par Moreau, Elisabeth
Référence Third Young Researchers Days in Logic, Philosophy and History of Science (3-4/09/2012: Belgian Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Brussels)
Publication Non publié, 2012
Communication à un colloque
Résumé : Related to the history of medical ideas in the 16th and 17th centuries, the present paper aims at appraising the role of medicine in the development of early modern corpuscular theories, leading to Cartesian mechanism characteristic of the Scientific Revolution. Firstly, it will examine the early modern neo-atomism, i.e. the early modern approach to natural philosophy combining ancient atomism (Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius), Renaissance Neoplatonism and iatrochemistry (Paracelsus), and mechanism of the classical age (Descartes). Secondly, it will study the confrontation between neo-atomism and the Galenic medical tradition taught in the universities since the 12th-13th centuries. Thirdly, it will survey the recent historiographical trends related to this research in history of matter and chemistry, and history of early modern medicine. Finally, it will discuss the epistemological status of the history of early modern physiology as related to the concept of Scientific Revolution. It seems relevant to reappraise the development of physiology at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, as it is located at the crossroads of (1) the Galenico-Avicennian tradition transmitted by the universities, (2) the interest in natural philosophy and its medical implications, (3) the development of the new corpuscular science in the beginning of the classical age. This will allow us to question the concept of Scientific Revolution as defined by historians of philosophy (Koyré, Butterfield) or philosophers of science (Kuhn), and cast new light on the importance of medical knowledge, particularly physiology, in the development of the new science of the 17th century.

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