the early 1650s to the 1680s, from the aftermath of Descartes to the heyday of the mechanical philosophy. The frequency with which our term occurs increased steadily; in the final decades of the century occurrences became so common that a study of this type would require a different style of inquiry. Therefore a later section discusses the shifting meanings of the terms mechanism and organism around 1700 in a specific context between London and Halle, whereas a brief coda focuses on a small selection of figures in mid-eighteenth-century France, mostly related to the Montpellier medical school. The term mechanism stems from machine and mechanical, with the suffix -ism marking the abstract noun.2 Cognate expressions too were used at the time, such as contrivance, especially with the qualifier mechanical, or in Latin “artificium mechanicum.” Moreover, the notions of “machine” and “mechanics” too are quite complex and were in a state of flux in the early modern period in several respects. Jole Shackelford, for example, has discussed puzzling occurrences of the term mechanics in some passages by Paracelsus and his Danish follower Petrus Severinus, arguing convincingly that they are not linked to simple machines and 79

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related domains but are better seen in connection with the activity of an artificer, which could be an immaterial archeus. Moreover, Vera Keller has recently shown that some artificial machines were seen as alive, blurring and problematizing distinctions even further.3 While occasionally I will mention cognate expressions, for practical reasons my main focus here is on the usage of the actual term mechanism. The differences and overlap in meaning across different periods make the linguistic study relevant to grasping some aspects of how the notion was used and understood over time. My citations below follow closely the original spelling, capitalization, and italicization: my only intervention is italicizing our term for ease of reference. Our term has become so appealing and pervasive that it is often used in English translations when it is lacking in the original Latin or French by Harvey or Descartes, for example, who employ more or less distant cognate terms instead. My study is limited to the usage of the term by the historical actors—as opposed to modern translations. The term mechanism is currently used in a precise technical sense, but also more loosely, meaning broadly “way of operating,” without any actual reference to what a mechanistic perspective would imply or what one could call “mechanism” in a strict sense. The looser meaning is not a recent phenomenon and can be documented already in the eighteenth century. In our times an influential work states that in Renaissance natural philosophy Nature “worked through a panoply of mechanisms, from the astral influences and the imagination of preternatural philosophy to the collision of matter in motion of mechanical philosophy.”4 Clearly the world of astral influences, the imagination of preternatural philosophy, and colliding bodies in a post-Cartesian world are such different domains that one wonders whether the term mechanism is appropriate for all of them. While in a loose sense this usage can be seen as legitimate, I believe it is unhelpful in that it misses the opportunity to clarify what the authors and their contemporary readers would have meant in a more rigorous way. While the primary focus of my contribution is the historical usage and meaning of our term, I also hope to stimulate greater awareness among historians and philosophers, and to suggest a more rigorous and sensitive usage of this key term. Early Occurrences to the 1650s The term mechanism makes a few sporadic appearances before the Restoration. An early usage is due to Paracelsian alchemist Timothy Willis (1560–ca. 1620), author of The Search of Causes, Containing a Theophysicall Investigation of the Possibilitie of Transmutatorie Alchemie (1616). His work is nothing less than an alchemical interpretation of the Biblical story of creation. Willis argues that much like potters working with clay and sculptors working with wood, nature’s activity

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is free at the outset but bound by her own creation at the end, meaning that once a form has been imposed on matter, no other form can take its place without destroying the previous one. Willis draws a contrast, however, between nature’s free activity and the constrained actions of the craftsmen, implying that nature does not operate mechanically like them: “Clay in the potters hand, and wood in the grauers, are in the workemans power to forme at his pleasure, Indifferent to all shapes: So is the efficient cause in the minde of the Artist. / But after one forme induced there is no place for any other without destroiing the first. So Nature (though not abridged, and so short tyed as mechanisme) before the specificall perfection of any thing, is free to any thing.”5 In Natures Explication and Helmont’s Vindication (1658) Harvard-trained alchemist and medical practitioner George Starkey (1628–1665) emphasizes a different aspect. He uses the term mechanism not to contrast mechanical and nonmechanical processes but seemingly to emphasize the regularity of a process. He draws a distinction between the soul, which is like a man in man, using an effect for merely finding its causes as opposed to finding “new hidden truth”: And this I shall adde, that the soul, which is a I may say ipse in homine homo, when once an effect is apparent, and so known, as to become a mechanism, doth no farther any more reap content from it, unless it be in reference to some deduction it gathers from it, to the finding out of some new hidden truth; nor doth the soul ever feed on it more as upon its object, originally, / directly, and in an absolute consideration, no more then in the knowing how to make a fire, or that the fire will burn, boyl, dry, &c.6

Other occurrences can be found in the writings of Scottish royalist author Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660), who uses mechanism for a mechanical profession, together with a number of others, such as “Merchandizing, Scholarship, Husbandry, Mechanism, Nobility, Gentry, Disport, Exercise,” etc.,7 and Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), future bishop of Salisbury, who used the term with a similar meaning: “He had also studied Mechanism, and all such / things as might improve a Society.”8 These early occurrences emphasize mechanical operations in contrast to natural ones, not only in relation to the limitations of mechanism but also with regard to the regularity of an action and to practical activities. Mechanism and the Immaterial Soul The writings of Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–1687) contain some especially interesting early occurrences of the term mechanism; it is with More that the contexts of the debates about our term crystallize. More was both a divine and a natural philosopher, a correspondent of Descartes who in 1664 was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. More defended the existence of an active immaterial

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Spirit of Nature, or “hylarchick principle,” in order to explain many phenomena then being debated, such as those related to Boyle’s celebrated experiments on the elasticity of the air.9 One year before the Restoration More published The Immortality of the Soul (1659), an apologetic work in which he denied activity to matter and in the preface of which he used the expression “Mechanical Philosophy,” as we have seen above. Referring to a passage from The Passions of the Soul, More attacked Descartes’s views, according to which animals are merely complex machines and even many actions in humans are not dependent on the soul or the will but result necessarily from the motions of the body-machine in reactions to external stimuli. In the contemporary English translation Descartes’s passage reads: If any one lift up his hand on a sudden towards our eyes, as if he were about to strike, although we know he is our friend, that he does this only in jest, and that he will be carefull enough not to doe us any hurt, yet wee can scarce refrain from shutting them: which shews it is not by the intermedling of our soul that they shut, since it is against our will, which is the only, or at least the principall Action thereof; but by reason this machine of our body is so composed, that the moving of this hand up towards our eyes, excites another motion in our brain which conveys the animal spirits into those muscles that close the eye-lids.10

In his rejoinder More questions both Descartes’s empirical assertion and its interpretation: For the wafting of one’s hand neare the Eye of a mans friend, is no sufficient proof That externall Objects will necessarily and Mechanically determine the Spirits into the Muscles, no Faculty of the Soule intermedling. For if one be fully assured, or rather can keep himself from the fear of any hurt, by the wafting of his friends Hand before his Eye, he may easily abstain from winking: But if fear surprise him, the Soule is to be entitled to the action, and not the meer Mechanisme of the Body. Wherefore this is no proof that the Phaenomena of Passions, with their consequences, may be salved in brute Beasts by pure Mechanicks; and therefore neither in Men.11

Here “mechanism” is understood in anatomical terms and applies to the action or rather reaction of the body to an external event. In More’s passage the body’s reaction as intended by Descartes is described as a “meer Mechanisme,” thereby specifically excluding the action of the soul: the body’s mechanical actions are qualified by the adjective “mere,” so as to imply that the main issue at stake among different interpreters is not simply having recourse to some forms of mechanism but also ruling out any additional explanation. This is a significant aspect of More’s work, because at least initially he accepted Cartesian accounts, but he also deemed them insufficient without nonmaterial entities.12 Immortality

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of the Soul goes on to argue that the immaterial soul, rather than residing only in the head, is best understood as “pervading the whole body” and especially the heart and stomach.13 In a subsequent work, Divine dialogues (1668), More employs the term mechanism a handful of times, always in conjunction with the adjective pure, as if to emphasize that his main concern is whether only mechanistic explanations sufficed or whether additional nonmaterial entities were required. Referring to Descartes in the address to the reader, he states:14 “But the rest of his Philosophy is rather pretty then great, and in that sense that he drives at, of pure Mechanism, enormously and ridiculously false.” Following More’s Immortality of the Soul, references to “mere” or “pure” mechanism occurred frequently in the literature. Here I focus on Robert Boyle’s A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv’ d Notion of Nature (1686), a text dating from a quarter of a century later, which discusses a theme echoing the one addressed by Descartes and More. In it, Boyle discusses a related case about the eye, namely the adjustment of the opening of the pupil to light; he also implies that there are other motions of the eye to which the same reasoning applies. Boyle argues that God has admirably contrived the organ of sight, joining teleology and mechanism: “Now the Wise and All-foreseeing Author of Things has so admirably contriv’d this Instrument of Sight, that, as it happens to be employ’d in differing Lights, so the Bigness or Area of the Pupil varies . . . / . . . these various Motions in the Eye are produc’d by mere Mechanism, without the Direction, or so much as Knowledg or Perception, of the Rational Soul. And, upon the / like Account it is, that other Motions, in several Parts belonging to the Eye, are produc’d, as ’twere spontaneously, as occasion requires.”15 This example too, like More’s, relates to a Cartesian text, namely the third part of Dioptrique, where Descartes had argued that although we are not aware of it, the size of the pupil is adjusted voluntarily both with regard to the attention paid by the subject and to the degree of illumination. The matter was taken up in the debate between Louvain medicine professors Vopiscus Fortunatus Plemp (1601–1671) and Gérard van Gutschoven; the latter tried to defend Descartes arguing that the will in question was that of seeing well, to which the former objected that every physiological process could be explained in a similar way. Thus, Descartes denied a role to the will for blinking, though he advocated it for the adjustment of the pupil; by contrast, Boyle denied it in both circumstances. The adjustment of the pupil was easily amenable to experimentation and indeed several scholars, including Scheiner and Descartes, investigated the behavior of the pupil in relation to the degree of attention exerted and lighting conditions, including differential responses when the two eyes are exposed to lights of different intensity simultaneously.16

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In a later passage from A Free Enquiry Boyle widens his reflections, including not only other operations of the eye but also many operations of the entire body: We see that in Man, though the Rational Soul has so narrow a Province to take care of, as the Human Body, and is suppos’d to be intimately united to all the Parts of It; yet, abundance of things are done in the Body by the Mechanism of it, without being produc’d by that Soul. Of this we may alledge, as an Instance, that, in Sleep, the Circulation of the Blood, the regular Beating of the Heart, Digestion, Nutrition, Respiration, &c. are perform’d without the immediate Agency, or so much as the actual Knowledge, of the Mind. And, when a Man is awake, many things are done in his Body, not only without the Direction, but against the Bent of his Mind; as often happens in Cramps and other Convulsions, Coughing, Yawnings, &c.17

Here Boyle drastically restricts the role of the rational immaterial soul and endorses the view that the operations of the body happen by “Mechanism,” or by the internal organization of the parts. His is a major departure from traditional Aristotelian-Galenic doctrines, which were routinely accepted until earlier in the century, according to which a plethora of immaterial faculties, whether of the soul or of nature—certainly not mechanisms—were responsible for most bodily operations. In the same work Boyle extends his considerations to diseased states as well: “Next I consider, that Critical Evacuations may be procur’d by the bare Mechanism of the Body. For, by vertue of That, it will often happen, / that the Fibres, or motive Organs of the Stomach, Bowels, and other Parts, being Distended or Vellicated by the Plenty or Acrimony of the Peccant Matter, will, by that Irritation, be brought to contract themselves vigorously, and to throw out the Matter that offends the Parts, either by the Emunctories or Common-Shores of the Body, or by whatever Passages the proscrib’d Matter can be, with most ease, discharg’d.”18 Once again, Boyle here subverts Galenic views, which relied extensively on notions such as selective attraction and repulsion. In On the Natural Faculties, for example, we encounter a plethora of such explanations for diseases as diverse as jaundice and cholera, and many others besides. A reference to our term in a therapeutic context could already be found in the anonymous review of Pharmaceutice rationalis (1673), by Thomas Willis, in the Philosophical Transactions discussing “by what mechanism or power” various medicaments produce their effects.19 More’s Cambridge contemporary and intellectual peer Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) used our term extensively in The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678). Boyle and Cudworth were deeply religious men who had strong apologetic motivations: the former suggested that divinely crafted material structures would be adequate to account for the living world; the latter, like More, invoked God’s role not only through immaterial “plastick powers” broadly related

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to life (but also including minerals and the Earth as a whole) and more generally several phenomena unrelated to life. Cudworth routinely associated the notion of mechanism with the adjective “fortuitous”, one often associated with a challenge to Epicureanism: according to Cudworth, since it would be unbecoming of God “to Form every Gnat and Fly, as it were with his own hands,” living organisms would either result from immaterial plastic natures or fortuitously. In the following passage he singles out the regularity of nature and respiration as especially problematic for mechanism: That all the Effects of Nature come to pass by Material and Mechanical Necessity, or the mere Fortuitous Motion of Matter, without any Guidance or Direction, is a thing no less Irrational than it is Impious and Atheistical. Not only because it is utterly Unconceivable and Impossible, that such Infinite Regularity and Artificialness, as is every where throughout the whole World, should constantly result out of the Fortuitous Motion of Matter, but also because there are many such Particular Phaenomena in Nature, as do plainly transcend the Powers of Mechanism, of which therefore no Sufficient Mechanical Reasons can be devised, as the Motion of Respiration in Animals.20

More, Boyle, and Cudworth held different views on mechanism and the soul and debated whether the soul was plausibly involved in bodily processes, defending opposite views on the topic. In the passages we have seen they debated how bodily operations occurred, at times even relying on observations and experiments, but without providing any detailed explanation of the physiological processes involved. As we have mentioned in the previous chapter and as we are going to see in the following sections, anatomists and especially microscopists such as Hooke sought explanations of those detailed processes at the lower, component level. Microscopy and Mechanism Microscopy was a crucial tool in the mechanization program and provided a key context for early occurrences of the term mechanism. In his pioneering 1664 treatise, Experimental Philosophy, Halifax physician Henry Power questioned the wisdom of those philosophers who doubted nature’s ability to reach smaller subdivisions of its components, even atoms, perhaps, although he did not offer any detailed explanation of mechanisms: “Such, I am sure, our Modern Engine (the Microscope) wil ocularly evince and unlearn them their opinions again: for herein you may see what a subtil divider of matter Nature is; herein we can see what the illustrious wits of the Atomical and Corpuscularian Philosophers durst but imagine, even the very Atoms and their reputed Indivisibles and least realities of Matter, nay the curious Mechanism and organical Contrivance of those Minute Animals, with their distinct parts, colour, figure and motion, whose whole bulk were to

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them almost invisible.”21 Here Power refers to “curious Mechanism” and “organical Contrivance,” associating the notion of mechanism to contrivances in tiny living animals. By “organical” he means belonging to the organs of a living body; at the end of the work he proposes to erase the distinction between natural and artificial, when he claims that “all things are Artificial; for Nature it self is / nothing else but the Art of God.”22 Among the key features of those mechanisms and contrivances, Power uncharacteristically includes not only their parts or shapes, figures, and motion but also their colors, a quality that was rarely seen as primary. Unlike Power’s Experimental Philosophy, Hooke’s Micrographia (1665), published one year after Power’s work, provides a wealth of details about the mechanisms and contrivances he had identified, through both verbal descriptions and remarkable plates. We shall discuss several of these occurrences below.23 In Micrographia the term contrivance occurs in excess of forty times, implying both devices made by nature and artificial ones, such as bellows. At times contrivance is joined with mechanism, as in the following passage on clocks, moss, and plants: “We know there may be as much curiosity of contrivance, and excellency of form in a very small Pocket-clock, that takes not up an Inch square of room, as there may be in a Church-clock that fills a whole room; And I know not whether all the contrivances and Mechanisms requisite to a perfect Vegetable, may not be crowded into an exceedingly less room then this of Moss, as I have heard of a striking Watch so small, that it serv’d for a Pendant in a Ladies ear.”24 In comparing artificial and natural mechanisms here Hooke shifts across three levels of mechanistic explanation, moving from church to pocket clocks, to one fitting in an earring; Hooke focuses on miniaturization by implying that the complex structure or mechanism of a perfect vegetable could fit in as small and simple one as moss, just as the mechanism of a church clock could fit in an earring. An occurrence of the term mechanism especially useful to our discussion can be found not in the text but in the index of Micrographia; it states that the Observation of the sting of a bee provides “a description of its shape, mechanisme, and use.”25 At first sight Hooke’s passage seems to echo the traditional division of anatomy into structure or historia, action or motion, and use or purpose. His notion of mechanism, however, cannot be identified simply with the motions of the parts: while at times mechanism seems to bridge structures and purposes, it also retains strong connections with both. In his discussion of snowflakes, for example, Hooke argues that it would be impossible accurately to draw the “curious and Geometrical Mechanisme of Nature” in any snowflake, though he does include a set of figures (fig. 3.1). In this instance the adjective geometrical points to Nature’s way of operating in forming structures, seemingly devoid of teleological implications. Here the emphasis is on structures, though by “Geometrical Mechanisme” Hooke may have intended the way of operating.26

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Fig. 3.1. Snowflakes. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme VIII. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

In discussing the microstructure of a stone from the borough of Kettering, one with a rough texture that he investigated through the microscope and depicted (fig. 3.2), Hooke emphasizes Nature’s “curiosity”: “But whatever were the cause of its curious texture, we may learn this information from it; that even in those things which we account vile, rude, and coorse, Nature has not been wanting to shew abundance of curiosity and excellent Mechanisme.”27 Here Hooke adopts suspension of judgment about the formation process of a stone whose microstructure he found surprising. By “Mechanisme” he means something like skill or craftsmanship, characters Nature would display together with “curiosity,” in the sense of ingenuity or creativity. In his study of animal or plant parts Hooke pointed to the purpose of the mechanisms he had identified, something he leaves out here. In the case of burnt vegetable or charcoal he refers to the use of the mechanism he identified, but what he had in mind was something different: the passage “It is not my design at present, to examine the use and Mechanisme of these parts of Wood” has more to do with use to humans rather than to the plant, whereas by “Mechanisme” he includes the idea of structure. Similarly, in the discussion of snowflakes Hooke refers to the “plastick virtue of Nature,” thus in an area where neither life nor seemingly finality is involved.28

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Fig. 3.2. Kettering stone. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme IX, figure 1. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

On another occasion Hooke refers to the “Mechanism of Nature” with a different emphasis. While discussing feathers, for example, he identifies a remarkable structure that in his opinion serves a double purpose: Very strong bodies are for the most part very heavie also, a strength of the parts usually requiring a density, and a density a gravity; and therefore should Nature have made a body so broad and so strong as a Feather, almost, any other way then what it has taken, the gravity of it must necessarily have many times exceeded this, for this pith seems to be like so many stops or cross pieces in a long optical tube, which do very much contribute to the strength of the whole, the pores of which were such, as that they seem’d not to have any communication with one another, as I have elsewhere hinted. But the Mechanism of Nature is usually so excellent, that one and the same substance is adapted to serve for many ends. . . . Now, in a ripe Feather (as one may

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Fig. 3.3. Bird feathers. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme XXII. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

call it) it seems difficult to conceive how the Succus nutritius should be convey’d to this pith; for it cannot, I think, be well imagin’d to pass through the substance of the quill, since, having examin’d it with the greatest diligence I was able, I could not find the least appearance of pores; but he that shall well examine an unripe or pinn’d Feather, will plainly enough perceive the Vessel for the conveyance of it to be the thin filmy pith (as tis call’d) which passes through the middle of the quill.29

Hooke attaches a teleological dimension to the organization of the feathers’ substance: specifically, he argues that the quill of feathers consists of a “congeries of small bubbles” whose films are made of a very hard and horny substance. He also compares the pith of feathers to the cross pieces in a “long optical tube,” thus combining strength with lightness and avoiding the density and gravity that would have been ill suited to a bird. Art and nature are joined here through a relatively recent instrument, though the telescope is mentioned for a different purpose from the one for which it was built. In addition, Hooke argues that in “unripe” feathers the undeveloped bubbly or frothy structure in the middle of the quill is suited to conveying nutrition, a function that ceases with growth in mature feathers. Furthermore, the structure of the down of feathers, consisting of a series of interlocked hooks and fibers, seems especially suited to impede air flow and enable flight. In a passage echoing the argument for design Galen put forward in the Epode of On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Bodies, Hooke states that Nature knows “best its own laws” and also “how to adapt and fit them to her designed ends.”30 In a slightly later passage, he presents an argument for design referring explicitly to God, whose creation or nature operates according to the best mechanical contrivances. Here Hooke echoes the eminent divine and later bishop of Worcester Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699), who in the recently published Origines sacrae, or, A rational Account of the Grounds of Christian Faith (1662) had argued that it would have been “ridiculous folly . . . to impute that rare mechanism of the works of nature to the blind and fortuitous motion of some particles of matter.” Just as in Galen’s work, Hooke too intermixes references to Nature and to a Creator, though his emphasis differs from Galen’s, whose God is no mechanician.31

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Fig. 3.4. Wings of flies. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme XXVI. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

The world of insects was especially fertile terrain for Hooke’s microscopic investigations and reliance on the notion of mechanism; he referred to the “feet of flies” and their wings as mechanisms, admiring their design, which he compared to a pendulum, and mode of operation (fig. 3.4): “Whil’st I was examining and considering the curious Mechanism of the wings, I observ’d that under the wings of most kind of Flies, Bees, &c. there were plac’d certain pendulums or extended drops (as I may so call them from their resembling motion and figure) for they much resembled a long hanging drop of some transparent viscous liquor.”32

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Fig. 3.5. Beard of oats and hygroscope. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme XV. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

He further observed that these structures—known to us as halteres—are set in motion just before the wings begin to move and speculated that they may serve to regulate those motions, though in this case he was uncertain about their purpose. He also proposed alternative explanations, such as a possible use in respiration, whereby the “pendulums may be somewhat like the staff of a pump”— another mechanical analogy—but then considered this second explanation as less plausible. Either way, he compared the new structures either to a recent mechanical device like the pendulum, or to an older one like a pump’s staff.33 One of the farthest-reaching findings in Micrographia concerns the structure of the “beard” of wild oats. Relying on his microscope, Hooke discovered that the filaments consisted of different threads twisted together; since they react differently to temperature and humidity, they twist and unravel on each other when conditions change. An especially interesting image ties natural and artificial devices: Hooke shows two portions of the beards lengthwise, one in cross section, and at the bottom an instrument—a hygroscope—with a pointer attached to a twisted thread measuring the humidity of air. The two strands of the beard of oats are among Hooke’s least successful visual renderings, since the lack of contrast obscures the structure of the twisted threads (fig. 3.5). Hooke was inspired by this mechanism occurring in nature to construct a hybrid device to

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measure humidity, or a hygroscope. This is an instance in which nature inspired a partly artificial device; in this case Hooke took a natural structure in the form of a beard of oats and constructed a measuring device with it, highlighting that the natural-artificial interaction worked both ways. This, however, was only his starting point, because he also tried to explain other phenomena: This, had I time, I should enlarge much more upon; for it seems to me to be the very first footstep of Sensation, and Animate motion, the most plain, simple, and obvious contrivance that Nature has made use of to produce a motion, next to that of Rarefaction and Condensation by heat / and cold. And were this Principle very well examin’d, I am very apt to think, it would afford us a very great help to find out the Mechanism of the Muscles, which indeed, as farr as I have hitherto been able to examine, seems to me not so very perplex as one might imagine, especially upon the examination which I made of the Muscles of Crabs, Lobsters, and several sorts of large Shell-fish, and comparing my Observations on them, with the circumstances I observ’d in the muscles of terrestrial Animals.34

