History of Science 2220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Vitalism, Empiricism, Omnipotence
2 May 2018
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Physiology Part 1
Overview
1. General principles of physiology
2. Vitalism and mechanism
3. Classical Greece
4. Humors
5. Hippocrates
6. Teleology and vitalism
7. Galen
General Principles of Physiology
• Phusis – Greek for nature
• About the natural world
• Living things and the function of living organisms
• Structure anatomy is a good guide but doesn’t give the inside to function that we
want
• Studies function rather than structure (i.e., anatomy) …
… Yet, structure is a clue to function (see this in part 2)
• Physiology journal
Conflict between science and life? Photo: William Blake – Newton (1795-1805)
Painting of Isaac Newton
Sense of which he is a living creature that is a part of nature
Still part of the mathematical representation, objectively measuring the world
Life is more fundamental than math
Key Themes (Duffin, 41-42):
1. Vitalism versus mechanism
- Description of signs of life- the set of rules for living things
- Living things can be translated into mechanistic things
2. Empiricism versus teleology
- Teleology looking for purposes and explain the scientific background
(answering the why)
3. Experimentation versus speculation
- Greek and the humors
4. Physiology as a discipline
5. Positivism
- Looking for proof
- Represents the ideology of science today
Vitalism: living things
• Living things have a unique property: Life
• Life cannot be reduced to physical laws (Duffin, 41)
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• Biology (study of life)
• Bio = life in Greek
• Life as a unique thing that is studied
• Life force = “spirit” (pneuma) (43)
• often seen in religious terms
• all living things have a soul
• that view is seen as too speculative in medicine today
Essential common traits of living things:
• Movement Growth
• Respiration Reproduction (hardest to find in non-living things)
• Sensitivity Excretion
Nutrition
• (= MRS. GREN)
• need to have all of these in order to be considered a living thing
Mechanism: All things (Duffin, 41)
• Mechanism: “the reduction of life to physical and chemical forces” = materialism
- all living things are like machines, they obey the laws of physics
o EX. A train – matter in motion
- Reduce humans to be a particular matter in motion. Obeys basic laws of physics and
chemistry.
- About matter and material changes in matter
- Translates all matter into the same kind of relationships and laws. There is nothing
special about living matter
Physics is the model for mechanism = matter in motion
• Forces in nature apply to living and non-living things equally
• Body as machine
o Does the same things as non-living things
o Chemistry further shows the bodies chemical processes
o Taking a bad part and putting a new part in
• No special life force
Classical Greece (vitalism)
• Ancient/Classical period (776 BCE to 323 BCE): From first Olympics to death of
Alexander the Great
• See NIH timeline for Greek medicine
• Greek science begins to flourish
- Everything is explained through a dominant religion- key feature of the medieval view.
However, it does not drown out rational enquiry
• Observation and speculation
• Religion is pervasive but does not stifle inquiry
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