Guido Giglioni on “Between Anatomy and Cosmology: Glisson Interpreter of Descartes” (2 May 2022, 5 pm (CET), Zoom)

[ISHPSS]

From: Andrea Strazzoni <andreas...@GMAIL.COM>


Lecture by Guido Giglioni (Macerata) on:

“Between Anatomy and Cosmology: Glisson Interpreter of Descartes”

Monday, 2 May 2022, at 5 pm (CET)

Venue: online Zoom meeting (CREMT - Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Zoom link: https://unive.zoom.us/j/84571640858?pwd=MWFJbFgxRjlnaVJLWUpIOWJwQlZVUT09
Zoom meeting ID: 845 7164 0858; Passcode: gMi180

Abstract:
In 1672, a rather odd volume came out of the presses of Elizabeth
Fletcher: the Tractatus de natura substantiae energetica, sive de vita
naturae (Treatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance, or The Life of
Nature). Its author was the anatomist and physician Francis Glisson
(1599-1677), who, by the time he had completed its weighty
philosophical tome, was more than seventy-year-old and could vaunt an
important career as Regius professor of medicine at Cambridge
University, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and member of
the Royal Society. The Tractatus represented the culmination of more
than twenty years devoted to philosophical research, from the
publication of his work on the anatomy of the liver (De anatomia
hepatis, 1654) to the treatise on “the life of nature”. These
metaphysical investigations turned out to be productive indeed:
Glisson’s main conclusion in the book was that matter was a living
substance. Among the authors that Glisson examined while presenting
his theory of living matter is René Descartes. Glisson concentrated on
two principal topics: motion and corpuscles. Glisson is a radical
Aristotelian – his contemporary and colleague at the University of
Cambridge, Ralph Cudworth, called him the new Strato of Lampsacus –
who reinterprets the notion of nature in materialistic terms by
endorsing Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy. In my talk I will focus
on Glisson’s criticisms of Descartes’s Principia philosophiae. In
Glisson’s opinion, Descartes crucially failed to understand the key
role played by force, both when dealing with motion and when
explaining the particulate character of matter.

Part of the series of lectures “Cartesianism and beyond. Lectures on
the History of Cartesianism and Its Reception”, March–June 2022,
organizers: Andrea Strazzoni & Marco Sgarbi

Kind regards,
Andrea Strazzoni
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Scholar (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
READESCARTES project
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie
Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 892794