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 Cunningham, we can assert that anatomists conceived of (...) their work as both a manual art and a rational science.1 Medicine had long proved problematic, failing to fit into disciplinary.. (shrink)

Studying early modern medico-legal testimonies can enrich our understanding of witnessing, the focus of much research in the history of science. Expert testimonies were well established in the Roman Canon law, but the sphere of competence of expert witnesses—one of the grounds on which seventeenth-century physicians claimed social and intellectual authority—troubled contemporary jurists. By reconstructing these debates in Counter Reformation Rome, and by placing in them the testimonies given by Paolo Zacchia, one of the founding fathers of legal medicine, this (...) article discusses the epistemological and social issues surrounding the definition of expertise about the body in court. It shows how a high-ranking expert witness would define his competence versus the legal authority on the one hand, and versus lay and lower-status expert witnesses on the other. But it also explores the interactions between specific legal constraints, for example about eye witnessing, and the ways in which different kinds of witnesses would use the body as a source of evidence for testimony. While engaging with medico-legal issues including the ambiguous signs of childbirth and the visibility of pain, the article examines their meanings within Counter Reformation social controversies, including control over sexuality, imposition of discipline and the social status of physicians.Author Keywords: Legal medicine; Seventeenth-century Rome; Expert witnesses; Testimony; Body; Zacchia. (shrink)

The articles in the special issue "Experience in natural philosophy and medicine" discuss the roles and notions of experience in the works of a range of early modern authors, including Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, the Dutch atomist David Gorlaeus, William Harvey, and Christian Wolff. The articles extend the evidential basis on which we can rely to identify trends, changes and continuities in the roles and notions of experience in the period of the Scientific Revolution. They shed light on the longstanding (...) influence of traditional views and the emergence of early modern experimental philosophy. This introduction highlights the benefits of considering medicine in connection with natural philosophy when studying early modern views on experience and summarizes the articles. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the natural philosophical method of Geminiano Montanari, one of the most prominent Italian natural philosophers of the late seventeenth century. Montanari’s views are used as a case study to assess recent claims concerning early modern experimental philosophy. Having presented the distinctive tenets of seventeenth-century experimental philosophers, I argue that Montanari adheres to them explicitly, thoroughly, and consistently. The study of Montanari’s views supports three claims. First, experimental philosophy was not an exclusively British phenomenon. Second, in spite of (...) some portrayals of experimental philosophy as an ‘atheoretical’ or ‘purely descriptive’ enterprise, experimental philosophers could consistently endorse a variety of natural philosophical explanations and postulate theoretical entities. Third, experimental philosophy and mechanical philosophy were not, as such, antagonistic. They could be consistently combined in a single philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

This article explores the history of forensic science in terms of ideologies and institutions rather than developing technique. It presents an analytical framework for characterising forensic institutions and practices, past and present. That framework highlights the distinct issues of means of witness, accredited testimony, and the reaching of juridical decisions. The article applies the framework by comparing four forensic ‘formations,’ (or ‘cultures’) which have been prominent at various times and places in the western world from the early modern period onward: (...) these are the central European heritage of the Caroline code, a eugenically-oriented forensic enterprise of late nineteenth-century America, the forensic perspective in nineteenth-century British India, and the representation of forensic certainty in contemporary American popular culture. The article concludes with a critique of what seems an increasingly common expectation: that forensic science evolves independently of legal institutions, and can ultimately displace them. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the particular problems raised by observations of phenomena outside the common course of nature for their validation as knowledge. It examines to what extent the content of the reports and, in particular, their lack of intrinsic plausibility affected the methods used in their authentication and the assessment of testimony at the Royal Society in the first half of the eighteenth century. I show that literary strategies were usually necessary but not sufficient for the validation of (...) these kinds of observations. Next, I discuss why visual representations were especially useful in establishing the singularity of the observations, but I point out that their high costs and other restrictions meant that they were not so widespread. In contrast I show that, for a long period of time, testimony was used in the majority of the reports as the true stamp of authenticity. I note, however, that the Royal Society accepted reports by authors of varied social status, level of education and occupation, and I discuss some of the factors responsible for the complexity of the handling of testimony at the Society. I argue against Shapin that in the case of reports of extraordinary phenomena, the competence of the reporter and witnesses was often more important than their social status. The increasing role of expertise in the assessment of observations at the Society become especially apparent by the middle of the eighteenth century.Author Keywords: Authentication; Competence; Monstrous births; Singular; Testimony; Royal Society of London. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A restricted interpretation of Humean methodology understands his experimentalism solely in terms of reducing epistemic statements to private sensory impressions accessible via introspection. My aim is to revise this interpretation by means of criticizing the connection it establishes between the maxim of not going beyond experience and the copy principle. I will show that this interpretation is inconsistent with the way Hume conceives the experimental method, since there is textual evidence to affirm that experience should not be understood in (...) terms of sensory impressions only, and that the science of human nature is not restricted to the study of the mental contents only, but it is nourished in the same way by the observation of social interaction. Finally, I will argue that the method Hume proposes does not prevent intersubjective verification of the empirical evidence, since the principle of sympathy enables the communication of mental states, which makes them devoid of their private character. (shrink)