More specifically, Hooke envisaged a mechanism whereby changes in humidity and other physical parameters would induce contraction and relaxation. His mechanism bears a resemblance to Descartes’s account of muscular motion, which would be due to the influx of fluids transmitted by the nerves: Now, as in this Instance of the Beard of a wilde Oat, we see there is nothing else requisite to make it wreath and unwreath it self, and to streighten and bend its knee, then onely a little breath of moist or dry Air, or a small atome almost of water or liquor, and a little heat to make it again evaporate; for, by holding this Beard, plac’d and fix’d as I before directed, neer a Fire, and dipping the tip of a small shred of Paper in well rectify’d spirit of Wine, and then touching the wreath’d Cylindrical part, you may perceive it to untwist it self; and presently again, upon the avolation of the spirit, by the great heat, it will re-twist it self, and thus will it move forward and backwards as oft as you repeat the touching it with the spirit of Wine; so may, perhaps, the shrinking and relaxing of the muscles be by the influx and evaporation of some kind of some liquor or juice.35

About fifteen years later, in Lectiones cutlerianae, commenting on some recent contribution by the Dutch microscopist and textile merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Hooke emphasized once again the diminutive size of anatomical structures and the explanatory potential of extreme miniaturization: Now if the Creature be so exceeding small, what must we think of the Muscles, Joynts, Bones, Shells, &c. certain it is, that the Mechanism by which Nature performs the muscular motion is exceedingly small and curious, and to the perfor-

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mance of every muscular motion in greater Animals at least, there are not fewer distinct parts concerned than many millions of millions, and these visible, as I shall hereafter shew through a Microscope; and those that conceive in the body of a muscle, little more curiosity of mechanism than in a rope of the same bigness, have a very rude and false notion of it; and no wonder if they have recourse to Spirits to make out the Phaenomena.36

Hooke’s legacy can be seen in John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), which discusses perception in plants and animals: Perception puts the difference between animals and vegetables. This faculty of perception seems to me to be, that which puts the distinction betwixt the animal kingdom and the inferior parts of nature. For, however vegetables have, many of them, some degrees of motion, and upon the different application of other bodies to them, do very briskly alter their figures and motions, and so have obtained the name of sensitive plants, from a motion which has some resemblance to that which in animals follows upon sensation: yet I suppose it is all bare mechanism; and no otherwise produced than the turning of a wild oat-beard, by the insinuation of the particles of moisture, or the shortening of a rope, by the affusion of water. All which is done without any sensation in the subject, or the having or receiving any ideas.37

Hooke thus emerges as a key figure in the early usage of the term mechanism: he provided several specific examples, mostly, though not exclusively, from plants and animals. At times he stressed organizational aspects involving structures, motions, and purposes, though his emphasis was on the integration among all these aspects, with an emphasis on the perfection and craftsmanship of Nature and God: Hooke’s mechanisms were divinely designed machines. Unlike Hooke, his fellow microscopist Marcello Malpighi did not use the term mechanism. However, the 1668 review of his work on the structure of the viscera, De viscerum structura, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (most likely by its secretary and editor of the journal Henry Oldenburg, who states having received the book directly from Malpighi) does use the term in connection with the kidneys. In his treatise Malpighi claims to have identified glandular structures: he localized the site of the filtration process in the kidneys by injection of ink into the renal arteries, showing what he calls glomeruli, resembling apples attached to an apple tree (fig. 2.41). The review states: “Discoursing of the Use of the Kidney’s he finds it difficult to explain, by what art and mechanisme, Nature so copiously excretes by the Reins (whose glandular structure seems to be uniforme) a liquor, which is compounded of Aqueous, Saline, Sulphury and other particles, and sometimes the relicks of imposthums, and other filth of the body.”38 Malpighi’s original Latin states: “quanam arte

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Fig. 3.6. Coded arsmart. Grew, Anatomy of Plants (1682). Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

id contingat obscurissimum,” or literally, “it is most obscure by which art this would occur”; therefore, the review renders “arte” as “art and mechanisme.” Both Malpighi and the review attribute “art” (in the sense of “technē”) to nature; here, by “mechanism” the review means an anatomical structure responsible for filtration. The review echoes Malpighi’s concerns with the problematic connection between the structure and mode of operation of the glomeruli, which would secrete a wide range of substances through a seemingly uniform structure. Possibly Malpighi was expecting a range of differently shaped glomeruli, each secreting different types of particles. Despite his success in locating the site of filtration, his inability to identify the specific filtration mechanisms at play is revealing and representative of his work on glands, and of the tension between his mechanistic program and results. The usage of the term mechanism by Hooke and in the review of Malpighi’s essay highlights differences between their approaches: at times Hooke visually identified the mode of operation, whereas Malpighi’s pinpointed a structure but was unable to show how it worked. In Hooke we notice a delight at being surprised in detecting unpredictable mechanisms even when their theoretical implications were not especially significant. Genuine curiosity and appreciation for beauty played a more significant role in Hooke: the opening words of one of his sections, “For curiosity and beauty,” capture two defining elements of his approach.39

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Fig. 3.7. Spring. Hooke, Lectures de potentia restitutiva. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

It should not come as a surprise that another occurrence of the term mechanism, together with an account of its component parts and their operations, can be found in the work of another microscopic anatomist, trained by and a friend of Hooke, Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712). Wondering why the plant coded arsmart could project its seeds some distance away, Grew found an explanation by comparing the membrane to which the seed is attached to a tense bow, or a coiled spring, thus establishing an analogy between a natural and an artificial device (figs. 3.6–7). In a wholly “Hookian” fashion, modest magnification enabled Grew to dispose of occult qualities or faculties and to make his account intelligible, in that the comparison with the bow enables the viewer to grasp how the projection occurs:

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From this Mechanism, the manner of that violent and surprising Ejaculation of the Seeds, is intelligible. Which is not a motion originally in the Seeds themselves; but contrived by the Structure of the Case. For the Seeds hanging very loose, and not on the Sides of / the Case, as sometimes, but on the Pole, in the Centre, with their thicker end downward, they stand ready for a discharge: and the Sides of the Case being lined with a strong and Tensed Membrane, they hereby perform the office of so many little Bows: which, remaining fast at the Top, and (contrary to what we see in other Plants) opening or being lett off at the Bottom, forceably curle upward, and so drive all the Seeds before them.40

As Machamer, Darden, and Craver have pointed out, “intelligibility is historically constituted and disciplinary relative.” Here, in line with what we have seen in chapter one, Grew took the discharge process to be intelligible not by having recourse to the size, shape, and motion of hypothetical constituent particles but rather by finding a structure whose behavior had recently been mathematically and experimentally studied by Hooke, and which had become a component of the most widely recognized mechanical device: the watch.41 Mechanism Debated and Defined The term mechanism appeared in contexts besides anatomical and microscopic investigations. A comparatively frequent usage occurred not in explanations of specific phenomena but in the context of sermons and in controversies between natural philosophers and divines about the nature of the new science: Early English Books Online lists close to twenty occurrences of the term mechanism in works with the word sermon appearing in the title. The dispute among divines Joseph Glanvill (1636–1680) and Thomas Sprat (1635–1713) with medical practitioner and controversialist Henry Stubbe (1638–1676) is especially helpful from our perspective, because it was in that context that Stubbe provided a definition of our term. Their exchanges included more texts and issues than I will be able to cover here; I will be very selective and discuss one passage from each. In an early work, The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661), published one year after his ordination in the Church of England, Glanvill put forward views echoing Henry More’s in their praise of some aspects of the new philosophy and Descartes while defending the role of immaterial entities: How the soul directs the Spirits for the motion of the Body according to the several animal exigents; is as perplex in the theory, as either of the former. For the meatus, or passages, through which those subtill emissaries are conveyed to the respective members, being so almost infinite, and each of them drawn through so many meanders, cross turnings, and divers roades, wherein other spirits are continually a jour-

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neying; it is wonderfull, that they should exactly perform their regular destinations without losing their way in such a wilderness: neither can the wit of man tell how they are directed. For that they are carried by the manuduction of a Rule, is evident from the constant steddyness and regularity of their motion into the / parts, where their supplies are expected: But, what that regulating efficiency should be, and how managed; is not easily determin’d. That it is performed by meer Mechanisme, constant experience confutes; which assureth us, that our spontaneous motions are under the Imperium of our will. At least the first determination of the Spirits into such or such passages, is from the soul, what ever we hold of the after conveyances; of which likewise I think, that all the philosophy in the world cannot make it out to be purely Mechanicall.42

Here Glanvill challenges “meer Mechanisme”—the very same expression employed by More two years previously—on two grounds: first, because of the initial actions of our will; secondly, because the bewildering downstream traffic system of the subtle fluids moving through the body could not possibly be “purely Mechanicall.” Although Sprat and Glanvill were both fellows and defenders of the Royal Society, their views with respect to mechanism differed. In History of the Royal-Society (1667), Sprat defended a strict version of the mechanical philosophy, though without mentioning the word mechanism. The occasion for the following passage was his desire to set the record straight about Christopher Wren’s accomplishments, which he believed had not been sufficiently appreciated: Dr. Wren produc’d before the Society, an Instrument to represent the effects of all sorts of Impulses, made between two hard globous Bodies, either of equal, or of different bigness, and swiftness, following or meeting each other, or the one moving, the other at rest. From these varieties arose many unexpected effects; of all which he demonstrated the true Theories, after they had been confirm’d by many hundreds of Experiments in that Instrument. These he propos’d as the Principles of all Demonstrations in Natural Philosophy: Nor can it seem strange, that these Elements should be of such Universal use; if we consider that Generation, Corruption, Alteration, and all the Vicissitudes of Nature, are nothing else but the effects arising from the meeting of little Bodies, of differing Figures, Magnitudes, and Velocities.43

Sprat attributes to Wren the role of founder of the true theory of the collision of bodies based on “many hundreds of Experiments.” Although Descartes had begun the project, his methodology and results were inadequate. Here I am less concerned with the details of Sprat’s reconstruction—which appears highly questionable—than with Stubbe’s response to his views.

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Stubbe was involved in a polemic with the Royal Society, especially its apologists Sprat and Glanvill. Both Glanvill and Sprat defended the society and the new experimental philosophy, while opposing the Peripatetic tradition. Stubbe’s views are rather complex and have been the subject of extensive investigations; in particular, he defended Aristotle, though there is probably more to his opinions than meets the eye, leading some interpreters to argue that many of his positions were purely tactical. Moreover, Stubbe was well acquainted with both More’s and Hooke’s writings and tried to enlist More on his side. More had to write a letter in a work of his follower Glanvill to distance himself from Stubbe.44 An especially important passage addressing some of the issues we have been discussing can be found in A Reply unto the Letter Written to Mr. Henry Stubbe in Defense of The History of the Royal Society (1671). Stubbe cites Sprat’s passage we have seen above, emphasizing the words “nothing else”; unlike Sprat, he opposes seeing nature as mere mechanism, and in this context provides a definition of our term, the first I have encountered: The very Word Mechanism imports thus much: it being an allusion to the conformation of Machines, wherein each part contributes to the effect according to its Scituation, Size, and the Geometrical Proportion it bears to the other Parts, of which the Machine is composed: And if the Machine do not produce its effect entirely, by vertue of such a Geometrical frame, we do not say that the Phaenomenon is Mechanical. Thus the Motion of a Water, or Clock, when it ariseth from its Fabrick purely, then it is Mechanical: but when a Man doth winde it up, ’tis not a Mechanical motion, except it do also appear that Man is also a Machine, and that what he operates at that time, is purely Mechanical.45

Here Stubbe draws a line between phenomena involving some mechanical aspects from those that are entirely mechanical. He emphasizes the relation between the machine as a whole and its parts, which contribute to its effect. The mechanism he has in mind would be a clock or a mill—the archetypal mechanisms—operating exclusively by virtue of its structure, without any nonmechanical contributions. Thus, water flow or the motion of the gear of a clock would be mechanical, whereas a man winding the clock would not—what it would mean for a man to operate mechanically in those circumstances he does not say in our passage. Pace Bechtel, early modern mechanisms are closely tied to machines. Anatomical Mechanisms The occurrence of our term in the anatomical literature was not restricted to microscopy. London physician Walter Charleton (1620–1707) was one of those who employed the term mechanism in the context of detailed investigations, notably of the heart. In Three Anatomical Lectures (1683), a treatise based on lectures

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delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, Charleton gestures toward a mechanistic explanation of the heart’s pulsation. The issue had been recently addressed in Borelli’s posthumous De motu animalium (1680–1681), a work that had a considerable impact across Europe and to which Charleton refers. Having praised the Alexandrian anatomist Erasistratus for his reliance on mechanical principles, Charleton proceeds to provide an account of the heart and its pulsation. After describing the structure and actions of the heart’s component parts, Charleton goes on to sound an optimistic note on his own achievement: Thus have we run through all the proper actions and offices or uses of all the parts of this incomparable Machine of the Heart, in their natural order; and found them all to be plainly Mechanic, i.e. necessarily consequent from the structure, conformation, situation, disposition, and motions of the parts, by which they are respectively performed. If the Mechanism hath been by us rightly explicated (as I am perswaded it hath) in the precedent discourse, no man has reason longer to believe, that the manner of the motion of the heart is a thing to human wit wholly impervestigable.46

In later passages Charleton seeks to provide a more detailed account of the mechanism of the heart’s pulsation based on its structure, comparing it to a hydraulic mint operating by the combination of smaller yet not microscopic component parts: “As the Artificial Engine was composed of many less Machines, each of which performed its proper office by a distinct operation; yet all conspired to one common end: So the Natural, being also complex, consisteth of various smaller Machines, viz. the Ears, Valves, Ventricles, Musculose flesh, Fibres of different orders, Chords, Columns, Papillae, &c. all which have their peculiar functions and motions; yet so combined, that they all co-operate to the Vital motion or heat of the bloud, and diffusion of the same.”47 Moreover, “the aptitude of the Heart to Pulsation doth consist in its proper Fabric and conformation, in its Conical Figure, in its cavities within, in the disposition and configuration of its Fibres, in a word, in its whole Mechanism, which I have formerly described, and which is far different from the Mechanism of any other Muscle whatsoever.”48 After having argued that the cause of the pulsation is a chemical process resulting from the afflux, drop by drop, of a nervous juice,49 Charleton develops the comparison between the heart’s fibers and the threads of a cord: And as for the Probability of this proposition; that cannot be obscure to any man of common sense, who shall consider, first, the near similitude that is between the threds of a chord, and the Fibres of the heart, in Figure, in tenacity and strength, in aptness to swell, and consequently to shorten themselves upon humectation, and in the faculty of restoring themselves to their natural tone after extension: and then

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the little or no difference betwixt water and the Succus Nervosus, as to the power of insinuating into, and dilating the Pores of bodies naturally apt to swell and shrink. For, since the two Agents, viz. water and the Succus Nervosus, are so alike in their efficacy, as to the dilatation of the / Pores of Tensile bodies; and since the two Patients also, viz. the threds of a chord, and the Fibres of the heart, have so full a resemblance in their nature: it is highly probable, if not necessary, that like effects should be produced by them. And this probability is the greater, because of all other Efficient Causes hitherto excogitated by Learned men, to solve the grand Phaenomenon of the Pulsation of the Heart, none can be given, which is either so intelligible, or so congruous to the whole Mechanism of the Heart, as this which I have in this Lecture endeavour’d to assert.50

By “mechanism” Charleton means primarily a structure with its component parts, leading to understanding its motion in what, echoing the recently published work by Grew on plants, he calls an intelligible fashion. London physician and comparative anatomist Edward Tyson (1651–1708) used the term mechanism in his study of comparative anatomy, which provided valuable opportunities to investigate unusual internal arrangements of the animal body. In Phocaena, or, The Anatomy of a Porpess (1680), for example, Tyson advocates a new natural history of animals based not simply on what he calls superficial descriptions of external appearances but on the anatomy of the internal parts, which he compares to the internal gears of a watch. Tyson was a friend of Hooke, who bought the porpoise for Tyson to study, drew the relevant images, and encouraged him to publish his work: I cannot see how a Natural History of Animals can be writ without Zootomy; at best their [former Naturalists’] Accounts can be but superficial, and by them we may know a Pig from a Dog, or that this is a Bull, a Bear or Monky; but still remain ignorant of the curious Contrivance and Mechanisme of Nature within; just as if a person should think he had sufficiently described a Watch, when he had only taken notice of the Case, the Studs, the Glass, the figures and hand; by this he may know it to be perhaps a Watch, but knows not how it so exactly measures time.51

As in several other instances, here Tyson pairs the terms “contrivance” and “mechanism.” In the same work Tyson provides specific instances of anatomical contrivances, arguing that the porpoise’s back resembles an inverted ship, for example. The spine too has a peculiar structure: “The vertebrae are joyned together by the intervention of a bony Cartilaginous body that consists of a double Lamina, containing, in a Cavity in the Middle, a gellied substance,” this being an “excellent contrivance for the flection of the body.”52 In a passage echoing the Danish anatomist Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686) and his own Ephemeri vita (1681),

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Tyson also provides a methodological perspective: “Natures Synthetic Method in the composure and structure of Animal Bodies, is best learn’t by this Analytic; by taking to pieces this Automaton, and viewing asunder the several Parts, Wheels and Springs that give it life and motion.”53 Here anatomy is compared to analysis or the art of resolution into the constituent mechanical components. In a later work, Carigueya, seu marsupiale Americanum, or, The Anatomy of an Opossum (1698), for which he dissected a female specimen of the animal, Tyson emphasizes other aspects. The anatomy of the opossum differs in many significant respects from that of mammals, and Tyson duly analyzes many peculiar features. In discussing the muscles and bones of the pouch, for example, he praises their construction, ending with a reference to Plato’s claim that God applies geometry, this being a connection with the notion of mechanism already exploited by Charleton. Here the emphasis seems to be on the spatial arrangement of parts rather than formal mathematics: The Antagonist to these Muscles is, the Sphincter Marsupii; an oval Series of strong, fleshy Fibres, which serve to constringe and close the Orifice of the Pouch; which it does so perfectly (as I have already observed), that one would think the Skin here not to be slit; nor can the Orifice be observed till you have dilated it with your Fingers. Nature’s Contrivance therefore in placing this Pouch here, in this Hinder Part of the Body, is very great; her Mechanisme in forming these Two Bones, the Janitores Marsupii, which no Sceleton besides has, and so artfully furnishing them with these Muscles, is most admirable; that with the Philosopher, there is none but must own Θεòς γεωμετρεí [God geometrizes].54

Comparative anatomy offers endless opportunities to identify and discuss differences among species. Going against a view of nature operating uniformly, one Malpighi had forcefully defended in previous decades, Tyson’s investigations led him to argue, on the contrary, that nature does not necessarily follow the same rules but adopts a wide range of contrivances. In the opossum, for example, the pylorus, connecting the stomach and the intestine, would seemingly let food back into the stomach; this, however, does not happen because of the animal’s frequent posture: “And what I hinted, how ’tis, that a Regurgitation of it into the Stomach again, is prevented; especially upon the Posture ’tis frequently in, when it hangs by its Tail, since (as I observed) the Passage at the Pylorus is so open and patent. And for the doing this, we must expect Nature’s Contrivance (which is always admirable) to be great; not confining her self still to the same Rules; but is Infinite and All wise, in attaining the same Ends, with the greatest Variety and Mechanism.”55 Although Tyson describes a mechanical arrangement preventing food reflux, here and in the previous quotation his usage of the term

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mechanism emphasizes nature’s ingenuity more than necessarily a mechanistic way of operating. Organism and Mechanism between London and Halle Semantic shifts were both frequent and related to key terms; here I wish briefly to investigate the interplay between the notions of mechanism and organism, one that was emerging at the turn of the century and whose interpretative history instantiates some claims I put forward in chapter one. Here it is therefore helpful and indeed necessary to consider the notion of mechanism in its connections with another key notion whose meaning was being defined. In The Divine History of the Genesis of the World (1670), a sprawling work of nearly five hundred pages published anonymously, the Puritan lawyer and member of Parliament Samuel Gott (1614–1671) mentions both “mechanism” and “organism.” By the former he meant mechanical organization, which could also be at the microscopic level. In the following passage Gott appears dismissive of those “Materialists” according to whom local motion and the minute internal organization of a body or its texture would be responsible for its qualities: “And now I shall return again to such Materialists, who though they cannot affirm, that becaus a whole Body is Moved up or down, this way or that way, therefore it ceaseth to be the same, yet can suppose, that if the parts in the Body be Moved in such a maner, as neither they nor we can discern them, there being a new Corporeal Texture, Schematism, and Mechanism therof, it shall therfore acquire a new Individual Spirit and Spiritual Qualitys, by such Local Motion, as it doth by Physical Generation and Corruption.”56 Gott was among the first to employ in the English language the term organism, which occurs a few times in the same work. This notion is harder to interpret: it stems from the Greek organon, or instrument, which in the now archaic adjectival form organical implies something endowed with organs like a living body, while the suffix -ism marks the noun; the term is also related to organization. Gott considers the role of what he calls elementary spirits, related to the four elements; vegetative spirits, related to plants and the lower activities of animals; and sensitive spirits, related to higher activities in animals. In this context he states: “Nor are there only such several Spirits of Trees, Herbs, Grass, and of every Species of them, which by a Proper Plastical Virtue Created in and with them by God do severaly Effigiate their Proper Bodys, and the Organism therof, but also Proper Subordinate Vegetative Spirits of Fishes, Fowls, and Beasts, and of every Species of them, which doth so Effigiate their Proper Bodys, and the Organism therof.”57 Here the verb “to effigiate” plays a key role in suggesting how the vegetative spirits, both of plants and animals, appropriately fashion their bodies and their organisms by means of a plastic virtue with which God has

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endowed them. Later in the same work he gives the example of a glassmaker who would effigiate glass to his wishes by blowing. By plastic virtue Gott means an immaterial power associated with the vegetative soul. He also compares God to a clockmaker: the latter relies on art and produces engines through artificial and external principles; the former relies on nature to produce “more Curious engines” through natural and internal means.58 The term organism thus involves the organization of a living body. Discussing the organs of sensation, including external ones such as eyes and ears, and internal ones such as the brain and nerves, Gott once again ties the notion of organism to the vegetative spirit. He states: “Also all the Organs, both External, and Internal, do require the Vegetative Spirit, and Virtues therof, Plasticaly to Form them, and Temper their Elementary Qualitys, and also to Actuate and produce their Animal Spirits, as I have shewed: and this I conceiv to be the very Organism of all the Organs of Sensation, and Instrumentalitys of the Sensitive Spirit.”59 Here Gott argues that this is what he understands to be the organism of the sensory organs, as a material interface of the sensitive spirit. Gott seems to imply that, left to its own devices, unorganized matter would be unsuited for a living body: its qualities would have to be tempered “plastically” by the vegetative spirit to become an organism. Nehemiah Grew too, in Cosmologia sacra (1701), uses the term organism, as when he states: “What more wonderful, than to see the several Viscera obtain their several kinds of Substance, as well as Organism.”60 And: “How admirable also is the natural Structure or Organism of Bodies?” Thus “organism” is taken as synonym to “natural Structure” and is mentioned alongside “substance.” Grew does not cite Gott, though it is not impossible that he would have been familiar with Divine History, whose contents are not unrelated to his own work.61 Grew argues that life is different from motion and a body cannot become vital by being moved. However, he compares life to motion and comes to the conclusion that in the same way as body is the subject of motion, so life must have as its subject an incorporeal “Substantial Principle” or a vital substance. Grew also claims that although a body cannot be made alive by its matter becoming subtler, properly mixed, or differently organized, it has to have a proper organism suited to its “species of life”: “Wherefore, the Organism of a body, although it hath nothing to do, in the production of Life, as hath been shewed: Yet it is necessary, that every Body, Should have its Organism, agreeable to the Species of Life, in the Vital Principle, wherewith it is endowed. So as hereby to be fitted to receive from, and transfer unto Life, all manner of proper Motions and Impressions. Life and Motion, being, as is said, the Two Instruments of Commerce, between the Vital and the Corporeal Worlds.”62 Grew’s views echo to some degree Gott’s focus on the role of the organism at the interface between an immaterial vital

