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31The history of the concept of pain: how the experts came to be out of touch with the folkIn Richard Samuels & Daniel A. Wilkenfeld (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science, Bloomsbury. pp. 173-190. 2019.In this chapter we consider the tension between how pain researchers today typically define pains and the dominant, ordinary conception of pain. While both philosophers and pain scientists define pains as experiences, taking this to correspond with the ordinary understanding, recent empirical evidence indicates that laypeople tend to think of pains as qualities of bodily states. How did this divide come about? To answer, we sketch the historical origins of the concept of pain in Western medicine…Read more
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11Concepts of Experience in Royalist Recipe CollectionsJournal of Early Modern Studies 11 (1): 37-68. 2023.This essay explores the idea of experience and its epistemological and practical role in maintaining the health of a household among early modern English Royalists. A number of prominent royalists during the mid-seventeenth century British Civil Wars expended quite some effort in the collection of medical recipes, including Queen Henrietta Maria herself, as well as William and Margaret Cavendish, and the Talbot sisters—Elizabeth Grey and Alethea Howard. This essay looks at these Royalists and fo…Read more
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6IntroductionJournal of Early Modern Studies 11 (1): 9-16. 2023.This essay explores the idea of experience and its epistemological and practical role in maintaining the health of a household among early modern English Royalists. A number of prominent royalists during the mid-seventeenth century British Civil Wars expended quite some effort in the collection of medical recipes, including Queen Henrietta Maria herself, as well as William and Margaret Cavendish, and the Talbot sisters—Elizabeth Grey and Alethea Howard. This essay looks at these Royalists and fo…Read more
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William Harvey’s Rejection of Materialism: Underdetermination and Explanation in Historical ContextIn Marcus P. Adams, Zvi Biener, Uljana Feest & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (eds.), Eppur Si Muove: Doing History and Philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Peter Machamer, Springer. 2017.This essay explores a familiar concept from the philosophy of science—underdetermination—in an unfamiliar context: explanation. Underdetermination is usually deployed in the realism debate, or in discussions of theory confirmation. Here, instead, I am concerned with how underdetermination, interpreted as the necessity of background assumptions, can help us understand a specific historical case involving a dispute about explanatory success. In particular, I look at the work of William Harvey, dis…Read more
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26Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy (edited book)Springer. 2016.This essay discusses the role of new mechanical devices put forward in the seventeenth century in anatomy and pathology, showing how several of those devices were promptly deployed in anatomical investigations. I also discuss the role of dead bodies as boundary objects between living bodies and machines, highlighting their problematic status in experimentation and vivisection.
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8This volume deals with philosophically grounded theories of animal generation as found in two different traditions: one, deriving primarily from Aristotelian natural philosophy and specifically from his Generation of Animals; and another, deriving from two related medical traditions, the Hippocratic and the Galenic. The book contains a classification and critique of works that touch on the history of embryology and animal generation written before 1980. It also contains translations of key secti…Read more
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23Marco Solinas. From Aristotle’s Teleology to Darwin’s Genealogy: The Stamp of Inutility. London: Macmillan, 2015. Pp. 200. $95.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 6 (1): 174-177. 2016.
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25Epigenesis and the rationality of nature in William Harvey and Margaret CavendishHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 39 (2): 1-23. 2017.The generation of animals was a difficult phenomenon to explain in the seventeenth century, having long been a problem in natural philosophy, theology, and medicine. In this paper, I explore how generation, understood as epigenesis, was directly related to an idea of rational nature. I examine epigenesis—the idea that the embryo was constructed part-by-part, over time—in the work of two seemingly dissimilar English philosophers: William Harvey, an eclectic Aristotelian, and Margaret Cavendish, a…Read more
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18William Harvey on Anatomy and ExperiencePerspectives on Science 24 (3): 305-323. 2016.The goal of this essay is to explore the meaning of experience in William Harvey’s natural philosophy. I begin with Cunningham’s argument that, for Harvey, anatomy was an experience-based science of final causes. But how could one experience final causes? I answer this by first articulating Harvey’s conception of anatomy, before turning to his understanding of experience.What did anatomia mean in the early seventeenth century? Consulting dictionaries, the texts of anatomists, and following Cunni…Read more
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26A dark business, full of shadows: Analogy and theology in William HarveyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (3): 419-432. 2013.In a short work called De conceptione appended to the end of his Exercitationes de generatione animalium , William Harvey developed a rather strange analogy. To explain how such marvelous productions as living beings were generated from the rather inauspicious ingredients of animal reproduction, Harvey argued that conception in the womb was like conception in the brain. It was mostly rejected at the time; it now seems a ludicrous theory based upon homonymy. However, this analogy offers insight i…Read more
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5A Dark Business, Full Of Shadows: Analogy and theology in William HarveyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (3): 419-432. 2013.In a short work called De conceptione appended to the end of his Exercitationes de generatione animalium, William Harvey developed a rather strange analogy. To explain how such marvelous productions as living beings were generated from the rather inauspicious ingredients of animal reproduction, Harvey argued that conception in the womb was like conception in the brain. It was mostly rejected at the time; it now seems a ludicrous theory based upon homonymy. However, this analogy offers insight in…Read more
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29Lisa T. Sarasohn. The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish: Reason and Fancy during the Scientific Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Pp. xi+251. $75.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (1): 169-172. 2011.
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46Luuc Kooijmans. Death Defied: The Anatomy Lessons of Frederik Ruysch, trans. Diane Webb. Leiden: Brill, 2011. History of Science and Medicine Library, vol. 18. Pp. xvi+472, index. $169.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 2 (1): 177-182. 2012.review of a book on Frederik Ruysch
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University of PittsburghGraduate student
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America