Physiologia - (History, and Culture) by Dennis Des Chene (Hardcover)

About the Book

Sixteenth-century Aristotelianism was the culmination of four centuries of commentary and criticism. Physiologia is one of the first books to provide an accessible and comprehensive guide to that tradition in natural philosophy. In an incisive and readable treatment, Dennis Des Chene illuminates the continuities and disruptions between...

Book Synopsis

Sixteenth-century Aristotelianism was the culmination of four centuries of commentary and criticism. Physiologia is one of the first books to provide an accessible and comprehensive guide to that tradition in natural philosophy. In an incisive and readable treatment, Dennis Des Chene illuminates the continuities and disruptions between medieval and modern philosophy and promotes a new understanding of the philosophical setting in which modern notions of science emerged.

From the Back Cover

Physiologia makes accessible, for the first time in English, major themes of sixteenth-century Aristotelianism, the culmination of four hundred years of commentary and criticism. In his incisive and readable treatment, Dennis Des Chene supplies the Aristotelian background necessary for understanding the rise of modern science. Physiologia promotes a new understanding of the philosophical setting in which modern notions of scientific law emerged. Continuities and disruptions between medieval and modern philosophy are set forth in an intellectual context never before available.

Review Quotes

A very impressive body of research.... Des Chene provides much thought-provoking discussion.... For the growing number of scholars with a serious interest in late scholasticism and its relationship to early modern philosophy, the book should be very stimulating and a rich source of information.

-- "Philosophical Review"

Des Chene successfully shows that these philosophers were fully aware of the problems in Aristotle's notion of the soul. He also shows that the questions fundamental to the Aristotelian psychology were not so much answered by Descartes and his followers as mooted.

--Peter Lautner "Bryn Mawr Review"

This rangy and precise book deserves to be read even by those historians who think they are bored with Descartes. While offering surprising and detailed readings of bewildering texts like the Description of the Human Body, Des Chene constructs a powerful, sad narrative of the Cartesian disenchantment of the body. Along the way he also delivers provocative views on topics as various as teleology, the role of illustrations in the history of mechanism, theories of the sexual differentiation of the foetus, and problems of simulation in scientific method.

--Paula Gould Chester "British Journal for the History of Science"

About the Author

Dennis Des Chene is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in Saint Louis.