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principle and the body’s structure and organization; motion and, more ambiguously, life being like a currency employed to trade between the vital and corporeal worlds. In at least some cases some structures in plants and animals may be called mechanisms, as we have seen for the coiled springlike membranes in coded arsmart. Although by the turn of the century Grew had seemingly moved away from the mechanical philosophy, in Cosmologia he uses the term mechanism with an analogous meaning, this time with regard to the bulk and figure of muscle and bone and the insertion of one into the other. Despite all its ambiguities, the notion of organism suggests a discomfort in relying exclusively on the notion of mechanism in characterizing structures of living bodies, and at the same time the need for a notion specifically suited to them, even considering that natural structures do not emerge by chance but are the product of divine creation.63 Moving linguistically from English to Latin, slightly forward in time, and geographically from England to Halle—a key intellectual medical center to the turn of the century—we find revealing semantic shifts in the works of rival physicians Georg Ernst Stahl (1659–1734) and Friedrich Hoffmann (1660–1742).64 The issue stems from the long-standing tension between man-made machines and natural ones, such as the animal and especially the human body. Hoffmann was prompted by the dislike some felt toward the “odiosum” and “invidiosum” term “mechanismus,” so as to rouse the bile (“bilem commoveat”) in some, to put matters this way: Thus to us a mechanism is a certain effect, such as a motion or operation of a body, dependent on a physical cause always and necessarily producing that effect; therefore whichever effects occur mechanically, namely by a mechanism, are brought about by necessary causes, namely acting or suited to acting for no other reason, . . . ; when several material causes are coordinated and disposed in such a way that effects arise from these that fit the idea of the craftsman who set himself a determinate goal, it is still a mechanism, but more perfect, and, according to some, it is an organism, since this mechanism happens to exist in organic bodies.65

Hoffmann considers mechanical processes rather broadly, including what he calls physical processes generally, or even chemical ones; the specific example he gives in the omitted portion is a piece of wood catching fire, the flame being often used as an analog of life. In his opinion the notion of mechanism is closely tied to that of regular cause—very much unlike Cudworth’s understanding of mechanism as fortuitous. Hoffmann perceives a hierarchy of mechanisms based on their perfection: simple artificial mechanisms, such as clocks, are made by us; hugely—perhaps infinitely—more elaborate mechanisms in which several causes interact with a purpose or goal as in living bodies, are due to the supreme artificer and are also called “organisms.” Thus, Hoffmann tries to establish a bridge

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between artificial and natural mechanisms, or organisms; however, there seems to be a major, perhaps unbridgeable, gap in complexity and perfection between them, comparable to the difference in perfection between the artificers. His colleague and rival Stahl had used the term organism already in his doctoral dissertation, De intestinis, eorumque morbis ac symptomatis, cognoscendis & curandis (On Investigating and Curing the Intestines, Their Diseases and Symptoms; 1684, repr. 1704), though the issue came to the fore more prominently early in the new century in Disquisitio de mechanismi et organismi diversitate (1706, repr. 1708), in which he drives a wedge between mechanisms and organisms. Stahl understood a mechanism as being subordinated to the immaterial soul, which would be an agent internal or intrinsic to the animal machine. Thus, a mechanism would be qualitatively different from an organism: the latter would provide a functional purposeful integration—one could say an orchestration— among a series of operations, in such a way that the final purpose is intrinsic to it; the former would involve a mere coordination of operations, such that any final purpose—as telling the exact time for a clock—is extrinsic to it and imposed by the artificer. For Stahl the purposeful operations of the soul could not be replaced by complexity, even an infinite one. Together with the Montpellier botanist and nosologist François Boissier de Sauvages, Stahl was one of the leading figures of the “animistes,” according to whom the soul played a key role in animal physiology.66 Both Hoffmann and Stahl entered in correspondence with Leibniz, who sided with the former. In the subsequent extensive exchanges Stahl provided an especially clear version of his own views: “This implication shows up first of all in the present sterile fight about mechanism, since the distinction between mechanism or machine, and organism or instrument, though obvious and evident, is not appropriately understood. . . . It is manifest that every physical organ is a machine, but it is equally clear that not every machine (indeed, strictly speaking, none) is forthwith an organ or instrument.”67 Thus, although the physical body and all its organs are machines and indeed mechanisms, it would be reductive and inaccurate to see them simply as such, because one would miss the teleological dimension central to organisms. A Brief Coda: Mechanism in Mid-Eighteenth-Century France Usage of our term spread far and wide during the eighteenth century. France is an especially interesting case because of the emergence at Montpellier of new medical and philosophical perspectives challenging traditional mechanistic views, and because of the publication in the third quarter of the century of the epoch-making Encyclopédie, by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert. After reviewing a passage tying mechanism to the Cartesians, I discuss more

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ambiguous references in an influential text by the Montpellier school on glands, echoing some of our previous discussions, and lastly select some crucial passages from the Encyclopédie. An unambiguous meaning to our term was assigned in the obituary of Cartesian natural philosopher and mathematician Joseph Privat de Molières (1677–1742), in which his friend Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan argued that according to some, physics was “réduit au vil méchanisme des artisans,” stating: “Mechanism, as immediate cause of all the phenomena of nature, has become in these latter times the distinctive sign of Cartesians.”68 By contrast, in his often-cited work on glands, Recherches anatomiques sur la position des glandes (1751), Montpellier physician Théophile de Bordeu (1722–1776) is much more flexible in the usage of our term, which occurs dozens of times. Bordeu routinely talks of the “mechanisme des excrétions” and “des secretions” of glands, but since he is unsure about their mode of operation, the term does not carry the same philosophical implications as in d’Ortous de Mairan’s obituary. Bordeu seeks an equidistant position between the eminent Leiden mechanist Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738) and Stahl, the Halle animist.69 While Malpighi too was unsure about the precise mechanism of glands, he did not doubt their mechanical nature. While Bordeu’s views echo those of Steno, who believed that nerves regulated the flow of saliva in the parotid gland by opening and closing vessels, his position was more ambiguous: Bordeu argued that glands adjust and react to changing circumstances through their rich supply of nerves, compared secretion to sexual erection, claiming that glands are not merely passive devices but operate like suction cups (“venteuse”).70 In an important footnote, Bordeu talks of an ever-acting conservative force responsible for the operations of the body and admits that he is having recourse to metaphors and comparison in addressing complex issues—almost as a form of suspension of judgment.71 In a particularly intriguing passage, Bordeu compares glands to organs of sense, including the eye, because they all adjust to the external circumstances—the eye through the pupil, which is more or less open depending on the amount of light. Boyle had claimed that since adjustments of the pupil occur without the action of the rational soul, the body works like a mechanism. By contrast, by pointing to nervous action, Bordeu stresses the body’s activity—a feature emphasized by the additional surprising comparison between glands and Abraham Trembley’s recently discovered freshwater polyps, which according to Bordeu seek nutrition much like glands seek their appropriate fluids. Through his emphasis on nerves, Bordeu saw glands almost like independent creatures.72 Bordeu contributed an entry for Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie on “crise,” although the Montpellier school was far more prolific. The Encyclopédie includes an exceedingly short entry for “méchanisme,” stating that our term is

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used “of the manner in which some mechanical causes produce their effect; thus one says the mechanism of a clock, or the mechanism of the human body,” an intriguing juxtaposition that may have benefited from some qualifications. The disciplinary domain is indicated as “Physique.” 73 The term, however, occurs over five hundred times in the multivolume endeavor, suggesting that its entry is considerably undertheorized. By contrast, the term “organisme” does not have an entry and occurs only sporadically in the text, mostly juxtaposed to “méchanisme.”74 The Encyclopédie, whose full title proclaims it to be a “systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts and crafts” (Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers), provides extraordinarily rich documentation of the technology of its time. In this context the term “mechanism” occurs repeatedly in conjunction with a wide range of devices, from “balance” and “balancier” to the extensive technological equipment documented in the tables. Many occurrences of our term occur in the context of discussions of the soul, anatomy, and medicine: the entry “âme des bêtes” by the Abbé Claude Yvon (1714–1791), has twenty-two occurrences; the anonymously contributed entry “Inflammation, Maladies inflammatoires” refers to a “mechanisme aveugle,” or blind mechanism, stressing the lack of a purpose.75 In his entry “Faculté vitale,” Jean Bouillet (1690–1777) presents current philosophical stances about life with great clarity: “méchanisme,” which he considered unsatisfactory; the belief in some vital faculty dependent on a mechanism different from known current ones, which he viewed as a fanciful position that should be reduced to “pur méchanisme”; and the belief in the role of the soul, which he endorsed—a rare position in the Encyclopédie.76 Concluding Reflections Mine is a partial and limited study, yet I hope it may be useful in highlighting some of the ways the term mechanism was used from mid-seventeenth century England, documenting the existence of a range of meanings and implications attached to it, and contributing to reconstructing the horizon of researches and debates and the growing role of mechanistic explanations at the time. In particular, Henry Stubbe’s definition provides strong evidence of the contemporary association between mechanisms and mechanical devices. Following More’s Immortality of the Soul, mechanisms were understood as material entities; they involved what the protagonists and their audiences saw as mechanical devices, whether artificial or natural, because God or nature worked mechanically—though with greater perfection than humans. We have analyzed the interplay between artificial devices and nature, with devices such as pendulums and springs helping us understand nature, and, reciprocally, nature occasionally inspiring new hybrid devices, such as Hooke’s hygroscope, in which he attached a needle with a graduated scale to a beard of oats. While the majority

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of the occurrences of our term imply a teleological dimension, occasionally the focus was also on curious structures seemingly devoid of a clear purpose, such as snowflakes or Kettering stone. We have encountered a range of stances with theological and natural-philosophical implications; divines, such as Henry More and Joseph Glanvill among others, used the term as frequently as experimental philosophers in the context of general discussions on mechanistic explanations, often accompanied by the qualification “mere” or “pure.” In this regard our term characterized the types of accounts offered and their range or coverage, rather than specific explanations, documenting an anxiety about the mechanical philosophy and the role of the soul and other immaterial entities in bodily processes. The term mechanism was also used in detailed studies, whether at the microscopic or visible levels. The term was relatively new—major Continental anatomists, such as Malpighi, for example, never used it; therefore, I am wary of drawing conclusions from its absence, though its occurrence in the second half of the century calls for some reflections. Hooke emerges as a key figure whose extensive reliance on the term in his microscopic investigations provides a rich and rewarding area of study; his work is especially valuable for the wealth of detailed accounts of specific mechanisms he provided, giving us an unparalleled sense of the research horizon of the period and its limitations. Anatomists like Nehemiah Grew, Edward Tyson (both significantly closely associated with Hooke), and Walter Charleton used our term to characterize specific macroscopic structures in human and animal bodies. It seems no accident that our term emerged in the aftermath of and in response to the works of Descartes; in mid-eighteenth-century France it was explicitly tied to Cartesians. Its increasing frequency documents the need for a concept capturing the growing emphasis on mechanistic explanations and the anxiety they generated. Similarly, the examples we have seen of the evolving tension between the notions of organism and mechanism highlight the growing need both for a term specifically devoted to describing structures of living bodies, whether plants or animals, and for a study seeking to reconstruct its exact meaning and usage over time. By focusing on the occurrences I have identified, I hope to alert historians to the significance of the term and its cognates. I also hope my study can serve as a model for further investigations involving different languages over a broader geographical area and a longer timeframe, including the professional affiliation of those who used it. If anyone reading a historical text will pause to reflect on the usage and meaning of our term, one of the aims of my study will have been fulfilled.

Chapter 4

Mechanisms as Investigative Projects Mechanistic explanations in anatomy were in a state of flux in the seventeenth century, especially the second half, for a number of reasons. New investigations were revealing a novel picture of the body; the range of mechanical devices available was growing and the toolkit of mechanistic explanations was expanding accordingly, relying on new devices such as pendulums and springs, and notions such as elasticity and semipermeability; moreover, the microscope was opening new vistas onto previously unknown microstructures, aided by novel and problematic techniques such as staining and injections.1 In this rapidly changing field mechanistic anatomists faced an uphill struggle in many areas, from the operations of individual organs, such as the lungs, the kidneys, the liver, or even the brain, to understanding sense perception. The problem of generation, however, stands out as one of the most challenging: how could one account for the formation of animals from their parents, a process occurring routinely and mysteriously in animals large and small? Marcello Malpighi, possibly the most productive and influential anatomist of the second half of the century, devoted two short but fundamental treatises and a few sections from larger works to generation. Several historians have investigated those works, highlighting his pioneering and remarkable usage of the microscope. My focus here is to investigate his mechanistic agenda in an area in which such explanations seemed exceedingly hard to attain; namely, the act of fecundation and its immediate aftermath, the onset of generation. It may seem peculiar and perhaps ungenerous to focus on Malpighi’s speculations on an area he admitted was beyond the capabilities of his microscopy, given his strong emphasis on detailed empirical investigations. Besides the fact that his larger work on generation has been extensively investigated by others, however, one could argue that precisely because visual evidence was so limited, Malpighi delved into speculations shedding light on his views and agenda—though admittedly they are not especially representative of his extensive work on generation and anatomy more broadly.2 109

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I start by reviewing Malpighi’s early works in relation to Harvey’s views; I then examine Malpighi’s and Borelli’s later attempts to interpret fecundation mechanistically, despite their use of the notion of “plastic power.” The third section goes back to the earlier works by Hooke and Boyle, who provide valuable linguistic and conceptual tools to reexamine the relevant questions. Boyle split the problem in two components, dealing with the agent and its mode of operation, giving to the latter an unquestionably mechanistic answer. The last section returns to Malpighi’s work on generation from the vantage point of his Opera posthuma (1697), which offers a wealth of reflections ranging from a possible mechanistic account in the form of chemical processes to a creative borrowing from Boyle’s strategy. Malpighi’s study of generation highlights the tensions between mechanism seen as a finished product and as an investigative project, providing a concrete and focused case study of the problems associated with mechanistic explanations in the second half of the seventeenth century. Harvey, Malpighi, and the Formation of the Chick in the Egg Harvey and Malpighi are the main seventeenth-century anatomists who sought to unravel the issue of generation through detailed and extensive empirical investigations. My brief excursus does not pretend to do justice to the richness of their works but seeks to highlight some key differences in their perspectives. Briefly put, for Harvey fecundation resulted from an immaterial process analogous to contagion in pestilential disease, to a magnet, or to a mental conception in the brain. He also argued that an immaterial plastic power or faculty guides the formation process from a homogeneous or “similar” undifferentiated body, so that “all and every the parts of a Chicken, whether they be Bones, Clawes, Feathers, Flesh, or what ever else, are procreated and fed.”3 In his main work, Exercitationes de generatione animalium (Exercitations on the Generation of Animals; 1651), Harvey argues that all the parts of the animals are fashioned by a “primigenial moisture” and in the following passage he clarifies his thoughts: I can scarce refrain my pen from rebuking those that follow Empedocles and Hippocrates also: (who will needs have all similar bodies to be generated by the congregation of the four contrary Elements: (as being mixt bodies) and dissolved or corrupted by their segregation) nor is Democritus and the Epicureans, who follow him, less blameable, who constitute all things out of the confluence of Atomes of different Figures. For it was their errour of old, and is a popular errour at this day, that all similar bodies are framed out of heterogeneous or different bodies. For according to this opinion, had a man Linceus his eyes he could not discerne any thing that were similar, one in number, identity, and continuity: but there were nothing but an appearing union, and an assembly or heap made up of a congregation and

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certaine colligation of indivisible bodies: so that generation were nothing else but an aggregation, and convenient positure of several parts.4

Here Harvey connects Empedocles, the proponent of the four elements, with Hippocrates and the atomists Democritus, Epicurus, and their followers, claiming that they would all deny true homogeneous or similar bodies. His reference to Lynceus, the mythological figure who would be unable to discern anything truly homogeneous despite being endowed with an exceptional sight, echoes a similar passage in Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione, though in the seventeenth century the issue had a new dimension related to the impetuous rise of corpuscular and atomistic views and of microscopy. Harvey’s subsequent claim, from a passage closely following the one just cited, discusses how the first stages of generation occur: Nor (so far as I could ever yet perceive, or by any meanes observe) are there any similar parts which are first constituted in their several order, or existence at the same time together (as membranes, / flesh, fibres, gristles, bones, &c.) that so from them conioined together (as out of the Elements or first rudiments of Animals) the organs or parts, and the whole entire animal should at last be framed; but as we said before, the first rudiment of the body is onely a similar soft gluten, or stiff, substance, not unlike a spermatical concernment, or coagulated seed: out of which (the decree of Generation going on) being changed, cut in sunder, or distributed into several parcels, as by the divine Mandat as we have said, (let here be a Bone, there a Nerve, or a Muscle, here the Bowels, the receptacles of the Excrements, &c.) out of an inorganical substance, was made an organical: out of one, and that one being of the same nature, were many things made, and those also diverse, and contrary: not by a kind of transposition, or local motion (as if by the virtue of the heat, there did arise a congregation of homogeneous, and a disgregation of heterogeneous bodies) but rather by a disgregation of homogeneous parts, or bodies, then any composition of heterogeneous.5

That “disgregation” of homogeneous parts would be the first step in the process of epigenesis, or the successive formation of the animal, not by local motion, but by the progressive differentiation and formation of new structures. The process Harvey envisaged was explicitly neither corpuscular nor mechanical. His views stood at the opposite end from Malpighi’s opinions, according to which the chick is not formed through epigenesis but emerges before incubation and immediately after fertilization or fecundation—probably because Malpighi studied eggs fecundated in August, in the hot Italian summers, leading to swift incubation. On the example of the Venice physician Giuseppe degli Aromatari (1587–1660), who was also a friend of Harvey’s, Malpighi saw a parallel between

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the formation of the chick in the egg and that of plants: he argued that the seed and the chick develop in similar fashion and are preformed or appear before incubation. This is what he meant when he talked of “preformation,” a term that subsequently assumed a different meaning. Therefore his position differed from that of his contemporaries, such as Nicolas Malebranche and Jan Swammerdam, for example, according to whom all successive generations were created by God ab initio and growth, as opposed to generation, was the only process truly occurring. Growth seemed more amenable to mechanistic understanding than the seemingly untreatable formation of a new animal. For Malpighi, fecundation and the first formation of the chick appeared crucial and problematic at the same time: it was the time when the new animal was formed, but it was shrouded in mystery regarding its details, which seemed unfathomable even with the microscope.6 Despite these difficulties, Malpighi’s mechanistic inclination is not in doubt from the often-cited opening sentence of his first essay on the topic, De formatione pulli in ovo (On the Formation of the Chick in the Egg), dating from 1672 and published by the Royal Society in the following year (1673): “In building machines artisans are used to fashion the individual parts preliminarily, so that those that must be later assembled could be first viewed separately. Several naturalists [Mystae Naturae] interested in the study of animals have hoped that this would also happen in works of Nature; for since it is extremely difficult to disentangle the complex structure of the body, it was thought helpful to inspect the production of the individual parts in their earliest stages, still separate.” 7 Alas, continues Malpighi, the animal makes its first appearance when it is already formed, frustrating the expectations of the naturalists, here characterized as “Mystae Naturae,” literally “Nature’s priests.” Malpighi’s statement was likely self-referential, in that he was one of those “Mystae Naturae” hoping to detect the building blocks, like some gears to be assembled as if animals were machines, but whose plan was thwarted. We see here Malpighi seeking to merge his empirical investigations with a mechanistic framework: he compared Nature to an artisan building machines or assembling them after having fashioned their components. Commenting on this passage, Raphaële Andrault has recently argued: “A physician known for his use of the machine analogy tries at the same time to emphasize the gap between organic bodies and artificial machines, when his research revolves around the very first formation of living beings.”8 In my opinion Malpighi recognized that nature fashions the body in a way different from the one he had hypothesized, but, ultimately, he believed that the process and outcome were no less mechanical; there was no unbridgeable gap between organic bodies and suitable machines. In fact, in a later passage, seemingly developing the opening one, Malpighi puts forward a related conjecture. But here there is a significant difference from

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the machinelike formation process he had naïvely envisioned in the opening sentence; now he outlines a more elaborate process: “For we may surmise that the chick, together with the contiguous small sacs of almost all its parts, lies hidden in the egg, floating in the colliquament, and that its nature results from the integration of mingled nutritive and fermentative juices, through whose kindled joint action blood is produced in successive steps and the parts previously delineated erupt and swell out.”9 At this point Malpighi has to admit that Naturae opificia, or the workshops of nature, are so intricate and hidden that his account is highly conjectural; therefore, it may be fruitless to pursue it in greater detail. Hence, he returns to the descriptive account of the successive stages of formation of the chick, which he could visually investigate and which occupy the rest of his essay. Conjectural and speculative as his account is, it is also revealing of the framework within which he operated and of his philosophical stance. Further, it echoes in interesting ways his opening passage quoted above. In both instances Malpighi conceives the formation process as resulting from an assemblage of parts. In the opening passage he does not identify a hierarchy in those parts, whereas in the passage immediately preceding the later quotation one of them, the carina, is given a privileged status in forming the framework and indeed the keel of the chick—carina being the Latin word for keel. According to Malpighi, the carina, or the rudiments of the vertebral column, would correspond to the trunk and leaves of the plant. Although the carina is not the chick but rather its key structural component, it is clear that it has a privileged role and that the various parts to be assembled are not all equivalent. Moreover, the opening passage suggests a mechanical assemblage of parts already made, almost as a clock assembled by a clockmaker. By contrast, in the second quotation the context is more chemical, as evidenced by the reference to mixing and fermentation of nutritive juices enclosed in small sacs of the egg; chemistry enabled a more fluid—literally and metaphorically—formation process in which the parts are not assembled already made but are mutually shaped in the interactive process. As we have seen in chapter one, the notion of fermentation was often employed to bridge the gap between the mechanistic program and the explanation of specific phenomena. In his treatise on the kidneys, Malpighi had stated that nature’s industry is so fecund that we will find machines not only presently unknown but also unimaginable or beyond his current understanding. Here he outlines a barely imaginable chemical process whose components shape each other without a soul and its faculties, which were part of traditional nonmechanistic interpretations in anatomy: we could call it a self-forming machine.10 Malpighi would have understood these processes as mechanistic in a broad sense, since for him chemistry consisted in the composition and separation of

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particles of matter based on their size, shape, and motion, which is excited by fire. As he explains it in his posthumous Risposta: The Chymists in their operations have method and a variety of instruments, which consist in the figure, in the openings and in the applications of fire or another excitant to motion, and these are known to a good chymist. According to them Nature is chymical: our body is a workshop of chymical containers, and since Nature, when it is not well regulated in its motions and positions, has to be corrected by the practical physician; the physician, like the Chymist, must have knowledge of the figure, quality, adaptation of the moving parts of our body; and this with a method that is the same as the anatomy, physiology, and therapeutics of Rational physicians.11

De formatione pulli in ovo is accompanied by an extensive collection of plates based on Malpighi’s own drawings. Here Malpighi was following in the tradition of Hieronymus Fabricius, who believed in the importance of images and relied extensively on them, rather than Harvey, who eschewed them as misleading.12 Both Fabricius and Malpighi provide a detailed visual account of the formation process on a daily and indeed at times even hourly basis. Despite Malpighi’s mechanistic agenda, it is difficult, to say the least, to detect a mechanistic narrative in the images. However, there are some elements that capture crucial features of his approach. His first figure, for example, showing cicatricula A life size on the left and enlarged under the microscope on the right, highlights a white speck belonging neither to the albumen nor to the yolk, which according to Harvey was the site of the soul and the point of origin of the chick (fig. 4.1). The enlarged figure also shows what Malpighi took to be the preformed “fetus” L enclosed in the small sac or “saccule” B—later known as the nucleus of Pander; hence from that stage on, there would be mainly growth of parts already formed or at least sketched out rather than the actual formation of new ones. Another revealing feature, to which we shall return below, is the series of concentric circles surrounding the central small sac. Malpighi interpreted them as fluid and more solid substances in alternation, starting from a liquid C resembling molten glass in which the small sac B floats, and followed by the lighter one D, more solid, as a dam. Malpighi added the figure of the same part in subventaneous or unfertilized eggs, highlighting major structural differences: both the small sac B and the concentric circles are conspicuously missing and what we have instead is a seemingly random patchwork of darker structures on a light background (fig. 4.2). This suggests that the process of fecundation results in the organization in concentric circles of matter of the egg, whence the chick is subsequently formed.13 In 1673 Malpighi published an appendix to his first essay on incubated eggs; the new observations, however, do not alter in a substantive way the picture of the process of fecundation emerging from his previous work.

