The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge

The books fifteen chapters offer fresh perspectives on Baconian science in which the body features a starring role, as both research object and medium of experience. The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge represents an important interdisciplinary contribution to the history and philosophy of science. It will primarily appeal to historians and philosophers of the early modern life sciences with an interest in instruments, technology, and the cultural contexts of the body. (Margaret Carlyle, Annals of Science, Vol. 74 (4), October, 2017) The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge challenges traditional accounts of empiricism in the early modern period ... . for specialist audiences in the history of science ... . focus of the volume on the role of the body in the dialectic between subjective versus objective knowledge will provide welcome encouragement for further scholarly research ... . overall message of the importance of the embodied, lived experience for early modern debates about science is a welcome contribution to our field. (Ian Stewart, Isis, Vol. 103, No. 3, September, 2012) This collective volume questions the role of the body as both an object of research and an instrument of experience in the transformations of the life sciences from the late Renaissance to the early nineteenth century . this volume, by opening many ways for exploring the transforming status of the body and its relationship with the rise of empiricism from the late Renaissance, is a very valuable tool for every scholar interested in the history of the early modern science. (Stphane Schmitt, Early Science and Medicine, Vol. 16, 2011) What the reader will extract from the text overall is an insightful and informative spectrum of medical and scientific practices (and to some extent their philosophical implications) throughout much of the early modern period. Wolfe and Gal have done a good job of bringing together a wide range of contributions emerging from various disciplines, resulting in a wonderful analysis of the practice rather than the theory of empiricism in early modern science. (Jordan Taylor, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Vol. 19, No. 6, 2011) Three different major dimensions of the study of the body and the emergence of empiricism this is a collection, then, which makes us think anew about the origins of the methods and mentality of the scientific movement in its formative centuries. this collection places the human body back squarely in our mapping of the development of early modern science.(John Gascoigne, Metascience, October, 2010)

Embodied Empiricism.- The Body as Object.- Victories for Empiricism, Failures for Theory: Medicine and Science in the Seventeenth Century.- Practical Experience in Anatomy.- Early Modern Empiricism and the Discourse of the Senses.- Alkahest and Fire: Debating Matter, Chymistry, and Natural History at the Early Parisian Academy of Sciences.- John Locke and Helmontian Medicine.- The Body as Instrument.- Empiricism Without the Senses: How the Instrument Replaced the Eye.- Mastering the Appetites of Matter. Francis Bacons Sylva Sylvarum.- A Corporall Philosophy: Language and Body-Making in the Work of John Bulwer (16061656).- Memory and Empirical Information: Samuel Hartlib, John Beale and Robert Boyle.- Lamarck on Feelings: From Worms to Humans.- Embodied Minds.- Carelessness and Inattention: Mind-Wandering and the Physiology of Fantasy from Locke to Hume.- Instrumental or Immersed Experience: Pleasure, Pain and Object Perception in Locke.- Empiricism and Its Roots in the Ancient Medical Tradition.- Embodied Stimuli: Bonnets Statue of a Sensitive Agent.- Empiricist Heresies in Early Modern Medical Thought.