The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy

by Smith, Justin E. H.

• ISBN13: 9781107407282
• ISBN10: 1107407281
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-09-13
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

In this 2006 volume Smith examines the early modern science of generation, which included the study of animal conception, heredity, and fetal development. Analyzing how it influenced the contemporary treatment of traditional philosophical questions, it also demonstrates how philosophical pre-suppositions about mechanism, substance, and cause informed the interpretations offered by those conducting empirical research on animal reproduction. Composed of essays written by an international team of leading scholars, the book offers a fresh perspective on some of the basic problems in early modern philosophy. It also considers how these basic problems manifested themselves within an area of scientific inquiry that has not previously received much consideration by historians of philosophy.

Table of Contents

The Dawning of a New Era

The comparative study of animal development: from Aristotle to William Harvey

Monsters, nature, and generation from the Renaissance to the Early Modern period: the emergence of medical thought Annie Bitbol-Hesperies

The Cartesian Programme

Descartes' experiments and the generation of animals

Imagination and the problem of heredity in Cartesian embryology

The Gassdendian Alternative

The soul as vehicle for genetic information: Pierre Gassendi's account of inheritance

Atoms and minds in Walter Charleton's theory of animal generation

Second-Wave Mechanism and the Return of Animal Souls, 1650-1700: 7 Animal generation and substance in Sennert and Leibniz

Malebranche on animal generation: pre-existence and the microscope

Spontaneous and sexual generation in Ann Conway's Principles Deborah Boyle

'Animal' as category: Pierre Bayle's 'Rorarius'

Between Epigenesis and Pre-Existence: The Debate Intensifies, 1700-70

Method and cause: the Cartesian context of the Haller-Wolff debate

Soul power: G. E. Stahl and the debate on animal generation

Charles Bonnet's neo-Leibnizian theory of organic bodies

Kant and His Contemporaries on Development and the Problem of Organized Matter

Kant's early views on epigenesis: the role of Maupertuis

Blumenbach and Kant on the formative drive: mechanism and teleology in nature

Kant and the speculative sciences of origins

Kant and evolution

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