The Appeal to Physical Explanations

Abstract

We have seen that the revival of interest in magic during the Renaissance also encouraged direct observation and reduced the influence of ‘authorities’. In the seventeenth century magic and mysticism played a decreasing role, but the interest in direct observation increased. This was accompanied by a new focus for inquiry in that mechanistic descriptions of the vital activities of living organisms and mechanistic explanations of their functions were sought. The change was not sharp or dramatic; even in the sixteenth century there had been the beginnings of indications of interest in explanatory accounts based on observations of physical structure rather than in terms of purpose. For example, we find Vesalius comparing the structure of skeletons in order to show that Galen’s assertions about the human body were based on irrelevant observations and were erroneous (see Chapter 2, p. 33).