Abstract
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 radical materialist. I chart the ways that they understood and explained epigenesis, given their differences in philosophy and ontology. I argue for the importance of ideas of harmony and order in structuring their accounts of generation as a rational process. I link their experiences during the English Civil war to how they see nature as a possible source for the rationality and concord sorely missing in human affairs.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
While all of these terms are actors’ categories at one point or another, I here use them as historians’ categories to help organize the plethora of positions we find on issues of generation throughout the early modern period. I purposefully avoid the term “vitalism” because I think it’s a misleading category when applied to pre-Stahlian ideas, though I don’t have space to argue for this conclusion.
As Smith notes, Leibniz makes some telling remarks to DeVolder in 1703: “No primitive entelechy whatsoever can ever arise or be destroyed naturally, and no entelechy ever lacks an organic body. As far as my consideration of these matters goes, these things could not be otherwise; they are not derived from our ignorance of the formation of fetuses, but from higher principles” (cited in Smith 2006b, 12).
Others might label this “vitalism,” but, again, I find this to be a misleading term here. In particular, ‘vitalism’ does not adequately distinguish the distinct positions of Aristotelians and Platonists/Galenists on the need for supernatural spirits, as both groups affirmed the importance of vital matter (and heat).
These positions are in no way meant to be exhaustive.
The Glorious Revolution did not, of course, end all turbulence, and Jacobite uprisings continued until the 1740s.
Rogers uses the term “vital” matter, but I think “active” is a less contentious and more accurate way of categorizing these theories.
While Harvey’s experimentalism soon becomes an orthodox position that Cavendish herself argued against in her Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, Cavendish’s ideas did not come to be nearly so quickly accepted. Her ideas were similar to those of some of the Cambridge Platonists, such as Henry More, who emphasized the importance of self-activity and motion in understanding especially living things. Of course, More was deeply concerned with immaterial substances, something explicitly rejected by Cavendish, who, indeed, spent a good deal of time specifically arguing against More’s doctrines. On Harvey’s experimentalism and its influence, see Frank (1980). On Cavendish and More, see Hutton (2003).
I here quote and translate from the 1552 Venice Aristotle-Averroes edition which Harvey is known to have used. “Est autem anima viventis corporis causa and principium…anima secundum determinatos tres modos causa dicitur: etenim unde motus causa est and cuius causa and sicut substantia animatorum corporum anima causa.” Or as Averroes wrote, “…the soul is a cause according to the three determined senses: it is the moving cause, it is the final cause, and it is the formal cause” (Averroes commentary in Aristotle 1552a, De Anima Lib. II, Cap. III, 68v). “…anima est causa secundum tres modos determinatos, scilicet causa movens, finalis, and formalis…”
Whitteridge’s (1981) translation of Harvey’s De generatione translates ratio as “concept,” and while this term is suggestive, I hope to steer a somewhat safer course by sticking with the less objectionable “definition” or “reason.”
…neque omnes ejus partes simul fabricari, sed successive, atque ordine emergere; eundemque simul, dum augetur, formari; and augeri, dum formatur; partesque alias aliis prioribus supergenerari and distingui…Facultas enim pulli formatrix materiam potius sibi acquirit, and parat; quam paratam invenit: videturque pullus haud ab alio fieri, vel augeri, quam a se ipso. Et quemadmodum omnia, ex quo fiunt, ab eodem augentur: it similiter a quo pullus conservatur, and augetur ab initio (sive id anima, sive facultas animae fuerit) ab eodem quoque…eum fieri credibile est. Idem enim reperitur tum in ovo, tum in pullo, efficiens, ac conservans; and ex qua materia primam pulli particulam constituit, ex eadem nutrit, auget, and superaddit reliquas omnes.
“…facultatem vegetativam, sive eam animae partem, quae hominem fabricat, and conservat, multo excellentiorem, and diviniorem esse, magisque similitudinem Dei referre, quam partem ejus rationalem; cujus tamen excellentiam miris laudiibus supra omnes omnium animalium facultates extollimus; tanquam quae ius and imperium in illas obtineat, cuique cuncta creata famulentur. Vel saltem fatendum est, in naturae operibus, nec prudentiam, nec artificium, neque intellectum inesse: sed ita solum videri conceptui nostro, qui secundum artes nostras and facultates…de rebus naturae divinis judicamus….”
I note that a good deal of the empirical work and writing for Harvey’s De generatione was done earlier, some as early as perhaps the 1620s, the majority being performed in the 1630 and 1640s. For more detail, see Keynes (1966).
Peter Anstey and his group have been developing a new categorization of early modern philosophy, one that replaces “rationalist” and “empiricist” with “speculative” and “experimental.” Anstey has argued that Cavendish fits quite well into the ‘speculative’ category, for which see Anstey (2014). I thank Kirsten Walsh for this reference.