Fig. 4.1. Cicatricula in fertilized egg. Malpighi, De formatione (1673), in Opera omnia, plate I. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 4.2. Subventaneous egg. Malpighi, De formatione (1673), in Opera omnia, plate III. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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Borelli and Malpighi on Fecundation Things changed, however, in the early 1680s. On November 1, 1681, Malpighi sent a letter partly dealing with relevant matters to the Lyon physician and antiquarian Jacob Spon, later published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1684; a copy was also sent to Robert Boyle, as Ashley Inglehart has recently shown. Almost immediately thereafter appeared in Rome the second volume of De motu animalium (On the Motion of Animals), by Malpighi’s erstwhile mentor Borelli—the address to the reader by Carlo Giovanni Pirroni, general of Scuole Pie, is dated December 22, 1681, almost exactly two years after Borelli’s death on the last day of 1679. Thus, the two works appeared in close succession and independently of each other.14 In the letter to Spon Malpighi discusses many topics, including the problem of generation, which he treats more extensively and in a wider range of animals, including higher ones; further, the terminology he employs changes considerably with the introduction of a philosophically loaded term that is absent in earlier texts. In an early section of the letter to Spon, Malpighi discusses a “monstrous” kidney found in the cadaver of Antonio Francesco Davia. The opening sentence of the next section, on the uterus, states: “Dismissing the errors of a languishing Nature we examine the workshop of the plastic virtue.”15 The term “plastic” occurs on two further occasions examining the process of fecundation. In the first, Malpighi investigates butterflies, arguing that the semen and various fluids produced by structures contiguous to the vagina are received and protected, so that the eggs passing through are moistened and fecundated: “Thus that plastic force is preserved for several days and is communicated to the eggs emerging in the subsequent days.”16 Malpighi argues that in poultry the process of fecundation is more far-reaching: “In poultry Nature does not scatter and sprinkle the cock’s semen, or another menstruum fecundated by the semen, only on the cicatrix, in which the rudiments of the parts lie concealed, but moistens with plastic force the entire egg, namely the aliment in the form of albumen and yolk, so that the whole is fecundated.”17 Despite his remarkable technical and historical competence, the translations and commentaries provided by the embryologist and historian Howard B. Adelmann are occasionally questionable. For example, in discussing the process of fecundation in a passage from the letter to Spon immediately preceding the one cited above, Malpighi had argued that while the penetration of the bulkier parts (“corpulentia”) of semen may be blocked, the more spirituous and volatile ones are not; those particles (“volatiles particulas”) are responsible for fecundation, which he presents as a process of fermentation leading to the transmission of motion. Here Malpighi clarifies the role of semen, which is to provide activity

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and motion through its most volatile particles, in a broadly mechanistic fashion: rather than contributing actual matter, semen merely provides the motion and activity for this organization. Still, Adelmann’s claim that Malpighi’s “postulation of an immaterial, fecundating element in the semen makes him the heir of Fabricius, Harvey, and de Graaf” (my emphasis) appears misleading: in no way could Malpighi’s fecundating element, his “volatile particles” inducing motion, be construed as being “immaterial” and his views be associated with those of Fabricius and Harvey in this regard. Fabricius had argued that fertilization was a noncorporeal effect of the formative faculty of sperm on the uterus, while Harvey advocated a generative faculty of the soul. Both views were alien and indeed antithetical to Malpighi’s mechanistic thinking. Adelmann’s views on Regnier de Graaf too seem questionable, in that the Delft anatomist’s reliance on a seminal vapor as the fecundating agent also implies a material agent.18 Similarly, I believe that Adelmann’s statement that Malpighi’s understanding of the expression “plastic virtue” or “spirit” would be “essentially a combination of the formal and efficient causes of Aristotle and the plastic or formative faculty of Galen” is misleading, because Aristotle and Galen relied on immaterial principles and faculties, whereas Malpighi, in line with some of his contemporaries, reinterpreted the meaning of “plastic” mechanistically, and characterized the formative process in a chemical and therefore for him mechanistic way.19 Malpighi does not provide a definition of what he means by “plastic,” nor does he outline its mode of operation in any detail; therefore we have to interpret his references contextually, relying on other works by him and his contemporaries. From the previous discussion we have already glimpsed that he attributed a major role to the size of particles, tiny volatile ones acting quite differently from the bulkier ones. Turning to his former mentor, we find revealing information. In De motu animalium Borelli includes chapters on the generation of both plants and animals. It is here that he provides a mechanistic account of plastic powers. In proposition 180, significantly titled “The composition of the nutritive juice of plants must be provided by the sieve-like structure of their vessels,” he refers to an “oculata, & industriosa virtute plastica,” a far-sighted and assiduous plastic virtue, which would arrange the particles of water suitably. In the immediately following passage Borelli explains: “All these things without doubt must occur immediately, not by a certain prudent and intelligent attending agent, but by a natural and mechanical necessity disposed by the Divine Architect.”20 His ensuing account provides a vintage mechanistic explanation depending on the size and shape of vessels and fluid particles. While denying any role to an intelligent agent intrinsic to the organism, Borelli attributes the process to a mechanical necessity—one could say laws—disposed by God.

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In the chapter on animal generation Borelli elaborates his analysis further. Following Harvey, Borelli accepts that semen is not found in the womb after coition, though he explicitly rejects as absurd Harvey’s conclusion that fecundation occurs through some immaterial property. Borelli further argues that semen is not homogeneous but has a complex structure and organization.21 In proposition 186 Borelli outlines a tentative specific mechanism or “mechanicum artificium” to explain how fertilization occurs.22 Rather than seeking empirically a suitable account, Borelli typically offers a range of analogies: here, for example, he compares the egg’s fertilization by semen to the action of a ferment, a clock set in motion, dry hay moistened by water, and a magnet activating the components of a mass of iron. The magnet and its operations were sufficiently ambiguous that they were invoked by investigators with different philosophical perspectives, as we have seen for Galen in chapter one: we have seen above that Harvey, too, compared the role of semen in conception to a contagion or to a magnet, though he interpreted the process quite differently than did Borelli. Borelli identified three aspects in a clock: the conformation and arrangement of the wheels; the added motive force, such as an attached weight, wind, or water; and lastly the actual operation of the automaton. He argues that even a fully formed pendulum must be set in motion; this last action is provided by warmth, which would activate particles of air present in the animal machine by setting them in a motion of compression and rebounding.23 While Borelli is more explicit than Malpighi in establishing analogies, and perhaps not surprisingly shows a stronger preference for mechanical devices such as a pendulum, their overall approach is similar with regard to the role of the egg and semen and of plastic power: following Harvey, they both claim that semen contributes to the fecundation process by providing motion and vivification: there is no mixing of the respective components, the matter comes exclusively from the egg and is merely activated by semen. Both employ the expression “plastic power” in a form wholly different from Harvey’s use and the classical heritage, interpreting it in a typical mechanistic fashion. Malpighi, however, seeks to provide an account starting from observations, problematic and insufficient as they were, whereas Borelli was content with offering ingenious and plausible accounts as yet unsupported by direct empirical evidence. Hooke and Boyle on Emergent Structures Borelli and Malpighi were not the first to use the expression “plastic power” and cognate ones with a nontraditional meaning and especially to gesture toward explanations of fecundation eschewing the soul and its faculties: about fifteen years earlier Hooke and arguably Boyle had made a similar move. However, while Hooke’s work, Micrographia, was in English and had a limited impact in Italy,

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Fig. 4.3. Frozen urine. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), schema VIII. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Boyle’s books were soon translated into Latin. We shall now briefly examine their crucial works, as Boyle’s was the likely source of Borelli’s and Malpighi’s terminological shift. As we have seen in chapter one, in a celebrated passage from the preface to Micrographia Hooke states that the microscope would reveal that qualities believed to be occult and plastic faculties could be understood as “small Machines of Nature.” However, he also emphasizes our ignorance about even the simplest operations of nature.24 In later passages Hooke attributes an especially intriguing role to cold: while it was well known that heat was required for the incubation of the chick in the egg, for example, he found that cold, too, could produce remarkable and surprisingly regular patterns. Hooke argued that all bodies have vibrating components, whose motion is proportional to their degree of heat.25 Ultimately, he was seeking a mechanistic account of the origin of organized nonliving structures as a bridge toward more complex, even living, ones: “Knowing what is the form of Inanimate or Mineral bodies, we shall be the better able to proceed in our next Enquiry after the forms of Vegetative / bodies; and last of all, of Animate ones, that seeming to be the highest step of natural knowledge that the mind of man is capable of.”26 While experimenting on frozen urine and discussing its appearance, for example, Hooke drew a comparison with the branching of ferns (notice especially the top portion in fig. 4.3):

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But there is a Vegetable which does exceedingly imitate these branches, and that is, Fearn, where the main stem may be observ’d to shoot out branches, and the stems of each of these lateral branches, to send forth collateral, and those subcollateral, and those latero subcollateral, &c. and all those much after the same order with the branchings, divisions, and subdivisions in the branchings of these Figures in frozen Vrine; so that if the Figures of both be well consider’d, one would ghess that there were not much greater need of a seminal principle for the production of Fearn, then for the production of the branches of Vrine, or the Stella martis, there seeming to be as much form and beauty in the one as in the other.27

Here Hooke suggests that elaborate organization in nature, notably “form and beauty,” could occur without a seminal principle, which would obviously be lacking in frozen urine or “stella martis,” a chymical compound with a starlike structure that had attracted Boyle’s early interest. This passage is especially interesting for the specific examples it offers of unusually elaborate organization in nonliving structures. Soon thereafter, Hooke discusses the figure of snowflakes: Observing some of these figur’d flakes with a Microscope, I found them not to appear so curious and exactly figur’d as one would have imagin’d, but like Artificial Figures, the bigger they were magnify’d, the more irregularites appear’d in them; but this irregularity seem’d ascribable to the thawing and breaking of the flake by the fall, and not at all to the defect of the plastick virtue of Nature, whose curiosity in the formation of most of these kind of regular Figures, such as those of Salt, Minerals, &c. / appears by the help of the Microscope, to be very many degrees smaller then the most acute eye is able to perceive without it.28

In these passages Hooke is using the expressions “seminal principle” and “plastic virtue,” discarding the traditional philosophical baggage attached to them, seeking to explain nonliving structures—perhaps implicitly suggesting that nature may have a self-organizing power also for living bodies without souls or substantial forms. He tentatively suggests a comparison with the structure of some regular solid bodies and crystals, which he believed were formed by stacking elementary globular units together. His plate (fig. 4.4) shows alum crystals and corresponding geometric figures produced by stacking together three, four, or more component globules, forming different shapes depending on their arrangement; the last one at bottom right (L) shows the cubic arrangement of sea or rock salt. Hooke states that he experimented by rolling bullets down an incline and observing their resulting arrangements, which exhibit regular shapes despite the seemingly random process.29 In the same year of Micrographia’s publication Boyle published New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold (1665), in which he argues that cold de-

Fig. 4.4. Alum crystals. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), scheme VIII. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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pends on the slower motion of a body’s constituent corpuscles. Following a Baconian approach of systematic experimentation, Boyle challenges both Aristotle, according to whom cold was a quality associated with a corresponding element, such as water, and Pierre Gassendi, according to whom cold was due to specific atoms. Boyle refers to his erstwhile assistant Hooke’s work: “Concerning the figures of frozen Urine I shall say nothing, the accurate description of curious Mr. Hook having so fully and truly performed that part of my task.” Thus Boyle seemingly endorses Hooke’s analysis.30 Hooke’s work was in English and was not widely read outside Britain; however, it appeared one year before Boyle’s Origine and it is possible that it may have set Boyle’s thinking in motion. I have argued elsewhere that in all probability Malpighi’s use of the notion of “plastic powers” can be ascribed to Boyle, who contributed to unmooring it from its classical Aristotelian and Galenic roots and reinterpreting it in a way that at the very least was not antithetical to a mechanistic perspective. In The Origine of Formes and Qualities (1666), Boyle drew a distinction between the nature of plastic power and their mode of operating: he bracketed off the former, or the nature of the agent, arguing that any agent would have to operate on matter in the same way. In his treatise Boyle begins with a theoretical part and then provides some examples of observations, the first of which is on the formation of the chick in the egg, one likely to have attracted Malpighi’s attention. In a passage on the transmutation, as he says, or alterations of the egg’s contents during the process of formation of the chick, Boyle states: I very well foresee it may be objected that the Chick with all its parts is not a Mechanically contrived Engine, but fashion’d out of matter by the Soul of the Bird lodg’d chiefly in the Cicatricula, which by its Plastick power fashions the obsequious Matter and becomes the Architect of its own Mansion. But not here to examine whether any Animal except Man be other than a Curious Engine, I answer, that this Objection invalidates not what I intend to prove from the alledg’d Example. For let the Plastick Principle be what it will, yet still, being a Physical Agent, it must act after a Physical manner; and having no other Matter to work upon but the White of the Egg, / it can work upon that Matter but as Physical Agents, and consequently can but divide the Matter into the minute parts of several Sizes and Shapes, and by Local Motion variously context them according to the Exigency of the Animal to be produc’d, though from so many various Textures of the produc’d parts there must naturally emerge such differences of Colours, Tasts, and Consistencies, and other Qualities as we have been taking notice of. That which we are here to consider, is not what is the Agent or Efficient in these Productions, but what is done to the Matter to effect them.31

The last sentence clarifies that Boyle’s concern at that point was not to discuss the nature of the agent in the process of generation; rather, he wished to study the

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effect in the form of the production and changes of various qualities of matter from the egg’s white. Earlier he had stated that egg white is a similar part; namely, every portion of it appears similar to any other to the senses, much like bone. However, subjecting it to distillation led to the production of several substances, such as phlegm, salt, oil, and earth; he leaves open the question as to whether they preexisted or were formed by the distillation process. Moreover, echoing Harvey, he also discusses the many transformations occurring in its substance in the formation of the chick, involving changes from transparent to opaque, the appearance of colors, changes in taste, and in hardness, as in the formation of the beak, for example.32 Boyle argued that regardless of what one understands by “plastic power,” his argument would still hold. In fact, pushing the issue of the nature of plastic power aside in order to focus on its mode of operation was not a neutral move with regard to a mechanistic understanding of the body. To his contemporaries matters would have looked quite different because Boyle appeared to have a clear target in mind: readers would not have failed to notice a direct if implicit attack on William Harvey, who is referred to as a “recenter Anatomist” earlier in the text. Boyle was intimately familiar with Harvey’s treatise on generation and had discussed it in his own work. Harvey broadly followed Aristotle and attributed a role to the soul and its faculties and plastic powers in generation. Boyle’s analysis and reference to the cicatricula follow Harvey’s views, while challenging his philosophical stance. As we have seen above, in De generatione animalium Harvey had put forward precisely the argument Boyle was opposing by denying any role to local motion in the way the plastic power operates. Boyle was working very much within the corpuscular and mechanical framework Harvey had rejected; he saw “plastick powers” as “physical agents” operating by dividing matter into particles of different sizes and shapes and arranging them appropriately by local motion.33 In a later passage from The Origine of Formes and Qualities discussing the figures of salts, Boyle rejects the existence of plastic powers in the process of mineral formation, though he accepts them to explain the formation of plant seeds and animals: “Though God has thought fit to make things Corporeal after a much more facile and intelligible way, then by the intervention of substantial Forms; and though the Plastick power of Seeds, which in Plants and Animals I willingly admit, seem not in our case to be needful.”34 Boyle differed from the Epicureans and from Descartes and questioned whether matter, either by chance as with the former, or set in motion according to given laws as with the latter, could produce such an organized structure as an animal body. He attributed seminal principles to God, as rather mysterious mechanical contrivances or engines set in the world at its creation. In an unpublished essay on spontaneous generation,

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probably dating from the late 1650s, he intimates as much; having described a number of processes arranged by human agents, he then states: “And shall we readily allow soe much foresight & contrivance to a Mechanicall artificer, and shall we scruple to allow much better Mechanismes to (the Author even of Artificers) the Omniscient God himself, in the Production of his Great Automaton, the World?”35 Thus, while Boyle legitimized plastic powers and seminal principles, he crucially reinterpreted them within a different philosophical domain with regard to their nature and especially mode of operation: they became a question as much as an answer. He was prepared to reinterpret them substantively with respect to traditional views, by rejecting Harvey’s claims, as we have seen, or by denying substantial forms, as in this case.36 Boyle adopts a similar approach to the role of the agent and patient elsewhere. In The Excellency of Theology (1674), for example, he states: “The chief thing, that Inquisitive Naturalists should look after in the explicating of difficult Phaenomena, is not so much what the  Agent  is or does, as, what changes are made in the Patient, to bring it to exhibit the Phaenomena that are propos’d.” The specific example he provides is that of corn and cornmeal: If Corn be reduc’d to Meal, the Materials and shape of the Mil[l]stones, and their peculiar Motion and Adaptation, will be much of the same kind, and (though they should not, yet) to be sure the grains of Corn will suffer a various contrition and comminution in their passage to the form of Meal; whether the Corn be ground by a Water-mill, or a Wind-mill, or a Horse-mill, or a / Hand-mill; that is, by a Mill whose Stones are turned by Inanimate, by Brute, or by Rational, Agents. And, if an Angel himself should work a real change in the nature of a Body, ’tis scarce conceivable to us Men, how he could do it without the assistance of Local Motion.37

The import of this passage will become apparent in the sequel. A decade later, in A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv’ d Notion of Nature (1686), Boyle denied a role to incorporeal substances and the rational soul in the formation of the human fetus, relying on the opinions of a range of scholars, not only philosophers and physicians but also divines and lawyers. He states: Yet, that admirable Work of the Formation and Organization of the Foetus, or little Animal, in the Womb, is granted by Philosophers to be made by the Soul of the Brute (that is therefore said to be the Architect of his own Mansion), which yet is neither an Incorporeal, nor a Rational Substance. And, even in a Human Foetus, if we will admit the general Opinion of Philosophers, Physitians, Divines and Lawyers, I may be allowed to observe, that the Human Body, as exquisite an Engine as ’tis justly esteem’d, is form’d without the Intervention of the rational Soul, which is not infus’d into the Body, ‘till This hath obtain’d an Organization, that fits it to

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receive such a Guest; which is commonly reputed to happen about the end of the Sixth Week, or before that of the Seventh.38

Here Boyle claims that the formation and organization of the fetus in brutes and humans is due to a corporeal soul, which is not a rational substance. The role of “plastick principles” and related notions in animal generation as well as in the formation of hard stones from a fluid state is quite complex, as Inglehart has recently argued in an in-depth analysis with a useful synopsis of the occurrences of the adjective plastic in Boyle’s works. Boyle does not tell us in any detail what the plastic power is; he suspends his judgment, while suggesting it to be some kind of mechanical contrivance. Such were Boyle’s standing and prestige that his using and seemingly bracketing off the notion of “plastick principle” gave it legitimacy in philosophical discourse in Borelli’s and Malpighi’s eyes. Since Malpighi had been trained in the Peripatetic philosophy and both were intimately familiar with Harvey, the Italian investigators would have easily grasped the context of Boyle’s passage and the fact that Boyle’s corpuscular philosophy was lurking behind his analysis. In the process, they reinterpreted the notion of plastic power. 39 Hooke and Boyle, and later Borelli and Malpighi, sought to mechanize more and more aspects of the process of generation, while the notion of plastic power was disentangled from its classical philosophical baggage, becoming a formative power operating in a chemical and mechanical fashion. While Borelli later sought to account for the fecundation process through mechanical devices, Hooke suggested a surprising concrete example based on the analogy between frozen urine and ferns. Malpighi, Torti’s Egg, and His Bologna Rivals The last few years of Malpighi’s life proved eventful: in the midst of bitter disputes with his Bologna rivals, he was called to Rome by Innocent XII as pontifical archiater. In those years Malpighi worked at two large works, an idiosyncratic and imposing Vita, or “autobiography,” presenting his latest findings and defending at the same time his works from criticism by his mentor Borelli and his Bologna colleague Paolo Mini (1642–1693), among others; and a passionate Risposta to the Bologna physician and Mini’s ally Giovanni Girolamo Sbaraglia (1641–1710). Those works were published by the Royal Society in 1697, three years after Malpighi’s death; both contain passages relevant to our analyses. I shall focus on three related aspects: the problem of mechanistic explanations in the process of generation in relation to an anomalous egg found at Modena; the controversy with Sbaraglia; and the controversy with Mini over the role of the faculties.40

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Malpighi returns to the problem of the incubated egg in his Vita. There too, as in the letter to Spon, he has recourse to the notion of a “plastic spirit” responsible for the formation of the rudiments of the chick. After having outlined the process of fecundation, Malpighi states: Therefore it seems to be Nature’s custom to form all the parts individually from a fluid as the first constituent, in such a way that she defines their outlines and outermost edges by delineating with more solid matter so many cribs or alveoli. Indeed, she begins to form the rudiments of the parts to be delineated with membranous utricles or small sacs, by means of whose pores, as if by as many glandular sieves, she separates the confined fluid from the one in which they float, and the fluid thus enclosed, when unsuitable portions have transpired and its parts have been suitably adapted, becomes pervaded and organized by the plastic spirit.41

