Abstract
For millennia, learned physicians tried to develop theoretical principles that would guide their therapeutic actions. The most enduring foundations were built on the discourse of the four elements, four qualities, four humours, six non-naturals, and the ways these combined to yield individual temperaments and constitutions. As these fundamentals came under attack in the seventeenth century, empiricism and medical specifics once again seemed the best method of finding certainty in therapy. This was no simple change in “method” proposed by the learned, however, since the developing medical marketplace gave empirics many new opportunities for promoting their views and forcing the rest to take account of them. Does this transition in medicine also apply to “science” more generally, giving prominence to those “matters of fact” that have gained our attention in recent years? The case is made for answering “yes.”
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
I am of course aware of the argument about why the word “science” is anachronistic when applied to the early modern period, but for reasons that will become clear below I do not think that “natural philosophy” is a good enough substitute for a collection of activities that also included medicine, chemistry, and artisanal practices; the term science therefore remains a useful short-hand. On learning and worldly engagements, see for example Eamon 1994; Smith 1994, 2004; Long 2001; Cook 2007; Harkness 2007. For the counter-argument, see Cunningham 1991; Cunningham and Williams 1993.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
The argument for a distinction between experimental and mathematical sciences is captured best in Kuhn 1976.
- 8.
Hall 1983, 147.
- 9.
Hall 1954, quotations from 134, 275, 289.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
Cook 1994.
- 14.
- 15.
Carlino 1999.
- 16.
- 17.
Jean Fernel, Methodo medendi, quoted in Reeds 1991, 25–26.
- 18.
- 19.
Cook 1990b, 1994.
- 20.
Cotta 1612, 1–2.
- 21.
Ellis 1963.
- 22.
Sloane 1707, vol 1 sig. Bv.
- 23.
Baglivi 1704, 5, 9, 15. Original published as Baglivi, De praxi medica. Ad priscam observandi rationem revocanda (Rome: Typis Dominici Antonii Herculis, 1696).
- 24.
Boerhaave 1743, 63, 71, 42.
- 25.
Cook 1989a.
- 26.
Glanvill 1668, 7–8.
- 27.
Stubbe 1670b.
- 28.
Frank 1979.
- 29.
Davis 1971.
- 30.
- 31.
Bylebyl 1978.
- 32.
Quoted from Chaney 1988, 16.
- 33.
Birken 1977, 306, 328–330.
- 34.
Woolfson 1998, 21–23.
- 35.
- 36.
Keynes 1966.
- 37.
Annals, 1:7b–20a.
- 38.
Cook 1989b, 1994.
- 39.
Cook 1985.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Webster 1967, 1979.
- 42.
Cook 1987.
- 43.
- 44.
See the fundamental work of van Berkel 1983, a revised and translated version of which is due soon.
- 45.
Garber 2001, 51, also 85–110; also see Garber 1978.
- 46.
- 47.
Quotations from Descartes 1985, 1:99, 3:59.
- 48.
Descartes 1985, 1:143.
- 49.
Descartes 1985, 1:143, 144.
- 50.
Descartes 1985, 2:56.
- 51.
Descartes 1985, 2:11.
- 52.
Descartes 1985, 2:56.
- 53.
Descartes 1985, 2:61.
- 54.
Shapiro 2007.
- 55.
Les Passions de l’Ame, in Descartes 1985, I:403.
- 56.
- 57.
- 58.
Most powerfully and provocatively put in Shapin 1994.
- 59.
Mokyr 2002.
- 60.
A rather distressing recent example is the paperback edition of Wootton 2006.
- 61.
- 62.
- 63.
Aubrey 1949.
- 64.
Pittis 1715, 40–41.
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Cook, H.J. (2010). Victories for Empiricism, Failures for Theory: Medicine and Science in the Seventeenth Century. In: Wolfe, C.T., Gal, O. (eds) The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3686-5_2
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