1 E. A. Parkyn, in his introduction to the Everyman's Library edition of Harvey (see following note): ‘Galileo and Harvey refused to be bound by the teachings of Aristotle and Galen, and appealed from these authorities to the actual facts of nature which any man could observe for himself. Their scientific work is therefore of interest, not only for the innate value of the discoveries they made, but also because it shows them as pioneers in that independent spirit of scientific inquiry to which the great advance in natural knowledge since their time is so largely due’ (p. viii). H. T. Pledge, Science since 1500 (New York, 1947): ‘ “De Motu Cordis” is a classic of science. Negatively, it was unencumbered by metaphysics, a virtue then exceedingly rare. Positively, it stands for the entry at once of the quantitative and of the comparative methods into biology’ (p. 29). Charles Singer, A Short History of Scientific Ideas to 1900 (Oxford, 1959), p. 275: ‘The Englishman, William Harvey (1578-1657), is also to be regarded as a disciple of Galileo though he himself was, perhaps, little aware of it… . We would emphasize that the essential part of its demonstration [Singer is referring to The Motion of the Heart and its demonstration of the circuit of the blood] is the result not of mere observation but of the application of Galileo's principle of measurement.’ Singer wisely refuses to say that Harvey was a mechanist, however, though he does assert that Harvey ‘gave a great impetus to explain vital works on mechanical grounds’ (p. 276). Singer discusses Harvey in a chapter headed ‘The Decline of Aristotle': ‘The Aristotelian world-system was falling. The Aristotelian biology held. Perhaps it still holds.'

2 In his Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in anitnalibus, first published in Frankfurt by William Fitzer in 1628. For an almost exhaustive listing of the various editions which this book ran through in its early years, see Keynes, Geoffrey, A Bibliography of the Writings of Dr. William Harvey, 1578-1657 (2d ed., Cambridge, 1953).Google Scholar The most commonly available modern editions, containing translations either alone or with the text, are: (1) The Works of William Harvey, M.D., tr. from the Latin by Robert Willis, M.D. (London, 1847). This contains all the works on circulation and also that on animal generation. There is a long introduction by Willis. (2) The Circulation of the Blood, tr. Robert Willis (London, 1907). This is the Everyman's Library edition, and omits the work on generation and the introduction by Willis. Instead there is a good biographical sketch by E. A. Parkyn. (3) Exercitatio, etc., by William Harvey, M.D., as presented by Chauncey D. Leake (Springfield, 111., 1928). This is the so-called Tercentennial Edition, and contains text (photographically reproduced from an early edition) and translation. The translator adds a preface and many long but stimulating footnotes. The style is colloquial, indeed a little racy, as Willis’ version decidedly is not. (4) A paperback edition of Leake's translation and notes, without the Latin text, was issued in 1930. (5) Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals: an Anatomical Essay by William Harvey, tr. Kenneth J. Franklin (Springfield, 111., 1957), was prepared for the Royal College of Physicians of London. The text is unfortunately printed after the translation, not facing it; the translation is closer to it than are those previously listed. It is without notes or introduction, wisely leaving all historical and philosophical questions aside. It is interesting to note that all of the books mentioned have gone through several printings, most of them within a few months after first publication. Other translations have been made by Zachariah Wood (1653) and Michael Ryan (1832-1833).

3 The best single treatment that I have found of this question as it was shaped in the sixteenth century is Neal Gilbert's, W. Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially the last four chapters.

4 G. K. Plochmann, ‘Socrates, the Stranger from Elea, and Some Others', Classical Philology XLIX (1954), 223-231.

5 The same remarks would apply to such atomists as are to be found in the sixteenth century.

6 Even in the little treatise On the Heart, the Hippocratic writer contents himself with quite general observations upon the chambers and tendons of that organ, and moves quickly to considerations of its leading purposes. One need not expect detailed anatomical accounts in such texts as The Ancient Medicine, or Airs, Waters, and Places, yet one would think that in works devoted to many of the rational aspects of health and disease some descriptions of gross anatomical findings would be prominent. On the Heart, by the way, contains the expression irepfoSos ai/xaros, but simply in the sense of a general movement of the blood, and it cannot be taken as evidence of any Harveian notions of a circuit of the self-same blood in every part of the body.