In the opening sentence Malpighi develops the same line of reasoning he had outlined in his first work on the subject, De formatione pulli in ovo; namely, that Nature forms the outlines or rudiments of the parts one by one starting from a fluid state. The hardening of parts was a pretty standard phenomenon in many domains, such as the formation of minerals and bones. The reference to utricles, or small sacs, in the second sentence reinforces the connection with his earlier speculations, with its implied notion of a mechanical-chemical machine that is assembled and at the same time shaped from the interaction among its fluid individual components. The second sentence outlines how the process occurs: Malpighi presents a standard mechanistic account based on filtration, whereby pores enable the transfer of material from the inside to the outside, leaving behind parts that have become suitably adapted and therefore pervaded by the plastic spirit. Borelli had outlined similar processes of selective filtration in the final section of Lorenzo Bellini’s (1643–1704) treatise in the kidneys. Malpighi further compares the pores of the separating membrane to “glandularum cribri”: glandular sieves were the cornerstone of his mechanistic understanding of the body. Here Malpighi was seeking to account for plastic spirits in a canonical mechanistic and chemical fashion by explaining the formative process of the embryo in terms of the filtration and selection of suitable fluid matter contained inside utricles and small sacs. The appropriate chemical mix is achieved not by adding the proper ingredients but by filtering away the inappropriate ones, though of course at a later stage the external fluid reaches the cicatricula to provide nutrition. It is worth looking again at his earlier figures (figs. 4.1 and 4.2), with those concentric bands of alternating fluid and more solid matter: Malpighi plausibly sought a mechanistic interpretation of the visual evidence he had provided, pushing the process of selective filtration to the fecundation stage.42

Fig. 4.5. Encased examples of “limon citratus.” Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, plate XIII. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

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Another reference to plastic force can be found in the context of a different, exceedingly interesting, discussion. In a long excursus in Vita Malpighi discusses a “monstrous” egg sent to him from Modena by the ducal physician Francesco Torti in 1691. The egg was peculiar because it enclosed three smaller eggs, one inside the other, as shown in an enclosed plate. At the time of the exchange with Torti, Malpighi was concerned with the possible implications of this case for the theory adopted by Malebranche and Swammerdam, whereby all creatures were created ab initio by God and were encased one inside the other, a view later known as emboîtement. Malpighi questioned such a view and argued instead that each generation produces the eggs of the successive one.43 In De polypo cordis (On the Heart Polyp), Malpighi had argued that monsters could be helpful in grasping Nature’s mode of operating, as if by erring she revealed her secrets; thus, Torti’s egg posed a problem for him, since he was considering it as an exception or a mere anomaly devoid of broader implications. In 1691 Malpighi implied that the problem had to be investigated further with additional instances; indeed, he did so in his Vita, discussing the Modena egg in conjunction with a few seemingly similar cases encountered in plants, which he thought offered simpler examples of nature’s way of operating. Malpighi relied on the study of citrus fruits by the Sienese Jesuit Giovanni Battista Ferrari, which discusses examples of “limon citratus” growing one inside the other, like Russian dolls, visible at the top in the enclosed plate (fig. 4.5). Malpighi followed a strategy he had adopted elsewhere, based on the assumptions that nature is fundamentally uniform and that its formations develop with growing complexity from plants to animals. Malpighi was not alone in discussing similar cases for a range of reasons: in De generatione animalium Harvey, too, had mentioned a small egg with its hard shell growing inside another one, leading him to argue that the shell is framed like the rest of the egg inside the womb by the “Plastick faculty”; Harvey also mentioned having found a perfectly shaped small lemon growing inside another one, something he had heard was common in Italy. In Vita, however, Malpighi’s focus shifts from challenging Swammerdam to reconsidering the formation process, his conclusion being that the monstrous egg and related plant cases arose from copia materiae, or an unusual abundance of matter.44 His preliminary drawings of Torti’s egg reveal the same interest in the cognitive role of color he had shown in his study of the formation of the chick in the egg: Malpighi liked to combine pencil and sanguigna (red chalk) in order to highlight different structures. Unfortunately, the black-and-white engraving in the Opera posthuma is quite confused and does not render the original satisfactorily. Therefore, Malpighi’s original drawings found among his papers at the Bologna University Library help the legibility of the images, especially in identifying the different eggs, whose shells are in pencil, whereas their interiors are drawn in

Fig. 4.6. Monstrous Modena egg. Malpighi, Vita, plate XII. Courtesy of the Lilly Library.

Fig. 4.7. Sketch of the monstrous Modena egg and “limon citratus.” Marcello Malpighi manuscripts, Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms 936 I K, c. 37. By permission of the Alma Mater Studiorum Bologna University— Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna. No futher reproduction or duplication of this image is allowed in any form.

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sanguigna. His friend Silvestro Bonfiglioli (1637–1696) prepared for publication the final manuscript of Malpighi’s Opera posthuma from chaotic manuscripts. Figure 4.7 appears to be the preparatory sketch for the printed version: since different colors were not used for printing, here the portions originally drawn in pencil, as opposed to sanguigna, are rendered with hatched lines enclosed by two broadly parallel outlines: the four eggs are clearly identifiable. The bottom section shows a sketch of the “limon citratus” (figs. 4.6–7).45 In the image labeled “Figure 1” at the top, A is the first egg; the two globules C at the top and D at the bottom are portions of its yolk; E is the white of the first egg, F is a hard substance divided into a double sheet or plate (“lamina”), still part of the first egg. B is the second egg, with its shell G; I and K are its white, and H its yolk. In K was enclosed body L, which were drawn separately in Figures 2 and 3, showing its outer surface and cross section, respectively. S and V, inside B, are part of the third egg; R is its shell with a chestnut color, S its yolk, and V its white—which is in small amount. Finally, T is the fourth egg, which is also shown separately in greater detail in Figure 4, X being its yolk.46 Whereas Malebranche and Swammerdam had all but eliminated the problem of generation by ascribing to God the simultaneous creation of all successive generations ab initio, Malpighi needed to explain how animals and plants originated from their parents at each successive generation—sexually in animals and in his opinion asexually in plants. It is in that context that he discusses the formation process further and refers in an unproblematic way to plastic forces. Discussing the cases of multiple fruits growing inside each other like Torti’s egg, Malpighi attributes the outcome to a combination of the abundance of matter and the defect of plastic force, “quia plastic vis forte deficit.”47 In fact, Malpighi also identifies common elements between the formation of stones and that of eggs, stating: “Also in the concretion of stones very similar phenomena not rarely occur.” Malpighi refers specifically to the formation of jet or gagates from a fluid state, as Boyle and Nicolaus Steno had argued.48 As he puts it: “In the generation of as many eggs it is necessarily required an abundance of fluid, which must be heterogeneous, namely consisting of various particles, of which some are heavier, others lighter, some tending to become rarer, others much disposed to concretion.”49 We find here an emphasis on heterogeneity. If matter were homogeneous, no developmental process could take place; it is the difference among particles that explains the formation of the chick in the egg. The heterogeneity is already present in the egg; the fecundation process adds motion and activity rather than matter. Together with the notion of fermentation, according to which the elementary components of a fluid are set in motion and rearranged, differences in weight, size, and the tendency to rarefy or come together allow some flexibility in providing explanations blurring the line between

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living and nonliving. Here fluidity plays a crucial role, because a wide range of processes can take place in a fluid—and fluid motion is complex, allowing for a range of explanations, like the separation or aggregation of particles.50 In describing such processes Malpighi had recourse to a key notion in his worldview, the necessitas materiae, implying the presence of physical laws applying to living bodies and nonliving matter alike and emphasizing the material as opposed to the final cause: “Moreover in the first formation of jet many eggs occur, not because stones derive their origin in a necessary fashion from the egg of living bodies, but because of the necessity of matter.”51 The comparison between the process of fecundation and the formation of stones in terms of the necessitas materiae highlights that by “plastic force” Malpighi understood chemical and physical processes active in living and nonliving as boding alike, without any soul or faculty at play; therefore, he reinterpreted plastic forces within a novel philosophical framework. In line with his belief in continuity in nature and progressive levels of complexity from minerals, to plants, to animals, Malpighi compares the formation process in jets and onions (“cepae”), with superimposed layers or integuments enveloping each other.52 Malpighi’s posthumous Vita appeared together with his Risposta to Sbaraglia; although Risposta does not deal specifically with the formative process, it does provide a detailed philosophical perspective on his approach to anatomy: “It pleased Nature, as it accomplished her admirable works in animals and vegetables, to compose their organic body with many machines, which are necessarily made of many minuscule parts arranged and situated in such a fashion, that they form an admirable organ, whose structure and composition for the most part cannot be grasped with the unaided eye, without the help of the microscope.”53 We see here a defense of a mechanistic understanding of the body in an exactly contemporary text to the Vita. Nor is this an exception, since such statements are very frequent. At one point, Malpighi cites approvingly an especially explicit passage from the Bibliotheca anatomica: “Since the bodies of animals appear as mere machines, or automata, . . .” Such statements provide a valuable context to interpret Malpighi’s references to plastic forces and spirits, suggesting that they are no exceptions to his widely known philosophical stance; like Borelli, Malpighi followed Boyle’s lead in reinterpreting the adjective plastic, shedding its older connotations and using it in a looser sense as a mechanical formative agent, and then seeking to flesh out his account by means of references to fluid saccules and glandular sieves.54 In his Risposta to Sbaraglia, Malpighi had to defend his work against the charge that microscopic anatomy, the study of plants, and comparative anatomy were largely, perhaps even completely, irrelevant to the art of healing, medicina practica. In the course of his elaborate and lengthy rebuttal, Malpighi put for-

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ward an argument coming straight from Boyle’s Excellency of Theology; moreover, its structure echoes Boyle’s claim in Origine of Formes that whatever one understands by “plastick principle,” it has to operate as a physical agent. Over forty years ago Malpighi’s passage attracted the attention of a shrewd investigator such as François Duchesneau, who rightly emphasized the role of analogical reasoning in Malpighi’s anatomical explanations. Here I wish to reconsider Malpighi’s passage from a different perspective, focusing specifically on disease. At the end of a detailed list of machines used to investigate disease, Malpighi puts forward an argument in defense of mechanistic pathology, implying that the soul is a mere name: I know that the way in which our soul makes use of our body in its operations is ineffable: it is certain, however, that in the operations of vegetation, of sense, and of motion, the soul is forced to operate in accordance with the machine to which it is applied, in such a way that a clock or a mill are moved equally by a lead or stone pendulum, or a brute, or a man: indeed, if an angel moved it, it would move in the same way by the changing of sites, as those due to brutes, etc. Therefore, since I do not know the angel’s mode of operation, but [I know] the exact structure of the mill, I would understand that motion and action; and if the mill was broken, I would try to repair its wheels and their wrong arrangement, neglecting to investigate the mode of operation of the moving angel.55

Much like Boyle’s passages cited above, here too we find a shift from ontological to operational concerns, or from the efficient to the material cause. Much like Boyle’s analogous argument from The Origine of Formes and Qualities was implicitly responding to Harvey, also in Malpighi’s passage there is more than meets the eye. Malpighi argues that the operations of the body, not only those of vegetation but also those of sense and motion, are mechanical and the agent responsible for them, whatever it may be, has to operate within mechanical bounds. Thus, here he separates the ontological from the operational question and assumes the latter to be answered in a mechanistic way. His move, however, was not a retreat from his mechanistic agenda. Throughout his career Malpighi denied any role to the soul and its faculties in processes related to vegetation, for example, thus in one respect his argument appears as a way to reconfigure ontological and operational issues by giving precedence to the latter while paying lip service to the former, because ultimately, he believed that the soul played no role in standard physiological processes. The context of his passage, however, is mainly therapeutic rather than merely anatomical or philosophical, as evidenced by the final sentence: Malpighi’s concern is how to address disease. In this context, he emphasizes the operational aspect—twice over, in fact, once with respect to the functioning of the body, the other with respect to therapeutic practices. Malpighi defends

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a mechanistic therapeutic strategy based on structures and ultimately also an understanding of disease; both were based on the parallel between, on the one hand, the body and, on the other, a clock or a mill, two canonical mechanical devices operating “by the changing of sites,” much like Boyle’s plastic force operated by local motion.56 Malpighi continues his Risposta with a passage highlighting the tension between his mechanistic program and its actual results: “In the parts then where the mechanical way with which nature operates has not yet been entirely discovered, as in the operations of the brain, it is sufficient to the physician for the time being to reach those mechanical ways that hinder and offend the minimal structure that nature employs, which are many: and the physician should heal not the faculties of the operating soul, but remove the impediments and that which affects the movements of the body part.”57 Here the adjective “mechanical” is repeated, even when Malpighi deals with such a complex organ as the brain, and has to admit that nature’s ways of operating is obscure. Clearly the notion that nature operates mechanically was not simply an empirical result established in all instances but a project: although the operations of the brain have “not yet been entirely discovered,” he seems to have no doubt about their mechanical nature, a point that did not escape Sbaraglia’s strictures. The last sentence of the quotation emphasizes again therapeutic concerns and strategies. The following passage too, dealing with pathology more generally, emphasizes again twice that nature operates mechanically and that knowledge of mechanics can help devising cures “a priori,” a daring and optimistic view.58 Both before and after Malpighi, physicians of different stripes advocated a role for immaterial entities in explaining disease. In De generatione animalium, for example, as we have seen above, Harvey ties the process of generation to the study of disease by drawing a parallel between the act of conception and the spreading of “Contagious, Epidemical and Pestilential Diseases,” in that both occur without the transmission of matter.59 Further, Joan Baptista van Helmont was an especially prominent advocate of the role of immaterial archei, or inner alchemists, in health and disease: for him disease resulted from the defeat of a bodily archeus by a disease archeus coming from the outside. In his initial attack on Malpighi, Sbaraglia claimed that according to van Helmont a general knowledge of anatomy was sufficient, and that it was pointless to mangle a large number of corpses to trace the ending of a tiny vein. Malpighi’s Risposta challenges the Helmontian system as a whole: “But since, according to van Helmont, it is reproachable to spend one’s entire life in search of the minimal structure of the parts, we could with greater justification declare reproachable to devote all one’s time to looking for the Archeus, sympathies, archeal diseases, caused by fanciful and ill-conceived ideas, the universal medicine, and other strange

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phantasies, which with new words hide the weakness of a totally abstract way of philosophizing.”60 Malpighi’s attack on van Helmont was not purely abstract or rhetorical, since both Mini and Sbaraglia were broadly sympathetic to a chemical understanding of disease and both defended the role of immaterial faculties, which perhaps were not so different from the archei of the Flemish physician, both in health and disease. Sbaraglia defended van Helmont’s ingenium while questioning his terminology.61 Not surprisingly, many of the pathological cases Malpighi discusses involve the obstruction of glands and his attempt to remove those obstructions largely through diet. The emphasis on a mechanistic understanding of the body in therapeutics resurfaced a couple of decades later in the work of Malpighi’s follower Ippolito Francesco Albertini. Albertini argued that as for water mills needing repair it is opportune to divert the course of water, so in vessels affected by aneurysms it is advisable to remove the amount of blood by decreasing the patient’s food intake.62 Sbaraglia did not accept this strategy and composed a detailed rejoinder to Malpighi’s Risposta, the huge Oculorum et mentis vigiliae at distinguendum studium anatomicum, et at praxin medicam dirigendam (Night-Watches of the Eyes and of the Mind for Discriminating Anatomical Study, and for Directing Medical Praxis; 1704). Sbaraglia was to object to Malpighi’s argument, highlighting its problematic status in the eye of contemporary readers hostile to a mechanistic understanding of the body: if the operations of the soul are “ineffable,” he argued, how could they be seen as mechanical? Rather, they would be “vital” operations. Setting aside arguments about the actions of the angel in Malpighi’s passage, Sbaraglia challenged his defense of “a priori” therapies based on the assumption—as opposed to any solid evidence—that the brain works mechanically. He was far less optimistic and more cautious about disease and therapies, arguing that even those physicians who “mechanismus non ignorarunt,” such as Thomas Sydenham, did not believe that medicine could be founded a priori, as Malpighi had obsessively stated throughout his Risposta. Here, by “mechanismus” Sbaraglia means mechanistic explanations in general; he seemingly implied that Sydenham was aware of such approaches, though he was not a mechanist himself.63 In the contemporary response to Mini in his Vita Malpighi adopts a line of reasoning similar to Boyle’s and to the one he adopted in his Risposta to Sbaraglia, though this time the context was anatomical and philosophical rather than therapeutic. In Medicus igne, non cultro necessario anatomicus (A Physician is Inevitably an Anatomist with Fire, not with the Lancet; 1678), Mini had argued that the separation of fluids in the glands depends not on the structure of the glands, which by themselves would lack the discriminating power to perform the task, but on Galenic faculties—Mini refers to Galen, On the Natural Faculties. Mini

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had tried to explain matters with the example of a musical simile: no doubt the sound produced by a string instrument depends on its structure, though it also depends on the player. Similarly, the operations of the body depend partly on its structure, though they also depend on the body’s vital powers (potestates vitales); otherwise, a cadaver would not differ from a living body. Therefore, structures alone are insufficient to understand bodily operations.64 By contrast, Malpighi claimed that the faculty could act only through the body: as such, in its action or actu secundo, the faculty is a mere name, nudum nomen. According to scholastic philosophy, actus primus denotes the power to perform an action; actus secundus denotes the actual exercise of that power, or the action itself. Despite the Aristotelian framing, Malpighi’s reasoning echoes Boyle’s in shifting the focus from the nature of the object to its mode of operation, or from the ontological to the operational level. However, there are also new developments from Boyle’s approach. Initially Malpighi distinguished between the nature of the faculty and its mode of operation, arguing that the latter had to take place through the structure of the body, notably a filter, and was therefore mechanical. In the end, however, he was not agnostic about the doctrine of the faculties, least of all that glands are mechanical devices: he did not believe in the faculties and rejected them as an empty name. Therefore, he used this line of reasoning to challenge the very notion of the faculty, arguing back to its nature, downplaying the ontological level in favor of the operational one. Going back to Mini’s example, what would be lacking in a cadaver would be motion, or perhaps structural features such as the tension of the parts of the opening of meati, not vital powers. It is possible that both Malpighi’s claim that the faculty is an empty name and his reasoning were related to a passage from On the Natural Faculties, in which Galen argues that the notion of faculty (dunamis) is a relative concept, because its existence is inferred as the cause of a known and visible effect or activity, concluding somewhat ambiguously: “So long as we are ignorant of the true essence of the cause which is operating, we call it a faculty. Thus we say that there exists in the veins a blood-making faculty, as also a digestive faculty in the stomach, a pulsatile faculty in the heart, and in each of the other parts a special faculty corresponding to the function or activity of that part.”65 Malpighi was familiar with this passage by Galen and commented sarcastically on it in a letter to his anatomist friend and Borelli associate Bellini. In his Risposta to Sbaraglia, Malpighi states that according to Galen the liver was coagulated blood, rather than a collection of glands for the separation of bile, as he believed he had discovered through the microscope. Had Galen had microscopes, Malpighi argued, he would have seen the liver as an instrument for the separation of bile, rather than for making blood. Malpighi saw his own work as uncovering structures making the notion of faculty redundant, because those structures accounted for

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previously seemingly inexplicable processes, which in the case of the liver was not that of making blood but of mechanically filtering bile.66 Concluding Reflections The analysis of Malpighi’s investigations of the generation of the chick in the egg, of fertilization, and of the problem of generation more broadly sheds light on a significant aspect of his contributions while at the same time showing how our reflections in previous chapters can be put to use in a concrete historical investigation. In our case, paying close attention to attempts by Malpighi and his contemporaries to make sense of the problem of fecundation helps us gauge his intellectual itinerary and attitude to mechanistic interpretations. Likewise, paying attention to images has enriched our understanding of Malpighi’s project and difficulties, highlighting the challenge of bridging the gap between an empirical descriptive account devoid of immediate philosophical implications and his mechanistic program. Hooke tentatively put forward the suggestion that nature has organizing properties that he instantiated in the case of stacking alum components. Cold is singled out as generating organized structures in the cases of frozen urine and snowflakes—thus the expressions “seminal principle” and “plastick virtue” are stripped of their traditional meanings and are reinterpreted in a radically new framework. Despite having recourse to the notions of “plastic powers” and “forces,” Malpighi—much like Hooke and Borelli—defended a mechanistic understanding of the body even in the problematic case of generation. While rejecting the doctrine of the faculties, Malpighi used those expressions with their traditional meanings; by contrast, when he used the expressions “plastic spirit” or “force,” he jettisoned their traditional meanings in favor of a mechanistic understanding unrelated to the ancient doctrine of the faculties of the soul or nature. Since those notions changed meaning, they cannot be taken as unchanging markers of a worldview, as Adelmann did when he ascribed Malpighi’s views to an Aristotelian and Galenic tradition. Malpighi tentatively argued that embryos result from the coming together of different components in the form of fluid utricles or small sacs. Unlike assembling a machine such as a clock, however, where the solid parts are already formed, the embryonic assemblage involves a process whereby heterogeneous fluid components are mutually shaped by chemical actions before hardening or congealing. Particles come together and separate from each other; some go through porous membranes and move outside to the surrounding fluid, leaving more active parts inside; fluidity and semipermeable membranes offered what Malpighi thought—or hoped—was a suitable account for these processes. The chemical reactions Malpighi hypothesized for the process of fecundation result

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from the separation of the appropriate components rather than the addition of what we may call an external reagent: the semen provides merely motion and activity, not a material component. Malpighi’s mechanistic pronouncements were partly based on empirical evidence, partly on analogies and philosophical considerations: they were among his most speculative statements, which can be seen also as investigative projects that bore a complex relationship to contemporary beliefs and practices by highlighting the gap between his agenda and what his anatomical investigations—even those based on advanced microscopy—could deliver.

