The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century: Intersections of Medicine and Philosophy (Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine)

This edited volume explores the intersection of medicine and philosophy throughout history, calling attention to the role of quantification in understanding the medical body. Retracing current trends and debates to examine the quantification of the body throughout the early modern, modern and early contemporary age, the authors contextualise important issues of both medical and philosophical significance, with chapters focusing on the quantification of temperaments and fluids, complexions, functions of the living body, embryology, and the impact of quantified reasoning on the concepts of health and illness. With insights spanning from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, this book provides a wide-ranging overview of attempts to ‘quantify’ the human body at various points. Arguing that medicine and philosophy have been constantly in dialogue with each other, the authors discuss how this provided a strategic opportunity both for medical thought and philosophy to refine andfurther develop. Given today’s fascination with the quantification of the body, represented by the growing profusion of self-tracking devices logging one’s sleep, diet or mood, this collection offers an important and timely contribution to an emerging and interdisciplinary field of study. Contents List of Contributors List of Figures Introduction 1 The Meanings of Quantification 2 The Metaphysics of Quantity and Measurement 3 The More, the Less, the Whole, the Body 4 The Quanti-Mathe-Mechanization of Nature and the Human Body as a Laboratory 5 The Fall of Mechanization and the New Life of Quantity 6 Overlapping Paths The More the Years the Less the Food: Alvise Cornaro on The Sober Life (1558) 1 Introduction 2 Cornaro and the Moral Question of Quantity 3 Quantity (of Food) Matters 4 Some Lies and ‘The Cumulative Advantages of Added Years’ 5 Leonhard Lessius SJ, Exporting Cornaro and His Proportions 6 Dissolution as Conclusion The Quantification of Talents: Education, Galenic Humoralism, and Classification of Wits in Early Modern Culture 1 Early Modern Educational Thought, Between Politics and Morals 2 The Qualitative Body in the Pseudo-Plutarchean De liberis educandis 3 “Queriendo reducir a arte esta nueva manera de filosofar”: Juan Huarte’s Work and the Beginnings of a Quantitative Approach to Educational Selection 4 Concluding Remarks: The Ingenium from Soul Faculty to Organic Function Quali-quantitative Measurement in Francis Bacon’s Medicine. Toward a New Branch of Mixed Mathematics 1 Introduction 2 The Ontology of Measurement 3 Mixed Mathematics, Physics, and Medicine 4 The Quali-quantitative Approach to Measurement 5 Quali-Quantitative Measures in Medicine: Some Examples 5.1 General Quantitative Registers 5.2 Mensura Quanti 5.3 Mensura Temporis 5.4 Mensura Spatii 5.5 Mensura Fortitudinis, Mensura Peristaseos 6 Conclusion Sanctorius’s Weighing Chair: Measurement, Metabolism, and Mind 1 Insensible Perspiration 2 Exercise of the Mind 3 Quantified Selfhood 4 Conclusion The Rise of Quantitative Biology in the Cartesian Age: The Theories of Preformation 1 Introduction 2 Malebranche’s Theory of Preformation 3 Régis’ (Limited) Theory of Preformation 4 Conclusion ‘Nature is More Subtle Than Any Mathematician’: Giorgio Baglivi on Fluids in the Human Body 1 The Intricate Nature of Disease 2 An Overview of De praxi medica, bk. I, Chs. 10–11 3 Analogical Reasoning and Quantification in Physiology 4 Blood, Saliva and Bile Matters: ‘Anatomising’ Body Fluids 5 Conclusion “The Human Body Should Be Investigated in All Its Details to the Most Precise Degree...”. Leibniz on the Quantification of Body in Medicine 1 Leibniz’s Directiones (1671). A Primer in Quantification? 2 Collecting Data 3 Anatomy 4 Medical Statistics 5 Instruments of Measure 6 The Interior of Nature and the Limits of Mechanization Appendix: Leibniz “De re medica augenda” Data vs. Mathesis. Contrasting Epistemologies in Some Mechanizations and Quantifications of Medicine 1 Introduction 2 Struggling for Certainty 2.1 Pitcairne and Keill 2.2 Axiomatic Reasoning and Medicine: Gaukes and Hoffmann 3 Quantifying Physiology: Contrasting Approaches 3.1 The Newtonians: From Ratios to Measurements 3.2 The Rationalists: Statics and Quantification 4 Conclusion The Pulse Watch and the Physician’s Senses: John Floyer on the Quantification of the Body 1 Introduction 2 The Pulse Watch and the Mechanist View 3 Floyer on the Limits of the Mechanist View 4 The Necessity of the Pulse Watch 5 Conclusion Against the Quantification of the Living: Hegel’s Critique of Romantic Naturphilosophie in the Phenomenology of Spirit 1 Hegel’s Conception of the Living Organism 2 Observing Reason and the Phenomenological Genesis of Romantic Naturphilosophie 3 The Controversy Concerning Romantic Naturphilosophie 3.1 The Inner-Outer Relationship in Romantic Naturphilosophie 3.2 Hegel’s Criticism of Phrenology 3.3 Hegel’s Criticism of the Schelling-Inspired Naturphilosophie 4 Conclusion Measuring the Mind: The French Debate on Fechner’s Psychophysics in the Late Nineteenth Century 1 Introduction 2 Fechner’s Psychophysics and Its Introduction into France 3 Mathematical Issues of Fechner’s Law 4 Bergson and Fechner: Quality or Quantity? 5 Conclusion Index