7 For the waning influence of the Arabs in the student days of Harvey, see Donald Campbell, ‘The Medical Curriculum of the Universities of Europe in the Sixteenth Century, With Special Reference to the Arab Tradition', in Science, Medicine, and History: Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice Written in Honour of Charles Singer, ed. E. Ashworth Underwood (London, 1953), I, 357-367.

8 John Aubrey, Brief Lives (any edition).

9 ‘Anatomical’ (and its related expressions), by the way, was a word used by Harvey aijfl his forerunners and contemporaries to denote matters functional as well as structural, and the presence of this word in the title in his main work hardly limits his treatment of the subject matter. Consult the Oxford English Dictionary for the history of this and the word ‘physiological'.

10 Arthur William Meyer, in An Analysis of the De Generatione Animalium of William Harvey (Stanford University, Calif., 1936), is a little more cautious than most of the historians of science, yet he says (on p. 27) that ‘In Harvey's time the experimental method often seemed to confirm incorrect Aristotelian ideas on generation, while in later times it controverted them. We know that all later progress in embryology has been made by the method upon which Harvey so greatly relied, and upon which, so far as one can see, all future progress must also depend.’ Leake, a great admirer of Harvey, is led into contradiction concerning the matter, for he says, in a note to page 44 of his translation of The Motion of the Heart, that Harvey was surely the first real disciple of Aristotle, while in his preface he says (p. xi) that Harvey was not an Aristotelian in any scholastic sense, nor a Baconian, but that he used modern observational methods, coupled with hypothesis, deduction, and experiment. One may well wonder, incidentally, if any serious discussion of science, even Aristotle's, would not have to include at least some of these fine things! To imply that they did not play a significant role in Bacon's theory of science would be like throwing out its special rime scheme and expecting the sonnet form to remain.

11 Epistle dedicatory to Dr. Argent, prefacing The Motion of the Heart.

12 Collected Works, p. 151. See also the remarks attributed by Dr. Ent (in the epistle dedicatory to the Animal Generation) to Harvey: ‘I have oftentimes wondered and even laughed at those who have fancied that everything had been so consummately and absolutely investigated by an Aristotle or a Galen, or some other mighty name, that nothing could by possibility be added to their knowledge. Nature, however, is the best and most faithful interpreter of her own secrets; and what she presents either more briefly or obscurely in one department, that she explains more fully and clearly in another.'

13 Animal Generation (Works, p. 207).

14 Works, p. 157.

15 Aristotle, Physics, II, 2 (193b31-35).

16 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, II, 19, passim.

17 “Ibid., I, 18.

18 Works, p. 154. This paragraph from Harvey is largely a reflection of Aristotle's Physics, 1, I (i84ai6-2i). It is not quite an accurate paraphrase, for Aristotle himself says that what is more known in its own nature is less known to us, and this is the universal. Harvey corrects his own deviation pretty well in the last clause; and neither exactness nor deviation would seem to offer conclusive evidence that he had taken his Aristotle from the text itself rather than from some handbook; differences of outlook could account for differences in statement. It is not parroting, at any rate.

19 This is one of the deepest questions of natural philosophy, for it involves not only the rules of logic and their application but also the natures of the things investigated. Aristotle himself distinguishes between things univocally named and those equivocally named at the outset of his logic (Categories, I, IaI ff.); but the means of securing univocation require much of the rest of his six treatises to set forth, and also the variety of methods by which he approaches his several subject matters.

20 On the Soul, 11, 12 (42a17 ff.).

21 Posterior Analytics, 1, 18 (81a37).

22 Prior Analytics, II, 23 (68bi9-29).

23 On the Soul, III, 4 (429b16).

24 The full title of this work is An Anatomical Disquisition on the Circulation of the Blood to John Riolan,Jun., of Paris, a most Skillful Physician; the Coryphaeus of Anatomists, Regius Professor of Anatomy and Botany in the University of Paris; Dean of the same University, and First Physician to the Queen Mother of Louis XIII. It was published (in Latin) in 1649; the Second Disquisition appeared in the same year.

25 Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, I, 1 (71a1).