Concluding Reflections

Philosophical debates about the notion of mechanism have proved complex and have raised a number of issues, such as teleology and levels of mechanistic explanations, just to mention two examples. We have seen that a sensitive historical analysis can be as complex and intellectually challenging as a philosophical one. I started in chapter one with a provisional definition and an implicit promise to return to the topic at the end. The criteria I outlined in my provisional definition are quite restrictive and, while appropriate for the early modern period, would have to be relaxed for later times: changing notions of machine, for example, would require dropping the condition that the operation of a mechanism would depend exclusively on the spatial arrangement of its parts, since later mechanisms may rely on electromagnetic phenomena or even computers and information technology, for example.1 While for later times one may follow Bechtel in dropping the analogy with machines, this is not an option for our period. Here I wish to follow the lead of Henry Stubbe’s 1671 definition, supported by scores of contemporary texts we have discussed especially in chapter three. I intend now to identify the varied and indeed contrasting reactions our term induced at the time. We have seen that mechanism was used both for human artifacts and nature’s creations and that there was a tension between them in terms of perfection: the former often induced admiration for their ingenuity and usefulness, as for Christiaan Huygens’s cycloidal pendulum or spring-regulated watch; the latter provoked a wide range of responses. Some natural philosophers, such as Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and Thomas Willis, expressed incredulity that the world could result from random processes and saw mechanisms as especially worthy of admiration as God’s creations. Some divines such as Henry More and Joseph Glanvill saw mechanisms, with the qualification of “mere”, as a threat to religion. Depending on their perceived success in uncovering nature’s mechanisms, investigators expressed a range of reactions: Hooke, for example, displayed a quiet confidence at having revealed hidden contrivances through his 139

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microscopes; for the early Nehemiah Grew the process of uncovering mechanisms helped make nature intelligible; Marcello Malpighi was often frustrated at his inability to grasp the mysteries of nature, which he believed operated uniformly; by contrast, Edward Tyson’s comparative anatomy reveals admiration at the variety of mechanisms nature has devised across different species. Together with systematic experimentation and the mathematization of nature, the mechanical philosophy has been seen in the literature as a key feature of the Scientific Revolution. In their recent analysis of the problem, for example, Daniel Garber and Sophie Roux have outlined a fourfold classification: “the general program of substituting for the . . . scholastic philosophy, a new philosophy”;2 the rejection of the Aristotelian doctrine of matter and form, “and the correlated adoption of an ontology according to which all natural phenomena can be understood in terms of the matter and motion of the small corpuscles that make up the gross bodies”; “The comparison of natural phenomena, most specifically the world of animals, to existing or imaginary machines”; and finally ”the ontology associated with mechanics as a new mathematical science of motion.” The present study builds on recent debates on the mechanical philosophy and challenges the “all-or-nothing” approach that has characterized many investigations. Focusing exclusively on the mechanical philosophy leads to a one-sided view obscuring the multitude of transformations and reconceptualizations limited to individual problems. Reliance on mechanism may involve a new philosophy replacing Aristotle, but it may also remain a limited enterprise confined to specific domains with no global anti-Aristotelian ambitions, as with Vesalius’s study of sutures in the skull or bone articulations, for example. Similarly, the rejection of matter and form and the belief that phenomena could be explained in terms of matter—including its shape, size, texture, and at times additional properties—and motion could be an overarching philosophical tenet but it could also apply to specific domains, such as the valves in the veins and lymphatic system, as we have seen. The comparison of natural phenomena and especially living organisms to machines was—and still is—at the core of the notion of mechanism. Anatomists routinely identified structures in plants and animals and interpreted them and their operations by analogy with artificial devices, from comparing the eye to the camera obscura to Hooke’s microscopic syringes and stinging nettle. Also, a ligature applied to the arm could be seen from Harvey’s perspective as a mechanism preventing venous blood from flowing backward, though this was not the case for those previous anatomists according to whom the ligature drew or attracted blood. Conversely, Vesalius’s observations on the structure of kidneys and Malpighi’s study of the optic nerve of the swordfish refuted—in different ways—naïve mechanism. Lastly, reliance on mechanics involved not only the science of motion but also the comparison with simple machines, such as levers

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and wedges, and more elaborate ones, such as springs and pendulums.3 Thus mechanisms prove helpful in enriching and problematizing our understanding of the mechanical philosophy in crucial instances by shifting our gaze visually, terminologically, and philosophically to some concrete examples instantiating conceptual and practical concerns. We have briefly seen music enter the scene in different forms: Descartes’s pipes in a church organ exemplified the nervous system, while Malpighi’s taut and vibrating lyre strings exemplified nerve fibers. By such comparisons both sought to underpin their views of the body as a machine. Borelli used the analogy of an instrument being played by a trained musician to instantiate the action of the soul on the heart muscle: the soul would be acting neither according to mechanical necessity nor to conscious free will, but without realizing it, “sine advertentia.” By contrast, by comparing the body to a musical instrument and the musician to the soul, Mini sought to undermine mechanism, thus emphasizing the crucial role of the musician/soul in the operations of the body—an instrument without a player produces no sound, a body without a soul is a mere cadaver.4 Music was contested territory at the intersection between mechanistic and antimechanistic views. In each chapter we have seen examples of experiments; namely, conscious interventions designed to investigate the course of nature. I mention some of those related to mechanisms, though some were not—such as Galen’s damaging an animal’s brain in order to ascertain the role of pneuma and the soul. Chapter one discusses Galen experimenting on deglutition in cadavers. In chapter two we have seen Harvey exploring the unidirectional flow of blood through the valves in the veins by inserting a probe in a vein in both directions and through ligatures. Moreover, Ruysch applied ligatures to the milky vessels to study the chyle’s direction of flow and Willis and Lower injected ink into a dog’s artery in order to show that all arteries supplying the brain are interconnected. Chapter three mentions Descartes and his readers experimenting on the pupil’s dilation in response to differing lighting conditions and degrees of attention. And lastly, we have seen Hooke dropping bullets along an incline to study the geometrical shape of their distribution. Some of the experiments demonstrate the mechanism’s operation, whether in a living body or in a cadaver. Others, such as those involving the pupil’s dilation, strictly speaking do not establish the mechanistic nature of the operation but make it plausible, at least to some natural philosophers such as Boyle; however, the precise nature of the hypothetical mechanism was hard to fathom. Lastly, some experiments, such as those by Hooke with bullets, involved artificial systems and were intended to establish the plausibility of some mechanistic processes in living bodies, such as the formation or highly organized structures.5

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Here, I follow recent scholarship in considering observation and experiment not as polar opposites, one passive and the other active, but as part of a continuum. Often observation required active intervention aimed at uncovering not so much nature’s regularities as her way of operating. Anatomical observations occupy an important position in this history: they involved elaborate procedures and at times injections and microscopy, which could be highly interventionist.6 At times the search for mechanisms proved successful in the eyes of early modern observers, as in the identification of some macroscopic structures or in the anatomy of insects. At other times it proved elusive, as in the minute operations of “glands” or in the study of generation. Often, however, mechanisms remained plausible explanations, concrete or even abstract projects rather than becoming detailed accounts of some of the pressing cases anatomists and natural philosophers were seeking. This tension is a key additional reason why focusing on the notion of mechanism offers a fertile perspective from which to review the transformations of knowledge related to the mechanical philosophy in the early modern period.

Notes

Introduction 1. Machamer, Darden, and Craver, “Thinking about Mechanisms,” 14, 23. A recent useful overview I rely on is Craver and Darden, In Search of Mechanisms. See also Glennan and Illari, Routledge Handbook; Glennan, “Mechanisms” and “Rethinking Mechanistic Explanations.” 2. Recent works touching on the mechanical philosophy include Bennett, “Mechanics’ Philosophy;” Gabbey, “What Was ‘Mechanical,’” “Mechanical Philosophies,” and “Philosophia”; Roux, “Cartesian Mechanics,” esp. 32–33, and “From the Mechanical Philosophy”; Newman, Atoms and Alchemy, esp. ch. 6; Hattab, “Mechanical Philosophy,” 72; and Garber, “Remarks.” 3. Descartes, Lettres, 2:50. Gabbey, “‘Mechanical Philosophy,’” 14, 18–19. 4. More, Immortality of the Soul, preface, §§11, 12, and 15. Gabbey, “Philosophia,” 220–21. 5. Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, 122. Garber, “Remarks.” 6. Hattab, “Mechanical Philosophy.” Roux, “From the Mechanical Philosophy,” esp. 31–33.

Chapter 1: Framing Mechanisms 1. Machamer, Darden, Craver, “Thinking about Mechanisms,” 2, 15, see also 22. 2. Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms, 26; for orchestration see also 32–33. Craver and Darden, Mechanisms, 26–27. Glennan, “Rethinking Mechanistic Explanations,” S344. 3. Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms, 4. 4. Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms, 22, 29–30. 5. Distelzweig, “‘Mechanics.’” 6. Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms, 20; see also 30n7. 7. Distelzweig, “Descartes’s Teleomechanics.” Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 15–16. 8. Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms, 45; for a more balanced view in which Bichat is identified as a vitalist see Bechtel, “Addressing the Vitalist’s Challenge,” 353. 143

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9. Haigh, Xavier Bichat, 113–16. Rey, Naissance, 321–72. Giglioni, “Jean-Baptiste Lamarck,” 25, 30. Wolfe, “Medical Vitalism.” Wolfe and Terada, “Animal Economy,” esp. 542–46. On the Montpellier school see the entry “méchanicien (médecine)” in Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie. 10. Steno, Lecture, 139; I have minimally modified the translation by Gustav Scherz. 11. Rey, Naissance, 386; Williams, Cultural History, 276; Wolfe and Terada, “Animal Economy,” 539n4. 12. Machamer, Darden, and Craver, “Thinking about Mechanisms,” 3, provides a definition based on “entities and activities.” Craver and Darden, In Search of Mechanisms, ch. 2. 13. Bertoloni Meli, “Machines,” 98–99; Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 123. One of the contentious issues was whether fermentation played a role in the process of secretion of urine. 14. Dear, Discipline, 151–52. 15. Clericuzio, “Mechanism,” “Gassendi.” Borelli, De motu animalium. Smith, Divine Machines, 78–81. On Gassendi see Bloch, La philosophie de Gassendi, and Messeri, Causa. 16. The passage from Hooke, Micrographia, 91, is discussed in chapter three. These matters are discussed in greater detail in chapter three. See Hirai, “Invisible Hand,” “Mysteries,” Medical Humanism. Inglehart, “Boyle, Malpighi,” “Seminal Ideas.” 17. Hatfield, “Mechanizing the Sensitive Soul”; Park, “Organic Soul.” Park’s views have been problematized in Edwards, “Body.” 18. Boyle, Free Enquiry, 373–75. Leibniz, Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, 31. On Borelli see Grondona, “L’esercitazione,” 455–62. Des Chene, “Mechanisms,” “Abstracting from the Soul.” 19. Garber, “Remarks.” 20. Von Staden, “Physis and Technē,” esp. 40–41. Berryman, Mechanical Hypothesis, 115–17, 158–59, 200. Hieronymus Fabricius too compared the valves in the veins to those in the heart in De venarum ostiolis, 52 (English trans.) and 73 (Latin ed.). 21. Distelzweig, “‘Meam de motu,’” “Mechanics,” 128. Harvey, Two Anatomical Exercises, in Anatomical Exercises, 36–38 (second reply to Riolan). See Galen, “Whether blood is naturally contained in the arteries,” in On Respiration, 179–81; and Galen, “On Anatomical Procedures (I procedimenti anatomici),” in Opere scelte, 248–49. See also Amacher, “Galen’s Experiment.” 22. Pecquet, New Anatomical Experiments, 144, 149. Ruysch identified valves in the tiny lymphatic vessels, documenting an elaborate hydraulic control system: see Ruysch, Dilucidatio. Bertoloni Meli, “Machines,” 98–101, 103. 23. Malpighi, Opere scelte, 491–631; Bertoloni Meli, “Mechanistic Pathology.” 24. Schiefsky, “Galen’s Teleology”; von Staden, “Teleology and Mechanism”; Jouanna, “La notion de nature.”

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25. Galen, On the Natural Faculties, I.7, II.3. Von Staden, “Teleology and Mechanism.” Leith, “Pores and Void.” 26. Galen, Usefulness of the Parts, V.6 and V.13; On the Natural Faculties, I.12 and I.13. Shank, “From Galen’s Ureters,” 333–34, 349n55. 27. Galen, On the Natural Faculties, III.8; Brock in Loeb/Harvard ed., 265, 267; 267n1 states: “I.e., this is a purely mechanical process.” 28. Bertoloni Meli, “Machines,” 107–12. 29. Galen, On the Natural Faculties, III.14 and 15, Loeb/Harvard ed., 317, 319. This and other examples are discussed in Riskin, Restless Clock, 52–53. 30. Berryman, “Galen,” 246. Berryman, “Imitation.” 31. See the introduction by Vegetti and Lanza in Galen, Opere scelte, 835–45. Aristotle, Opere biologiche, 540–41, 543–49. 32. Galen, On My Own Opinions, 62–63, 108–9, and Nutton’s commentary on that work, 201. Galen, On the Natural Faculties, I.1. Debru, “Physiology.” Von Staden, “Body.” 33. Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato, 442–45. Donini, “Psychology.” Hankinson, “Body and Soul.” García Ballester, “Soul and Body.” 34. Galen, On Mixtures, in Selected Works, 261; I have slightly altered the translation. Galen, Kühn, Opera omnia, 20 vols, I:635–6. Frede, “Galen’s Theology,” esp. 76, 86–87, 93–94, 96; and 110, 116 on mixtures. 35. Galen, Quod animi, III, in Psychological Writings, 381. See the introductions by Peter Singer, 335–73, and Ivan Garofalo and Mario Vegetti in Galen, Opere scelte, 859– 79. The relevant passage is at 973. 36. Keller, “Drebbel’s Living Instruments,” 39–74. Galen, On the Natural Faculties, III.15. Boyle, Tracts, 141–42. 37. Berryman, Mechanical Hypothesis, esp. 193–97. Garber, “Remarks.” Ragland, “Chymistry,” esp. 17–18. Henry, “Robert Hooke.” Galluzzi, Mechanical Marvels, 216–19. Bertoloni Meli, “Machines,” 98–103. 38. Hutchins, “Descartes.” 39. Hooke, Lectures, 7, 23. 40. Huygens, “Extrait.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, unsigned review of Horologium oscillatorium, 60–69. Mahoney, “Drawing Mechanics.” Henry, “Hooke,” adopts a different perspective on Hooke’s notions. Chapman, England’s Leonardo, ch. 10. Bertoloni Meli, Thinking with Objects, 240–46. Neumann, “Machina machinarum.” Newman, “How Not to Integrate.” 41. Dechales, Cursus seu mundus, 2:211–32. Wilson provides valuable perspectives on the complexity of elasticity in Physics Avoidance, ch. 3, and “What I Learned from the Early Moderns,” forthcoming. 42. Boyle, Origine of Formes and Qualities, 11–12. [Oldenburg], review of Origine of Formes and Qualities, 191. Garber, “Remarks,” 6–7, 11. Roux, “From the Mechanical

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Notes to pages 19–26

Philosophy,” 27. For a more comprehensive analysis see Newman, Atoms and Alchemy, 186. 43. Boyle, Origine of Formes and Qualities, 68–9. 44. Boyle, Origine of Formes and Qualities, 38–39, 45, 99, 181; on 192–93 Boyle discusses the contrivance of seminal rudiments or principles. Anstey, Philosophy of Robert Boyle. 45. Boyle, Tracts, 141. 46. Boyle, Excellency, separate pagination, Of the Excellency and Grounds of the Corpuscular or Mechanical Philosophy, 14. 47. Boyle, Excellency, 15. 48. Hooke, Micrographia, 134. 49. Anstey, Philosophy of Robert Boyle. Clericuzio, “Redefinition”; Elements, Principles and Corpuscles, 103–48. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy. Inglehart, “Seminal Ideas.” 50. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, ch. 4 and 144–45, 242–45, 262–63. 51. Hooke, Micrographia, preface. 52. Hooke, Micrographia, 141. Galen, On the Natural Faculties, II.3. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 236–46; “Blood,” 519. Cheung, “Omnis fibra.” Fend, Fleshing Out Surfaces, 43–44. The notion of plastic power is discussed in chapter four. 53. Detlefsen, “Biology and Theology,” 142. 54. Boyle, Origine of Formes and Qualities, 17–18. 55. For the entire section see Boyle, Origine of Formes and Qualities, 16–58. Anstey, Philosophy of Robert Boyle, 103–5. Kaufman, “Locks.” The metaphor of the lock and key, and its variations, such as a jammed lock, have become ubiquitous in modern biology, including pathology. 56. Descartes, Discourse, 90–91. Hutchins, “Descartes,” 163–66. A broader investigation of the art-nature or human-divine dichotomy is in Newman, Promethean Ambitions. 57. Smith, Divine Machines, esp. chapter 3. Hutchin, “Dissolution of Life.” Detlefsen, “Descartes on the Theory of Life,” 146–53. 58. Des Chene, “Mechanisms.”

Chapter 2: Mechanism and Visualization 1. Chambers, Cyclopædia, 2:521. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this reference. For a more sustained discussion on definitions see chapters one and three. 2. For a discussion of machines see Belloni, “Schemi”; French, William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy, 348–71; Roux, “À propos du colloque”; “Quelles machines.” Keller, “Drebbel’s Living Instruments”; Bertoloni Meli, “Machines.” 3. Bechtel and Abrahamsen, “Explanation.” Craver and Darden, In Search of Mechanisms, 38–41, 136.

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4. Dackerman, Prints, esp. 20, 25–26. The locus classicus for the older literature is Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication. 5. Elkins, Poetics of Perspective, esp. 15, 18, 109, 117. The main work on the mathematical theory of perspective is now Andersen, Geometry of an Art. Kemp, Science of Art. 6. Panofsky, “Artist, Scientist, Genius.” De Santillana, “Role.” Edgerton, “Renaissance Development,” “Galileo, Florentine ‘Disegno,’” and Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry. Ackerman, “Involvement.” Kemp, Science of Art, esp. ch. 4. Pang, “Visual Representation,” esp. 143–47. Hentschel, Visual Cultures, 169–79. 7. Mahoney, “Diagrams and Dynamics.” Hall, “Didactic and the Elegant.” Topper, “Towards an Epistemology,” esp. 241–45. 8. Edgerton, “Galileo Florentine ‘Disegno,’” and Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry, ch. 7. See also among his many publications on this topic Bredekamp, “Gazing Hands.” See also Dupré, “Visualization,” 23–30, 23n29. 9. Edgerton, “Renaissance Development.” Leng, “Social Character.” Sawday, Engines of the Imagination, 78–116. Popplow, “Why Draw Pictures.” Lefèvre, Picturing Machines, 14. 10. Agricola, De re metallica, 155. Zonca, Novo teatro, 33–5; 86. On Zonca see the introduction by Poni in Novo teatro (1985). 11. See the volume edited by Lefèvre, Picturing Machines, notably the essays by Popplow, “Why Draw Pictures;” Leng, “Social Character;” Long, “Picturing the Machine;” McGee, “Origins,” quotation at 55n3. 12. Edgerton, “Renaissance Development,” 169. Truitt, Medieval Robots. 13. Mahoney, “Diagrams and Dynamics,” esp. 198–201; “Diagrams and Dynamics Revisited,” accessed August 27, 2018, http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/articles/ drawing/mpipaper.rev.v-1. See for example Clagett, Nicole Oresme. 14. Ekholm, “Fabricius’s and Harvey’s Representations.” Corneanu, “Teaching the Mind.” 15. Long, “Picturing the Machine,” 141. 16. Lefèvre, Picturing Machines, 14. We will discuss Zonca and de Caus below. 17. Büttner et al., “Challenging Images of Artillery.” Many papers in Lefèvre, Picturing Machines, discuss these matters; see Henninger-Voss, “Measures of Success,” esp. 146. Valleriani, Galileo Engineer. Brahe, Mechanica. 18. Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum. Bennett, “Practical Geometry;” “Early Modern Mathematical Instruments.” Mosley, “Objects of Knowledge.” See also the contribution by Suzanne Karr Schmitt on “Printed Instruments” in Dackerman, Prints, 267–315. 19. Hunter, Wicked Intelligence, 5, 43–44. Huygens, Horologium oscillatorium, 4, 19, 20. The plate also shows a system of unit measures at far right. See also figure 3.1 below. Leopold, “Christiaan Huygens,” “Longitude Timekeepers.” Mahoney, “Christiaan Huygens,” “Drawing Mechanics.” Howard, “Marketing Longitude,” “Christiaan Huygens.” Philosophical Transactions, unsigned review of Horologium oscillatorium, 6069.

148

Notes to pages 38–48

20. Kusukawa, “Drawings of Fossils” and Picturing the Book. An older classic is Rudwick, Meaning of Fossils. 21. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica. 22. Sappol, Dream Anatomy, 11–19. Kusukawa, Picturing the Book, 184, 233–37. Lind, Studies in Pre-Vesalian Anatomy. De Ketham, Fasciculs medicinae (1491); Gersdorff, Feldtbüch der Wundtartzney (1517). Works that did not include illustrations include Benedetti, Historia corporis humani, sive Anatomice (1502, with a modern edition by Giovanna Ferrari, 1998) and Zerbi, Liber anatomiae (1502). 23. Harcourt, “Andreas Vesalius.” Kusukawa, Picturing the Book, 214–17. 24. Grondona, “Strutturistica,” 173–75. McVaugh, “Losing Ground.” Sappol, Dream Anatomy, 11–15. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 275. 25. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, I:378. See also II:148–53. Smith, “Machines,” 100–1. 26. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, V:591–92. The fact that according to Vesalius the arteria venosa (veinlike artery, our pulmonary vein) carries air, not blood, does not affect our discussion of the role of his images here. Leonardo’s drawings at the Royal Collection were far more perspicuous in this respect. Among the extensive literature see the recent Clayton and Philo, Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomist. 27. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 14, for the image of the hinge. Vesalius, Tabulae anatomicae sex can be accessed at http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/anatomy/vesalius .html. 28. Fabricius, De venarum ostiolis, 4, in the margin: “Similitudo ostiolorum ab obstaculis quae aquam in molendinis detinent.” In the text: “Similem sane industriam hic natura machinata, atque in molendinarum machinis ars molitur, in quibus artifices ut aqua multa detineatur, ac pro molendinarum, ac machinarum usu reservetur, obstacula nonnulla, quæ latine septa, & claustra, vulgo autem clausas, & rostas vocant, apponunt, in quibus maxima aquæ copia, atque in summa ea, quæ necessaria est, veluti in apto ventre colligitur: æque profecto natura in venis ipsis, quæ veluti fluviorum canales sunt per ostiola, tum singula, tum geminata molitur.” The translation by Franklin, De venarum ostiolis, 53–54, is problematic. At 5 Franklin claims, based on Richard Lower, that ostiola could be translated as “floodgates.” Roby, “Natura machinata.” French, Harvey’s Natural Philosophy, 357–58. O’Rourke Boyle, “Harvey in the Sluice,” 3. I have been unable to verify the claim that the little doors would be vertically operated gates, as O’Rourke Boyle has recently argued (“Harvey in the Sluice,” 13). See also Siraisi, “Vesalius,” 16. Bates, “Machina ex Deo.” 29. For these terms I rely on Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano, which gives for “chiusa” and “rosta” precisely the meaning of water diversion and storage for mills and similar machinery meant by Fabricius. 30. Fabricius, De venarum ostiolis (English trans.), 58, 55. 31. Harvey, Anatomical Exercises, chapters 12, 13.

Notes to pages 48–63

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32. Harvey, Anatomical Exercises, 73, 30, 38. Zonca, Novo teatro, 10–13. 33. Harvey, De motu cordis, ch. 11, 48–53; Anatomical Exercises, 59–69. Bylebyl, “Medical Side,” 36–37, 57–58. French, William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy, 107–10, 174. 34. Hentschel, Visual Cultures, 242–45. Rosenberg and Grafton, Cartographies of Time. 35. Biagioli, Galileo’s Instruments, 138–41. 36. Von Staden, “Physis and Technē.” Berryman, Mechanical Hypothesis, discusses Ctesibius at some length. 37. Walaeus, “Epistolae duae” (1645), 474–75. Schouten, “Johannes Walaeus.” Ragland, “Mechanism, the Senses, and Reason,” 179–84. 38. Walaeus, “Epistolae duae” (1645), 472–73; see also relevant passages on 475. Pecquet, New Anatomical Experiments, 12–18 and 92–133. Guerrini, Courtiers’ Anatomists, 46–49 and 77–80. 39. Ruysch, Dilucidatio, 36–37. Kooijmans, Death Defied. 40. Willis, Anatomy of the Brain, 68. 41. Willis, Anatomy of the Brain, 68. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 76–78. 42. Willis, Anatomy of the Brain, 60. 43. Descartes, L’ homme, 2, 12–13, 57–58. Kassler, “Man—A Musical Instrument,” 62–64. Riskin, Restless Clock, 35–42. 44. Descartes, La dioptrique, 35–37. Kemp, Science of Art, 191–92. Baigrie, “Descartes’s Scientific Illustrations.” Zittel, “Abbilden und Überzeugen,” esp. 578–80. Lüthy, “Logical Necessity.” Lefèvre, Inside the Camera Obscura. Chan, “Style and Substance.” Gal and Chen-Morris, Baroque Science, ch. 1. 45. Descartes, L’ homme, 2; Discourse, 75–86. There are slight differences in Descartes’s formulations but these are irrelevant to the present discussion. Alban-Zapata, “Light and Man,” 162–63. Milanese, “Hobbes,” 255. 46. Borelli, De motu, vol. 2, ch. 6, especially proposition LXXX. Bertoloni Meli, “Early Modern Experimentation,” 202–10. 47. Lindeboom, Biography, 743–44. On de la Forge see the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Desmond Clarke: “Louis de La Forge,” last revised November 2, 2015, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/la-forge/. Wilkin, “Figuring the Dead Descartes.” Zittel, “Conflicting Pictures.” Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 85–88. Nadler, “Art.” 48. Descartes, De homine, 7–9; L’ homme, 5–6. Bartholin, Anatomia, 272–73. 49. Descartes, De homine, 20–24, at 22; L’ homme, 16–21, at 18. Sherrington, Integrative Action, 286–87. Nadler, “Art,” 202–7. Schmaltz, “Early Dutch Reception,” 75–78. 50. Descartes, De homine, 19 and 34, figs. VI and XIII; L’ homme, 15, 28–29. Descartes, Dioptrique, 30–31. Hatfield, “L’Homme in Psychology,” 273n14.

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Notes to pages 64–75

51. Descartes, Passions, 10–11. For the heartbeat see 7–8. 52. I cite the contemporary English translation of 1650, Descartes, Passions, 21; La dioptrique, 30–32. Klestinec and Manning, “New (Old) Anatomy,” 68. 53. Peyer, Exercitatio anatomico-medica, preface to the reader. Belloni, in Malpighi, Opere scelte, 24–25. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 155–56. 54. Ragland, “Mechanism, the Senses, and Reason.” Steno, Lecture. As I put it in Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 137: “Unlike Descartes, Malpighi was an anatomist interested in the anatomical details, who disliked mechanistic explanations when they were only in principle rather than in practice—even though at times he found nothing better to fall back on” (italics added). The citation of this passage in Klestinec and Manning, “New (Old) Anatomy,” at 68, misleadingly omits the italicized portion; on Malpighi and nervous transmission see also below. McVaugh, “Losing Ground.” 55. Cole, “History of Anatomical Injections.” Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease , 89–91. 56. Malpighi, Risposta, in Opera posthuma (1698), 326–7; Opere scelte, 556 (my trans.). 57. Ruysch, Epistola problematica duodecima, on De cerebri cortice substantia (1699), in Epistolae anatomicae problematicae. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 298–300. 58. Harwood, “Rhetoric.” Dennis, “Graphic Understanding.” Neri, Insect and the Image, ch. 4, 167. Hunter, Wicked Intelligence. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 19. 59. Hooke, Micrographia, 143–45, 163–65. 60. Gabbey, “Mechanical Philosophies,” 458. Gabbey, “Mechanical Philosophy,” 12– 17. Gabbey, “Explanatory Structures.” Roux, “From the Mechanical Philosophy,” 32–33. 61. Hooke, Micrographia, 187, 143. 62. Hooke, Micrographia, 170. 63. Descartes, L’ homme, 76. Zittel, “Conflicting Pictures,” 257–59. Lüthy, “Logical Necessity.” 64. Roberts and Tomlinson, Fabric of the Body, 309–19. Sappol, Dream Anatomy, 28, 34, attributes the engravings to Pieter Stevens van Gunst and Abraham Blooteling. Knoeff, “Moral Lessons.” Margócsy, Commercial Visions, ch. 5. Fend, Fleshing Out Surfaces, 47–53. 65. Roberts and Tomlinson, Fabric of the Body, 309–19. 66. Belloni in Malpighi, Opere scelte, 39–40. Ruestow, Microscope, 82–83, 97n95. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 105–29, 150–69, 300–1. 67. Bidloo, Anatomia, plate 43, fig. 6. Malpighi, Opere scelte, 170, and Tavole, in Opere scelte, 17–18. Fend, Fleshing Out Surfaces, 49–51. The original wash drawings for Bidloo’s Anatomia are preserved at the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de Santé, Paris; see “Lairess, Bidloo et Cowper,” http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/medica/lair esse-bidloo-cowper.php. See esp. plates 10 (glands in the cerebral cortex) and 43 (renal glomeruli).

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68. Belloni, “Schemi.” Kemp, “Style.” Bertoloni Meli, “Machines.” 69. Smith, Body of the Artisan. Long, Artisan/Practitioners. Andrault, La raison, esp. 39–40.

Chapter 3: “The Very Word Mechanism” 1. In French, for example, the term became common in the eighteenth century and though frequently used in Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, it made only cameo appearance among its definitions, as we will see. In Italian it became established only in the eighteenth century: Battaglia, Grande dizionario. 2. See the Oxford English Dictionary for “mechanism,” “machine,” “mechanical,” and the suffix “-ism.” Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 12–13, 92–93, 288, 393n21. Distelzweig, “‘Mechanics’ and Mechanism,” 125. 3. Roux, “Quelles machines.” Belloni, “Schemi.” Bertoloni Meli, “Machines.” Keller, “Drebbel’s Living Instruments.” Shackelford, Philosophical Path, 178–80, “Transplantation,” 239–42. 4. Park and Daston, Wonders, 209; see also 161, 163. For examples of a looser usage of the term see Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 1:272, “Alkahest, ou Alcahest,” and 8:733, “Influence ou influxe des astres,” in relation to meteorology. 5. Willis, Causes, 43–44. On Willis see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry by John H. Appleby. On the issue of art versus nature see Newman, Promethean Ambitions. 6. Starkey, Natures Explication, 75. On Starkey there is an extensive literature but for our purposes see the authoritative Dictionary of National Biography entry by William Newman. 7. Urquhart, Logopandecteision (1653), 27. 8. Burnet, Discourse, 67–68. 9. Gabbey, “Henry More,” esp. 24 and, for later developments, 25. Henry, “Henry More versus Robert Boyle,” esp. 60; see also Henry’s entry on More in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last revised September 7, 2016, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ henry-more/. Greene, “More.” Newman, “How Not to Integrate.” 10. Descartes, Passions, 22. 11. More, Immortality, 220; for the Latin, “non soli mechanismo corporis,” see More, Opera omnia, 2:358. See also Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 13. 12. Henry, “Henry More versus Robert Boyle.” As we have seen in the previous chapter, Borelli adopted an intermediate position between Descartes and More in this regard. 13. The passage continues in More, Immortality, 220–21: “It is evident that [the Phaenomena of Passions] arise in us against both our Will and Appetite. For who would bear the tortures of Fears and Jealousies, if he could avoid it? And therefore the Soule sends not nor determines the Spirits thus to her own Torture, as she resides in the Head. Whence it is plain that it is the effect of her as she resides in the Heart and / Stomack,

152

Notes to pages 83–89

which sympathize with the horrid representation in the Common Sensorium, by reason of the exquisite unity of the Soul with her self, & of the continuity of Spirits in the Body, the necessary instrument of all her Functions.” In the following section More launches into a discussion of the weapon-salve, an ointment thought to cure a wound by being applied to the weapon that caused it. 14. More, “The Publisher to the Reader,” in Divine Dialogues. See also pp. 32 (“pure Mechanism”), 39 (“pure and universal Mechanism”), 41 (“pure pretended mechanism”), and 44 (“pure Mechanism”). 15. Boyle, Free Enquiry, 312, 313–14. I cite from Boyle’s first editions; all his publications are available in Works. See also for a different though not unrelated example Descartes, Passions, §44, related to the eye’s adjustment in relation to distance. 16. Descartes, La dioptrique, 27–28. Canguilhem, La formation, 29. Collacciani, “Reception,” 109–10. Scheiner, Oculus, 29–52. 17. Boyle, Free Enquiry, 353. Kaplan, “Divulging of Useful Truths”. 18. Boyle, Free Enquiry, 222–23. 19. See for example Galen, On the Natural Faculties, I.13, II.8, III.13. Philosophical Transactions, unsigned review of Pharmaceutice rationalis, 6167. 20. Cudworth, True Intellectual System, 9, 148. Andrault, “What is Life.” 21. Power, Experimental Philosophy, 5. 22. Power, Experimental Philosophy, 192–93. 23. Explicit references to “mechanism” occur in Micrographia at 9, 91, 95, 102, 134, 152, 154, 165, 170, 171, 173, and 186. 24. Hooke, Micrographia, 104, on bellows as a contrivance; quotation at 134. See also 170, on the feet of flies: “Their suspension therefore is wholly to be ascrib’d to some Mechanical contrivance in their feet.” 25. Hooke, Micrographia, 186. 26. Hooke, Micrographia, 91. Hunter, Wicked Intelligence, 49–50. 27. Hooke Micrographia, 95. Hull, “Robert Hooke.” 28. Hooke, Micrographia, 102, 91. The snowflake is discussed in chapter four. 29. Hooke, Micrographia, 165. 30. Hooke, Micrographia, 167; the whole passage reads: “But Nature, that knows best its own laws, and the several properties of bodies, knows also best how to adapt and fit them to her designed ends, and whoso would know those properties, must endeavour to trace Nature in its working, and to see what course she observes. And this I suppose will be no inconsiderable advantage which the Schematisms and Structures of Animate bodies will afford the diligent enquirer, namely, most sure and excellent instructions, both as to the practical part of Mechanicks and to the Theory and knowledge of the nature of the bodies and motions.” Galen, On the Usefulness, book 17. 31. Hooke, Micrographia, 171–72. The relevant passage reads: “And to conclude, we shall in all things find, that Nature does not onely work Mechanically, but by such ex-

Notes to pages 90–99

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cellent and most compendious, as well as stupendious contrivances, that it were impossible for all the reason in the world to find out any contrivance to do the same thing that should have more convenient properties. And can any be so sottish, / as to think all those things the productions of chance? Certainly, either their Ratiocination must be extremely depraved, or they did never attentively consider and contemplate the Works of the Almighty.” Stillingfleet, Origines, 401. Lennox, “Robert Boyle’s Defense.” 32. Hooke, Micrographia, 173. Edgerton, Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry, 1–4. 33. Hooke, Micrographia, 173. Bertoloni Meli, “Machines,” 96. 34. These matters are discussed in Andrault, La raison. Hooke, Micrographia, 151–52. 35. Hooke, Micrographia, 12. See chapter two. 36. Hooke, Lectiones cutlerianae, 103; see also Micrographia, 134. 37. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 63. 38. [Oldenburg], review of De viscerum structura, 890. Malpighi, De viscerum structura, 95. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 121–24. 39. Hooke, Micrographia, 140, referring to seaweed. 40. Grew, Anatomy of Plants, 188–89. Grew, De potentia, plate. On Grew’s later views see Garrett, “Vitalism.” Andrault, “What is Life.” In Musæum, when describing the “riverwhale,” Grew draws a parallel between animal and artificial structures: “The Cartilage, as the spring in a Pendulum Watch, to stint the motion and make it more steady” (103–4). 41. Machamer, Darden, and Craver, “Thinking about Mechanisms,” 12, 21–22, quotation at 22. Craver and Darden, In Search of Mechanisms, 38–39. Dear, Intelligibility of Nature, ch. 1, esp. 31–32. 42. Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing, 24–25. For other occurrences of the term mechanism see 7, 41, 111, 207, and contents, under chapter V. 43. Sprat, History, 312. The immediately preceding passage, at 311–12, reads: “The first instance I shall mention, to which he may lay peculiar claim, is the Doctrine of Motion, which is the most considerable of all others, for establishing the first Principles of Philosophy, by Geometrical Demonstrations. This Des Cartes had before begun, having taken up some Experiments of this kind, upon Conjecture, and made them the first Foundation of his whole Systeme of Nature: But some of his Conclusions seeming very questionable, because they were only deriv’d from the gross Trials of Balls / meeting one another at Tennis, and Billiards.” 44. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, ch. 5. Syfret, “Some Early Critics.” In Legends no histories  (1670), Stubbe challenged Sprat and Glanvill. In A Prefatory Matter to Mr. Henry Stubbe (1671), Glanvill included a letter by More at 154–58; More attacks “mere Mechanism” on 155. See also 151–52. 45. Henry Stubbe, Reply, 66. Jacob, Henry Stubbe. Cook, “Physicians.” On Stubbe see the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography by Mordechai Feingold. 46. On Charleton see the Dictionary of National Biography entry by John Henry. Booth, Subtle and Mysterious Machine, ch. 7. Borelli, De motu animalium, part II, chapter 6. Charleton, Three Anatomical Lectures, 37, 95, quotation at 69.

154

Notes to pages 99–103

47. Charleton, Three Anatomical Lectures, 72. 48. Charleton, Three Anatomical Lectures, 90. 49. Charleton, Three Anatomical Lectures, 84–86. 50. Charleton, Three Anatomical Lectures, 95–96. 51. Tyson, Phocaena, 6. Tyson’s comparison does not necessarily imply that he held mechanistic views in general. On Tyson see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry by Anita Guerrini. Moxham, “Edward Tyson’s Phocaena,” esp. 251n38. Hunter, Wicked Intelligence, 118–19. The porpoise, or phocoena, is a delphinoid. 52. Tyson, Phocaena, 16, 46. 53. Tyson, Phocaena, 2, quoted in Guerrini, Courtiers’ Anatomists, 242. Tyson, Ephemeri vita, 2. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 13. 54. Tyson, Carigueya, 15 (see also 30 and 50). Cole, History of Comparative Anatomy, 215–17. Charleton, Three Anatomical Lectures, 37. 55. Tyson, Carigueya, 30. Bertoloni Meli, “Of Snails and Horsetails.” 56. Gott, Divine History, 340; see also 304, where Gott refers to mechanism in relation to the microscope. The work was reviewed anonymously in the Philosophical Transactions. Gott was a friend and correspondent of mathematician John Wallis: see Wallis, Correspondence, 3:3–6. Schmidgen, Exquisite Mixture, 53–56. On Gott see Morrish, “Virtue and Genre,” 248–51. See also “GOTT, Samuel (1614-71), of Battle, Suss.,” from The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1660–1690, ed. B. D. Henning (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983), available at http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/ volume/1660-1690/member/gott-samuel-1614-71. 57. Gott, Divine History, 145. Cheung, “What Is an ‘Organism,’” 157. Gott’s work predates the first occurrence (by Grew) reported in the Oxford English Dictionary by thirty years; see “organism,” “organical,” and “-ism” as a suffix. 58. Gott, Divine History, 358, as part of a discussion of the heartbeat; 148. Plastic virtues or powers are discussed in chapter four. 59. Gott, Divine History, 370. At 461–62 Gott praises man’s “Body, which is of an Erect and Sublime Stature, and of a more Excellent Temper and Organism, especialy his Hands, whereby he can Use and Manage any other Instruments farr otherwise, and to more advantage, then they.” At 346 he claims that Gott also states that plants can live and reproduce from a twig or branch, which retains “a sufficient Portion of their Divisible Spirit,” but if animals have the organism of their principal parts destroyed, meaning their head, heart, etc., they cannot live. 60. Grew, Cosmologia Sacra, 18. 61. Cheung, “From the Organism of a Body”; “Regulating Agents”; “What Is an ‘Organism,’” esp. 158–62. Andrault, “Entre anatomie et théologie.” Later also John Evelyn used the same term in Silva, Or a Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber (1706).

Notes to pages 103–107

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62. Grew, Cosmologia Sacra, 33–34, quotation at 34. Garrett, “Vitalism.” Andrault, “What Is Life?” For Grew’s earlier views on mixtures see Schmidgen, Exquisite Mixture, 52–53. 63. Grew, Cosmologia Sacra, 57. 64. Duchesneau, “Organism-Mechanism”; “Leibniz versus Stahl.” Geyer-Kordesch, “Georg Ernst Stahl’s Radical Pietist Medicine.” Chang, “Motus Tonicus.” De Ceglia, I fari di Halle. 65. Hoffmann and Cellarius, Dissertatio inauguralis physico-medica, §5 (pages are not numbered): “Est itaque nobis mechanismus, effectus quidam seu motus vel operatio corporis, ex causa physica semper & necessario talem effectum producente dependens; unde quicunque effectus mechanice fiunt sive per mechanismum, perficiuntur causis necessariis i.e. non alia ratione agentibus vel agree aptis . . . quando autem plures materiales causae ita coordinatae ac dispositae sunt, ut effectus fluant, ideae artificis, qui certum finem propositum habeat correspondents, dicitur etiam mechanismus, sed perfectior, & a nonnullis organismus, quoniam in organicis corporibus existit.” Duchesneau, “Organism-Mechanism,” 101. 66. Stahl, Disquisitio, repr. in the opening of Theoria. Duchesneau, “G. E. Stahl,” esp. 8, 19; “Organism-Mechanism,” 98, 105–7. Cheung, “What Is an ‘Organism,’” 166– 69. De Ceglia, I fari di Halle, ch. 2. Duchesneau and Smith, introduction to Leibniz, Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, esp. xxvi–xxxviii and liii–lxii. Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 16:137. Martin’s claim in “Nosology” that Sauvages would not be different from contemporary “vitalists” is misleading, because Sauvages emphasized the role of the soul in a way that most contemporaries did not. Williams, Cultural History, 80–111. 67. I have minimally altered the translation by Duchesneau and Smith in Leibniz, Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, 67. See also their introduction, xxxv, lv, lvii. 68. [D’Ortous de Mairan], Éloge, 200: “Le Méchanisme, comme cause immediate de tous les phénomènes de la Nature, est devenu dans ces dernier temps le signe distinctif des Cartésiens.” Aiton, Vortex Theory, 209–14. 69. Bordeu, Recherches anatomiques, 6–8, 511–12. Roger, Les sciences de la vie (French ed.), 618–30, esp. 618–25. 70. Bordeu, Recherches anatomiques, 350, 367, 370–75. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 112–13. 71. Bordeu, Recherches anatomiques, 373n. Williams, Cultural History, 154–60. 72. Bordeu, Recherches anatomiques, 379–83. Ratcliff, Quest for the Invisible, ch. 5. Rey, Naissance. Williams, Cultural History. 73. Encyclopédie, 10:226: “MÉCHANISME: se dit de la maniere dont quelque cause méchanique produit son effet; ainsi on dit le méchanisme d’une montre, le méchanisme du corps humain.” 74. The four occurrences of “organisme” are in the entries on “fibre,” “galenisme,” and “nutrition” (twice).

156

Notes to pages 107–116

75. Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 8:713. 76. Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 6:365–71, at 367. Roger, Les sciences de la vie (French ed.), 636n265. Rey, Naissance, 115–22, at 118. Williams, Cultural History, 122.

Chapter 4: Mechanisms as Investigative Projects 1. Belloni, “Schemi.” French, William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy, 348–71. Bertoloni Meli, “Machines of the Body.” See also Berryman, “Ancient Automata.” 2. I refer in particular to Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, and Malpighi, Opere scelte, 217–83. On plastic powers and forces see Hirai, Medical Humanism. Inglehart, “Boyle.” 3. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, 51. Lennox, “Comparative Study.” Ekholm, “Harvey’s and Highmore’s Accounts,” 593–94. 4. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, 467, exercitation LXXII. This passage echoes a previous one on 51–52. In the editio princeps of De generatione there is an error in numbering, exercitation 4 being repeated; later editions correct the error and the numbering of the exercitations is shifted by one. 5. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, 467–68; see also 223–29. Lüthy, “Atomism,” esp. 6–17. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy, 27–28. 6. Degli Aromatari, Disputatio, preliminary epistola. On Aromatari see the entry by Giuseppe Asor Rosa in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (1961–). Malpighi, Opere scelte, 226, 223. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, 57. Roe, Matter, Life, and Generation, ch. 1. Roger, Life-Sciences. Detlefsen, “Biology and Theology.” Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, 944–45. 7. Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, 934–35; I rely on my own translation. 8. Andrault, “Machine Analogy,” 112 and n65. 9. Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, 957. Malpighi, Opere scelte, 236. I follow Belloni in interpreting Malpighi as arguing that the chick, not the colliquament, “results from the integration of mingled nutritive and fermentative juices.” Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 229–30. 10. Malpighi, De renibus, in Opera omnia, 1697, 2:287–88. Malpighi, Opere scelte, 183. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 282–89, 393–94n21. 11. Malpighi, Risposta to Sbaraglia, in Opera posthuma, 313–14; Opere scelte, 540. 12. Ekholm, “Fabricius’s and Harvey’s Representations.” Cobb, “Malpighi, Swammerdam and the Colourful Silkworm.” 13. Malpighi, Opera omnia (1687), De formatione pulli in ovo, separate pagination, 2:2. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, 62–63, 303–4. Ekholm, “Harvey’s and Highmore’s Accounts,” 601. 14. Inglehart, “Boyle,” 313. 15. Malpighi, Opera omnia (1687), 2:217: “Dimissis languentibus Naturae erroribus plasticae virtutis officina contemplemur.” In Malpighi, Opere scelte, 301, Belloni translates the adjective plastica into Italian as formatrice, or “forming.”