26 Plato, Meno, 8oe suggests this hypothesis as a way of explaining some of the paradoxes in the learning process.

27 Posterior Analytics, II, 13 (97b26).

28 Ibid., II, 19 (100a16).

29 Ibid.,1, 2 (72a1). Harvey does not stress intuition, in fact hardly mentions it, but this is because it forms a kind of instantaneous step between the forming of universals and their employment in deduction, and is of interest not so much logically as psychologically. Aristotle himself has little to say about it.

30 Ibid., 1, 2 (72a!). Cf. note 15.

31 Butterfield, H., The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800 (New York, 1957)Google Scholar is rather hasty, I think, in saying (p. 50) that The Motion of the Heart ‘seems to lack order'. As one traces the outlines of this work, from the largest division down to its tiniest details, and tries to explain the least parts in terms of the concepts involved, the excellent organization of the book, worthy of a St. Thomas Aquinas or of a Hobbes, becomes more and more apparent.

32 Preamble. In the notes that follow, I shall refer to chapters in The Motion of the Heart rather than page numbers, as the former are in many cases rather brief, while the latter are full of variation as between the different editions, or between text and translation in the same edition.

33 Aristotle, Prior Analytics, II, 27 (70a3 if.).

34 I would say ‘back to a final cause', except that such a cause does not exist, for Aristotle, as a necessary antecedent to what is caused. Modern philosophy, and especially that of the period after Hume, has generally broken with this view of causes that includes purpose or end as one type. One place, however, where such causes have a way of persistently cropping up is in embryology, and our contemporary theories of education would be lost without final causes.

35 tated in Galen, On the Natural Faculties, tr. Arthur John Brock (New York, 1928, Loeb Classical Library), III, 14 (204-206).

36 The Motion of the Heart, preamble. This question bothered Harvey a great deal, for two decades later he said that arterial blood may be spirituous, possessed of higher vital force, but that it is not more vaporous or aerial. Neither the animal, natural, or vital spirits which inhere in the solids, such as ligaments and nerves, are kinds of vapor. See the Second Disquisition to Dr. Riolan (Everyman's Library, p. 143).

37 This and related questions are argued in Joseph Frank Payne, Harvey and Galen: the Harucian Oration, 1896 (Oxford, 1897).

38 Though strictly it is not one. There are other possible consequents of the first statement. We are dealing here, as Harvey admits, with probabilities and signs.

39 Drawn from the fourth chief division of The Motion of the Heart.

40 On the Parts of Animals, II, 1 (647b2-4).

41 The Motion of the Heart, ch. 9.

42 In his treatise, Harvey gives no evidence for these variations, and historians have conjectured that his notes were lost. But observations like these are either relatively easy to make again, by the standards of his day, or else hopelessly beyond any but very recent mechanical and electronic devices. Had it suited his purpose he could have at almost any point in the demonstration given long tables of findings, in the manner of the astrono mers of the Renaissance, or descriptions of individual cases, in the manner of the Hippocratic writers.

43 Everyman's Library edition, p. 150.

44 This is an argument against the Galenists, who asserted that the blood was formed in the liver from ingested food and renewed at every meal. In this point Harvey agreed with Aristotle, who devotes a considerable space to the disproof that the liver is the primary organ of the whole body or the maker of the blood. See Parts of Animals, m, 4 (666x2.6 ff.). Harvey himself is not explicit concerning the location of the manufacture of the blood. But it is well to recognize his daring, for Sylvius, Columbus, Eustachius, and Fallopius, leading anatomists of the time, all asserted that the veins originate in the liver and that blood is manufactured there. For Galen's views on this matter, see op. tit., I, 4; n, 8.

45 G. K. Plochmann, ‘D'Arcy Thompson: his Conception of the Living Body', Philosophy of Science x x (1953), 145-146. Thompson in general thought of himself as a follower of Aristotle and he uses many expressions from Peripatetic philosophy; but his actual practice, and not least his mathematical theory of growth and form, is far different.

46 Ch. 8: ‘quasi in circulo'. Harvey goes on to say that this is the kind of circularity which Aristotle meant in talking about meteorological successions. We would more properly use the word ‘cycle'.