Notes to pages 116–122

157

16. Malpighi, Opera omnia (1687), 2:225: “& ita per plures dies plastica illa vis conservatur, & subsequentibus diebus excurrentibus ovis communicatur.” 17. Malpighi, Opera omnia (1687), 2:225: The second passage: “Natura in gallinaceis non soli cicatrici, in qua partium rudimenta latent, galli semen, vel aliud menstruum ab eodem fœcundatum aspergit & affundit, sed totum ovum, alimentum scilicet sub specie albuminis & vitelli vi plastica irrorat ita, ut totum fœcundetur.” Malpighi, Opere scelte, 317–18. Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, 861–62. 18. Malpighi, Opera omnia (1687), 2:224–25. Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, 859. Malpighi, Opere scelte, 316–17. Catherine Wilson follows Adelmann in Invisible World, 128. On de Graaf see Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 222–23. Lennox, “Comparative Study.” Ekholm, “Harvey’s and Highmore’s Accounts,” at 594–95. See also Borelli, De motu animalium, 379. 19. Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, 866n12, 1162. 20. Borelli, De motu animalium, 2:370–71; I find Macquet’s translation of “oculata” as “hidden” unconvincing (English trans. 390). 21. Borelli, De motu animalium, 2:379. Further references to “plastic virtue” and “force” can be found in De motu animalium, 2:318, 2:385, 2:412. 22. The heading of proposition 186 seems incoherent to me: “Conjectatio modi mechanici fœcundationis ovi, & quare id non expergiscitur, nisi excitetur a fœtu, vel impulsu externo.” Here “fœtu” seems to be a misreading for “semine,” and indeed in the text Borelli discusses at length the role of male semen in the fecundation of the egg— something that cannot be due to the fetus. 23. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, 539–40. Borelli, De motu animalium, 387–90. 24. Hooke Micrographia, 88. 25. Hooke, Micrographia, 16. 26. Hooke, Micrographia, 87–88. 27. Hooke, Micrographia, 90–91. Hunter, Wicked Intelligence, 5–6. 28. Hooke, Micrographia, 91–92. Starkey, Alchemical Laboratory Notebooks, 344. Newman and Principe, Alchemy, 266. Hunter, Wicked Intelligence, 49–50. 29. Hooke, Micrographia, 85–86 and schema VII. Schneer, “Kepler’s New Year’s Gift.” 30. Boyle, An Account of Freezing made in December and January, 1662, in Cold, separate pagination, 19. Boyle goes on (19–20) to question the experiment on the recreation of nettles by freezing reported by Quercetanus; Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 228–29. Hooke further mentions the “Plastick virtue” at 110–12, where he denies that it played a role in the formation process of fossils. Hunter, Boyle, 118–19, 145–46. Christopoulou, “Early Modern History of Cold.” 31. Boyle, Origine of Forms and Qualities, 112, quotation at 116–17; the relevant section is at 109–20. Inglehart, “Boyle.” Hirai, Medical Humanism and “Invisible Hand.” Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 231–32. Malpighi was made aware of the 1669 Oxford Latin translation of Boyle’s Origine of Forms and Qualities, Origo for-

158

Notes to pages 123–128

marum et qualitatum juxta philosophiam corpuscularem, in a letter from Oldenburg of July 25, 1670, in Malpighi, Correspondence, 2:467–69, at 468n11. The interpretation of Boyle is controversial: Anstey, “Boyle on Seminal Principles.” Newman, Atoms and Alchemy, 158n5, 215n43. Inglehart, “Boyle” and “Seminal Ideas.” 32. Boyle, Origine of Forms and Qualities, 110–16. Inglehart, “Seminal Ideas,” §2.8. 33. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, 467; see also 51–52. Boyle, Origine of Forms and Qualities, 109. Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, 87–88. Ekholm, “Harvey’s and Highmore’s Accounts,” 571, 591, 596–97. Inglehart, “Boyle,” 309. 34. Boyle, Origine of Forms and Qualities, 221–22. See also Boyle, Essay, 54–55. 35. Boyle, Works, 13:286–88, at 288. 36. Boyle, Origine of Forms and Qualities, 190–95. 37. Boyle, “Of the Excellency and Grounds of the Corpuscular or Mechanical Philosophy,” in Excellency of Theology, separate pagination, 19, 21–22. A Latin edition of the relevant tract appeared in 1674. I am grateful to Sophie Roux for having brought this passage to my attention. 38. Boyle, Free Enquiry, 354. 39. The sources cited here by no means exhaust the growing literature on these matters; Clericuzio, “Redefinition” and “Gassendi”; Anstey, “Boyle on Seminal Principles.” Newman, Atoms and Alchemy, 158n5, 215n43. Inglehart, “Boyle,” 302–3. 40. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 276–80, 307–11. 41. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma; I refer to the Amsterdam 1698 edition, which is more accurate than the English one of the previous year: “Quapropter Naturæ institutum videtur, omnia ex fluido tanquam prima materia, singula excitare, hac tamen ratione, ut solidiori materia delineatis veluti tot præsepibus & alveolis partium delineamenta & extimos fines describant. Quinino partium delineandarum inchoamenta utriculis & sacculis membranosis inchoat, quorum poris, quasi tot glandularum cribris, separat determinatum fluidum ab eo, in quo innatat, & ita custoditum plastico spiritu pervaditur & organizatur, transpiratis incongruis, & facta debita suarum partium adaptatione” (109). I have modified the translation in Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, 866 and 1169–70. 42. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 109–10. Grondona, “L’esercitazione,” at 461. 43. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 118–22, esp. 118–20. Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi, 886 and n2. Malpighi, Correspondence, 4:1659–64, Torti to Malpighi, Modena, 25 January 1691; Malpighi to Torti, 28 January 1691; Torti to Malpighi, 5 February 1691; the relevant passage is at 1662 and n2. Bernardi, Le metafisiche, 92, reports the relevant passage, but I disagree with his translation of Malpighi’s memorandum. 44. Malpighi, “De polypo cordis. An Annotated Translation.” Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 119–20. Ferrari, Hesperides, 263–87, at 269 and 271. Bertoloni Meli, “Blood, Monsters, and Necessity”; Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, ch. 9. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, 50–51.

Notes to pages 131–135

159

45. Marcello Malpighi, Bologna University Library, ms 936 I K, cc. 36–37, the reproduced sketch is at 37; see also ms 936 II B, cc. 15r.-16v. 46. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 118–19. See also Università di Bologna, ms 936 II, Fasc. A, c. 15a. 47. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 120. 48. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 121. 49. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, both quotations are at 121: “In generatione tot ovorum necessario requiri copiam fluidi, quod debet esse heterogeneum, variis scilicet particulis congestum, quarum aliquæ plus, aliæ minus graves sunt, aliæ rarescentes, aliæ magis pronæ ad concretionem.” Inglehart has recently shed much new light on these matters in her doctoral dissertation, “Seminal Ideas.” 50. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 118–22, esp. 121–22. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 135–38, 143–45, 250, 293–95. 51. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 121: “Succedunt autem in prima gagatis production tot ova, non quia lapides ab ovo viventium more ortum necessario trahant, sed materiæ necessitate.” Aristotle, Opere biologiche, 642a (569–71). Bertoloni Meli, “Blood, Monsters, and Necessity,” 516–21; Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 130–38, 143–45, 293–95. 52. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma: “quasi tot involucra sese contingentia ceparum instar manifestantur”; “In hoc tandem ovo alia minima, haecque copiosa includuntur, quae ceparum more suis involucris distincta tot ovula graphice epraesentant”; “Fiunt igitur quasi tot involucra ceparum instar, seu plani ex solidiori & opaca quadam materia ob fossilium copiam, quae probabiliter postremo concrescit” (121). 53. Malpighi, Risposta, in Opera posthuma, 282. Malpighi, Opere scelte, 504. 54. Malpighi, Risposta, in Opera posthuma, 321; “Cum animantium corpora merae videantur machinæ, seu automata, . . .” I have slightly modified the translation in Opere scelte, 549. 55. Malpighi, Opere scelte, 516. Duchesneau, “Malpighi, Descartes,” 116. Giglioni, “Machines of the Body,” 166. Bertoloni Meli, “Mechanistic Pathology.” On Malpighi’s references to machines used in pathology see Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 315–19. 56. Malpighi, Risposta, in Opera posthuma, 292; Opere scelte, 516. 57. Malpighi, Risposta, in Opera posthuma, 292; Opere scelte, 516. 58. Malpighi, Risposta, in Opera posthuma, 292; Opere scelte, 516. Sbaraglia, Oculorum et mentis vigiliae, 252–54. 59. Harvey, Anatomical Exercitations, quotation at 206, 256, 539–66. Harvey compares further conception to the action of the magnet and draws a parallel between the brain and the uterus. Ekholm, “Harvey’s and Highmore’s Accounts,” 593–94. 60. Malpighi, Risposta, in Opera posthuma, 313; Opere scelte, 539–40, quotation at 540. Pagel, Joan Baptista van Helmont, 141–98. Giglioni, Immaginazione e malattia.

160

Notes to pages 135–142

61. Malpighi, Opere scelte, 135. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 290. Mini’s main work was Medicus igne. Sbaraglia, Oculorum et mentis vigiliae, 326. 62. Albertini, “Animadversiones,” 332b. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 338–44. 63. Sbaraglia, Oculorum et mentis vigiliae, 252–54. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 324. 64. Mini, Medicus igne, 2–3, 6–7, 29, 45, 139. 65. Malpighi, Vita, in Opera posthuma, 55, 135. Giglioni, “Machines of the Body,” 167–70. Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, 292–95. For “actus secundus” see New Catholic Encyclopedia (Detroit: Gale, 2003), under “act.” Galen, On the Natural Faculties, I.4. 66. Malpighi, Risposta, 305; Opere scelte, 530–31. Malpighi, Correspondence, 3:1226– 30, Malpighi to Bellini, 3 and 10 December 1686. Giglioni, “Machines of the Body,” 169–70.

Concluding Reflections 1. Machamer, Darden, Craver, “Thinking about Mechanisms,” 14. 2. Garber and Roux, “Introduction,” esp. xi–xii. Roux, “From the Mechanical Philosophy,” esp. 27–28. Hattab, “Mechanical Philosophy.” 3. This is the topic of Bertoloni Meli, Thinking with Objects. Bennett, “Mechanics’ Philosophy”; Gauvin, “Instruments.” 4. Kassler, “Man.” 5. This account differs from that provided in Craver and Darden, Mechanisms, ch. 8, which highlights substantive changes in the way experiments on mechanisms were performed over time. 6. Daston, “Empire.”

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Index

Adelmann, Howard B., 116–17, 137 affections, mechanical, 18–20 agent, 4, 19, 20, 100, 105, 110, 117, 122–24, 132, 133 Agricola, Georgius, 29, 31, 35 Alberti, Leon Battista, 27–28 Albertini, Ippolito Francesco, 135 Andrault, Raphaële, 112 archeus, 80, 134–35 Aristotle, 6, 8, 14, 15, 98, 117, 120, 123, 140 Aristotelian philosophy/doctrine, 5, 84 art/artifice, 7, 12, 46 artificium mechanicum, 79, 118 art-nature, 4, 20, 89, 94 Asclepiades of Bithynia, 11 Aselli, Gasparo, 51, 59 atom/atomism, 9, 13, 85, 110, 122 atomist, 11, 111 attraction, 10, 12–13, 50, 52, 76; selective, 13, 40, 41, 84 automaton/automata, 22, 32, 101, 118, 124, 132 Bacon, Francis, 32–33 Bartholin, Thomas, 52, 60 Bechtel, William, 5–7, 98, 139 Bellini, Lorenzo, 126, 136

Belloni, Luigi, 74–75 Benedetti, Alessandro, 46 Berryman, Sylvia, 13 Bichat, Xavier, 5–7 Bidloo, Govert, 26, 72, 74—Biringuccio, Vannoccio, 31 Böckler, Georg Andreas, 55–56 Boerhaave, Herman, 106 Boissier de Sauvages, François, 105 Bologna, xii, 125, 128 Bonfiglioli, Francesco, 131 Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso, xii, 9, 60, 99, 110, 116–19, 125–26, 132, 137, 141 Bouillet, Jean, 107 Boyle, Robert, ix-xii, 5, 9, 16, 35, 67, 82–85, 106, 110, 116, 118–20, 122–25, 131–36, 139, 141; Excellency of Theology, 20, 124, 133; Origine of Formes and Qualities, 18–19, 22, 122–24, 133 Brahe, Tycho, 35 Britain, xi, 79, 122 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 27–28 Burnet, Gilbert, 81 Bylebyl, Jerome J., 50 cadaver, 10, 12–13, 48, 116, 136, 141 Cambridge, ix, 81, 84 183

184

camera obscura, 58–59, 140 Chambers, Ephraim, 25 Charleton, Walter, 98–100, 108 Charles V, 35 chemical phenomena/processes, 4, 7, 99, 104, 110, 113, 117, 125–26, 132, 137 chemistry/chymistry, 8, 9, 17, 28, 113 chiaroscuro, 27–28, 32 Clerselier, Claude, 60, 63 clock, 17–20, 22, 36, 57, 86, 98, 104, 107,113, 118, 133–34, 137 collision, 18, 97 color, 85–86, 122–23, 128 component, 5–7, 17–18, 21–22, 31, 37, 54, 77, 85, 95–96, 99–101, 112–13, 118, 119–20; fluid, 126, 131, 137–38 contrivance, 18–20, 22, 71, 79, 85–86, 89, 92, 100–101, 123–25, 139. See also mechanism corpuscular philosophy, 9, 19, 85, 111, 123, 125 Craver, Carl, ix, 4, 96 Ctesibius, 10, 51 Cudworth, Ralph, 84–85, 104 Dackerman, Susan, 27 D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, xi, 105, 106 Darden, Lindley, ix, 4, 96 Davia, Antonio Francesco, 116 Dear, Peter, 7 de Bordeu, Théophile, 106 de Caus, Salomon, 35, 57 Dechales, Claude François Milliet, 18 degli Aromatari, Giuseppe, 111 de Graaf, Regnier, 117 de Ketham, Johannes, 38 de la Forge, Louis, 60 de Lairesse, Gerard, 74, 75 Delft, 117 Democritus, 110–11

Index

Descartes, René, ix, 5, 8, 17, 22–4, 32–33, 57–69, 74, 79, 80, 81–83, 92, 96, 108, 123, 141 Des Chene, Dennis, 23 Detlefsen, Karen, 21–22 Diderot, Denis, xi, 105, 106 Distelzweig, Peter, 10 divine (or theologian), ix, xi, 81, 89, 96, 108, 124, 139 d’Ortous de Marain, Jean-Jacques, 106 Drebbel, Cornelis, 16 Dryander, Johannes, 39 Duchesneau, Francois, 133 Edgerton, David, xi, 28, 31–33, 37 elasticity, 10, 17–19, 53, 82, 109 Elkins, James, 28 Empedocles, 110–11 Encyclopédie, xi, 105–7 engine, 17, 19, 85, 99, 103, 122–24 engineer, 10, 28, 31–32, 35, 51 Epicureans, 110, 123 Epicurus, 111 epigenesis, 111 Erasistratus, 10–13, 21, 51, 99 experiment, 10, 12, 15, 19, 20, 48, 52, 82, 141 Fabricius, Hieronymus, 46–48, 50, 52, 114, 117 faculty, ix, x, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14–15, 21–23, 60, 77, 84, 94, 107, 125, 136, 137; pulsative, 5, 10, 136 fecundation, xi, 109–12, 114, 116–18, 125–26 ferment, 8, 118 fermentation, 23, 113, 116, 131 Ferrari, Giovanni Battista, 128 filter, 39, 41, 136 filtration, 7, 9, 12, 94, 126

Index

fountain, 18, 55–56, 57 Francesco di Giorgio Martini, 28, 31, 33 Fromondus, Libertus, ix Gabbey, Alan, 70 Galen, x, 3, 6, 8, 10–16, 23, 89, 117, 118, 135, 141 Galilei, Galileo, 4, 28, 31–33, 35 Garber, Daniel, 10, 19, 140 Gassendi, Pierre, 122 generation, xi, 4, 9, 21, 50, 97, 102, 109–12, 116–18, 122–25, 128, 131, 134, 137, 142 genesis, 11, 14. See also generation gland, 21, 67, 68–69, 74–75, 94, 106, 135–36, 142 Glanvill, Joseph, 96–98, 108, 139 glomerulus, 7, 67, 93–94 Gott, Samuel, 102–3 Grew, Nehemiah, 95–96, 100, 103–4, 108, 140 growth, 11–12, 14, 21, 112, 114 Guido da Vigevano, 35 Halifax, 85 Halle, 79, 104, 106 Harcourt, Glenn, 39 Harriot, Thomas, 28 Harvey, William, xii, 5, 10, 11, 12, 26, 32–33, 48–50, 52, 59, 60, 76–77, 80, 117, 140, 141; Generation of Animals, 110–11, 114, 118, 123–25, 128, 133–34 Hattab, Helen, ix Heron of Alexandria, 31 Hesse, Mary, 8 Hippocrates, 110 Hoffmann, Friedrich, 104–5 Hooke, Robert, xi, xii, 5, 9, 25, 67, 69, 76–78, 92–96, 98, 100, 107–8, 110,

185

125, 137, 139–41; Micrographia, 19–22, 25, 70–73, 85–92, 118–22; De potentia restitutiva, 17–18, 95 horror vacui, 12, 13 Hutchins, Barnaby, 17 Huygens, Christiaan, 17, 33, 35–37, 139 hygroscope, 91–92, 107 Inglehart, Ashley, 116, 125 Innocent XII, 125 instrument, ix, 15, 20, 21, 27, 35, 37–38, 83, 89, 91, 97, 102, 105, 114, 136; musical, 60, 136, 141 intelligibility, 95–96, 100, 123, 140 Keller, Vera, 16, 80 Kemp, Martin, 28 Kepler, Johannes, 35–36 Keyser, Konrad, 35 kidney, 7, 9, 10, 12, 21, 39–41, 67, 74–77, 93, 109, 113, 116, 126, 140 Klestinec, Cynthia, 63 Kusukawa, Sachiko, 38 law, 5, 9, 20, 89, 117, 123, 132 lawlike explanations, 4, 8 Lefèvre, Wolfgang, 33 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 23, 105 Leiden, 51, 106 Leonardo da Vinci, 17, 33, 42, 48 level (of mechanistic explanation), 4, 6, 17, 20–22, 26, 85–86, 139 life, ix, 4, 6, 7, 13, 15, 17, 85, 87, 101, 103–4, 107 ligature, 12, 48–52, 60, 77, 140–41 local/global accounts, x, 8, 10–11 Locke, John, 93 London, 79, 100 Long, Pamela, 33, 77 Louis XIV, 36

186

Louvain, ix, 60, 83 Lower, Richard, 54, 141 Lynceus/Linceus, 110–11 Lyon, 116 lyre, 68–69, 141 Machamer, Peter, ix, 4, 96 machine, ix, x, xi, 8, 32–33, 79, 82, 98, 99, 118, 119, 126, 133, 137, 140; human made/artificial, 5–7, 14; human versus divine, 4, 5, 22–3, 104 magnet, 13, 16, 110, 118 magnitude, 17, 21, 97. See also size Mahoney, Michael, xi, 32–33, 35, 37 Malebranche, Nicholas, 112, 128, 131 Malpighi, Marcello, xi-xii, 11, 20–21, 26, 67–70, 74–78, 93–94, 106, 108, 122, 133–38, 140–41; and generation, 109–19, 125–33; and the uniformity of nature, 65, 101, 128, 140 Manning, Gideon, 63 matter, living, 8, 14, 132 McGee, David, 31–32 mechanical philosophy, ix-x, 3, 4, 79, 82, 97, 140–42 mechanism: defined, 4–7, 21–22, 98, 139; mere/pure, 82–83, 97–98, 108, 139; as a project, x, 8, 23, 110, 134, 138, 142. See also contrivance mechanistic program, 4, 6, 9, 11, 16, 21, 67, 85, 94, 113, 134, 37 microscope, xi-xii, 7, 21, 74, 70, 77, 85, 87, 91, 93, 109, 119–20, 132, 140 microscopy, 67, 69, 78, 90, 108, 111, 142 mill, 22, 46, 57, 98, 124, 133–5 Mini, Paolo, 125, 135–36, 141 Modena, 125, 128 Montpellier, 79, 105, 106

Index

More, Henry, ix, xi, 16, 19, 81–85, 96–98, 107, 108, 139 motion, ix, 7, 9, 16–17, 19–24, 80, 85–86, 96–104, 114, 116–19, 122–23, 131–33, 136, 138, 140; fortuitous, 85, 89; local, 102, 111, 122–24, 134; muscular, 25, 60–62, 92–93 necessity: mathematical, 35; mechanical, 60, 85, 117, 141; of matter (necessitas materiae), 132 Newton, Isaac, 33 Nuremberg, 55 nutrition, 12, 14, 21, 84, 89, 106, 126 Oldenburg, Henry, 19, 93 organ (musical instrument), 57, 141 organism, xi, 3, 79, 102–5, 107, 108 Oxford, 54 Padua, 35 Panofsky, Erwin, 28 Paracelsus, 79 Paris, 38, 39 particle active/volatile, 8, 23, 116–17 Pecquet, Jean, 10, 17, 52–53, 59, 76, 77 pendulum, 78, 90–91, 107, 109, 133, 141; clock, 17–18, 36–37, 118, 139 perception, 14, 21, 28, 65, 67, 83, 93, 109 perspective, 27–33, 35, 37–38 Peyer, Johann Conrad, 67 Pirroni, Carlo Giovanni, 116 plastic power/virtue/etc., 9, 21, 23, 84, 87, 102–3, 110, 116–20, 122–26, 128, 131–34, 137 Plato, 15–16, 101 Plemp, Vopiscus Fortunatus, 83 Power, Henry, 85–86

Index

principle: active, 8, 81; hylarchic, 19–20, 82; immaterial, 9, 103–4; seminal, 9, 23, 120, 123–24, 137 Privat de Molières, Joseph, 106 pupil (of the eye), 83, 106, 141 qualities, occult, 21, 95, 119 Ragland, Evan, 67 Ramelli, Agostino, 31–32, 35 Rome, 116, 125 Roux, Sophie, 140 Ruysch, Frederik, 53–54, 69, 77, 141 Saumur, 60 Sbaraglia, Giovanni Girolamo, 11, 125, 132, 134–36 Scheiner, Christoph, 58–59, 83 Schuyl, Florentius, 60–63, 74 secretion, 21, 106 semipermeability, 109, 137 sensation, 14–15, 59, 61–62, 64, 70, 92–93, 103 Severinus, Petrus, 79 Shackelford, Jole, 79 shape, ix, 16–17, 19, 24, 70, 86, 96, 114, 117, 122, 123, 140, 141 size, ix, 8–9, 16–17, 19, 21, 22, 24, 96, 98, 114, 117, 122, 123, 131, 140. See also magnitude sluice, 10, 46, 48, 51, 76 Smith, Pamela, 77 snowflake, 9, 71, 86–87, 108, 120, 138 soul, 7–9, 14–16, 60, 65, 81–85, 96–97, 103, 105–8, 114, 120, 122–25, 133–35, 141; and its faculties, ix, x, 4–5, 9, 11, 14, 23, 84, 113, 117, 118, 123, 132, 133, 137 Spon, Jacob, 116, 126

187

Sprat, Thomas, 96–98 spring, 16–18, 20, 37, 95, 101, 104, 107, 109, 141 Stahl, Georg Ernst, 104–6 Starkey, George, 80 Steno, Nicolaus, 5–6, 100, 106, 131 Stillingfleet, Edward, 89 Stubbe, Henry, xi, 96–98, 107, 139 suspension of judgment, x, 8, 9, 11, 16, 23, 87, 106 Swammerdam, Jan, 112, 128, 131 Sydenham, Thomas, 135 Sylvius, Jacobu,s 38 syringe, 54, 70, 76, 78, 140 Taccola (Mariano di Jacopo), 28 Tartaglia, Niccolò, 35 technician, 31–32, 46, 77 teleology, 5, 6, 8, 11, 86, 89, 105, 108, 139 texture, 9, 19–21, 38, 87, 102, 122, 140 Torti, Francesco, 128 Trembley, Abraham, 106 Tyson, Edward, xi, 100–101, 108, 140 Ufano, Diego, 35 Urquhart, Thomas, 81 valve, 10, 12, 46–54, 59, 60–61, 76, 77, 140, 141 van Gutschoven, Gérard, 60, 83 van Helmont, Joan Baptista, 134 van Leeuwenhoek, Antonie, 92 Vesalius, Andreas, xi, 25–26, 35, 38–45, 60, 74, 75, 77, 140 visual evidence, 70, 109, 126 visual representation, x-xi, 25–28, 32–33, 37–38, 50, 60, 77–78 vital property/principle, 6–7, 103–4

188

vitalism/vitalist, 6–7 vivisection, 12, 15, 48, 52, 59, 67 von Gersdoff, Hans, 38 von Guericke, Otto, 35 von Kalkar, Jan Stephen, 42 von Staden, Heinrich, 10 Walaeus, Johannes, 51–52, 60, 77 watch, 16–18, 20, 37, 96, 100 weaving, 12, 21 weight, 20, 118, 131 Willis, Timothy, 80–81 Willis, Thomas, 54–55, 76, 77, 84, 139, 141 Worcester, 89 Wren, Christophe,r 97 Yvon, Claude, 107 Zonca, Vittorio, 30–31, 35, 48

Index