47 G. K. Plochmann, ‘Nature and the Living Thing in Aristotle's Biology', Journal of the History of Ideas xiv (1953), 173. The point in both Aristotle and Harvey is that, if final causes are to be used at all, these must be used in a systematic way, and not permitted to enter by the back door, even though they may be subordinated over and over again to totally different considerations. I therefore oppose such a grudging concession as that of L. W. H. Hull, in his History and Philosophy of Science; an Introduction (London, 1959), p. 273: ‘Indeed, the disposition of these valves [in the veins] did more than anything else to suggest [Harvey's] discovery to him. In asking what their purpose was, he began to form his new ideas. This is one of the rare cases in which science has been advanced by an inquiry into final causes.'

48 H. T. Pledge, op. cit., p. 29: ‘This action [of the heart] is slow enough [in coldblooded animals] to be visibly analysable on mechanical lines. After the heart has contracted, the aorta expands. There is an obvious resemblance to a pump. Now pumps were in the air at that time.’ Sir William Dampier-Whetham, A History of Science (3d ed., Cambridge, 1942), p. 261: ‘Harvey explained the motion of the blood as that of a fluid pumped through the tubes of arteries by the mechanical action of the heart, a theory which gave a naturalistic turn to physiological inquiry.’ See also Chauncey Leake's preface to his translation of The Motion of the Heart. It must be noted that in Harvey's own lecture notes of 1616, he speaks of a water bellows that raises water by two clacks, and likens the propulsion of the blood to this. But his expression ‘as by’ is not synonymous with ‘is exactly the same in kind as'.

49 Titnaeus, 70b ff.

50 On the Parts of Animals, II, 3 (65ob2).

51 Ibid., II, 3 (6“5oa2-21).

52 On Animal Generation (Works, p. 386).

53 Everyman's Library edition, p . 149. « Ch. 15.

56 On the Parts of Animals, II, 2 (648bn-b26).

57 In Animal Generation, published in 1651, i.e., 23 years after The Motion of the Heart, Harvey says that the blood is the primary part engendered, and the heart is a mere organ to make the blood circulate (Works, p. 376). He even says that blood is the soul of the body (p. 309). Aristotle had long since dismissed this view as ‘crude’ (On the Soul, 1, 2 [45005]). But we must remember that in the later work Harvey is writing on embryology, and the blood is certainly life-giving in this relation. And on any definition of the soul, what else beside blood would the embryo have as soul at that stage?

58 The Motion of the Heart, ch. 15.

59 One of the relatively few clear statements of Harvey's conceptual relations to Aristotle is found in Walter Pagel, ‘The Reaction to Aristotle in Seventeenth-century Biological Thought', in Essays … in Honour of Charles Singer, 1, 489-509. It must be noted, however, that Pagel represents Harvey's Aristotelianism as a kind of vitalism, and does not connect the doctrine of the circulation with either the Organon or the theory of the four causes, stated in book I of the Metaphysics and book n of the Physics. But his is an excellent essay, nevertheless, and begins with the sensible statement: ‘Seventeenthcentury scientific thought is often represented as the fruit of antagonism to Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy… . Such a view calls for qualification—at all events in the sphere of seventeenth-century biology’ (p. 489).

60 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1, 7.

61 One of the most important features of his method is the use of the lower animals as corroborative or, even more, definitive evidence in the problem of final causes. Had he dissected human beings only, the relation between heat and the chambers of the heart could never have been clear, because there are always four such chambers. In the coldblooded animals, on the other hand, and in the lower mammals, the number is always less, and with reason. But it is odd to find a doctor of the seventeenth century complaining that there is too much dissection of the human body!

62 H. Butterfield, op. cit., p. 48: ‘To the humanists of the Renaissance, Padua was an object of particular derision because it was the hotbed of AristoteHanism; and it is one of the paradoxes of the scientific revolution that so important a part in it was played by a university in which Aristotle was so much the tradition and for centuries had been so greatly adored.'

63 The present essay is an expanded version of a paper read at the April 1961 meeting of the Central Renaissance Conference, St. Louis, Mo.

63 The present essay is an expanded version of a paper read at the April 1961 meeting of the Central Renaissance Conference, St. Louis, Mo.