Also see one of her (many) prefaces to her 1666, the one entitled “An Argumental Discourse,” where she writes, “…other-wise the creatures which Nature produces, would all be produced alike, and in an instant; for example, a Child in the Womb would as suddenly be framed, as it is figured in the mind; and a man would be as sud-denly dissolved as a thought: But sense and reason per-ceives that it is otherwise; to wit, that such figures as are made of the grosser parts of Matter, are made by de-grees, and not in an instant of time…” (no pagination).
I quote here from Whitteridge’s translation (Harvey 1981). There are numerous possibilities for interpretation here, and Harvey describes several, including hearts as generals, brains as kings, and so on: 147–153. This is a pretty standard trope, found not just in medical authors, but also in the work of Francis Bacon (for which point I thank an anonymous reviewer).
…supra vires elementorum agit…reliquas totius corporis partes ordine fabricat; idqua summa cum providentia and intellectu, in finem certum agens, quasi ratiocinio quedam uteretur.
It’s important to note here that Cavendish needed rational matter not just to explain living things, but, in fact, to explain any cause whatsoever. See Detlefsen (2007, 188).
Hill (1964). See also Thomson (2008): “The most common form of seventeenth-century Christian mortalism claimed that the whole individual died and was insensible until the resurrection and judgement, when the whole individual would be resuscitated and enter on eternal life. There was no continuation of an immaterial part of the individual, no feeling, thought, or suffering before the final general resurrection” (42). See also: Pagel (1967, 136ff.), and Wolfe and van Esveld (2014).
References
Anstey, P. (2014). Margaret Cavendish: Speculative philosopher. Early Modern Experimental Philosophy. https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/2014/03/margaret-cavendish-speculative-philosopher/. Accessed September 2016.
Aristotle. (1552a). De anima. In Aristotelis libri omnes…cum Averrois Cordubensis variis in eosdem commentariis, Vol. 11. Venice.
Aristotle. (1552b). Meteorologicorum, In Aristotelis libri omnes…cum Averrois Cordubensis variis in eosdem commentariis, Vol. 5. Venice.
Aristotle. (1552c). Topicorum translatio Abrami. In Aristotelis libri omnes…cum Averrois Cordubensis variis in eosdem commentariis, Vol. 1. Venice.
Battigelli, A. (1998). Margaret Cavendish and the exiles of the mind. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.
Boyle, D. (2013). Margaret Cavendish on gender, nature, and freedom. Hypatia, 28(3), 516–532.
Broad, J. (2002). Women philosophers of the seventeenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cavendish, M. (1664). Philosophical letters. London.
Cavendish, M. (1666 [2001]). In E. O’Neill (Ed.), Observations upon experimental philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cavendish, M. (1668). Grounds of natural philosophy. London.
Cheung, T. (2008). Res Vivens: Agentenmodelle organischer Ordnung, 1600–1800. Freiburg: Rombach.
Detlefsen, K. (2007). Reason and freedom Margaret Cavendish on the order and disorder of nature. Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie, 89, 157–191.
Duchesneau, F. (1997). Les modèles des vivants de Descartes à Leibniz. Paris: J. Vrin.
Ekholm, K. (2008). Harvey’s and Highmore’s accounts of chick generation. Early Science and Medicine, 13(6), 568–614.
Frank, R. (1980). Harvey and the Oxford physiologists. Berkeley: University of California Press.
French, R. (1994). William Harvey’s natural philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goldberg, B. (2012). William Harvey, soul searcher: Teleology and philosophical anatomy. PhD Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
Goldberg, B. (2013). A dark business, full of shadows: analogy and theology in William Harvey. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(3), 419–432.
Gregory, A. (2001). Harvey, Aristotle and the weather cycle. Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 32(1), 153–168.
Harvey, W. (1627 [1959]). De motu locali animalium (G. Whitteridge, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
Harvey, W. (1628). Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus. Frankfurt: Guilielmi Fitzeri.
Harvey, W. (1649). Exercitatio de circulatione sanguinis. Rotterdam: Arnoldi Leers.
Harvey, W. (1651). Exercitationes de generatione animalium. London: Du-Gardianis.
Harvey, W. (1981). Gweneth Whitteridge (Trans.), Disputations touching the generation of animals. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.
Henry, J. (1986). A Cambridge Platonist’s Materialism: Henry More and the concept of soul. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49, 172–195.
Hill, C. (1964). William Harvey and the idea of monarchy. Past & Present, 27, 54–72.
Hirai, H. (2005). Alter Galenus: Jean Fernel et son interprétation platonico-chrétienne de Galien. Early Science and Medicine, 10, 1–35.
Hirai, H. (2007). The invisible hand of God in seeds: Jacob Schegk’s theory of plastic faculty. Early Science and Medicine, 12, 377–404.
Hirai, H. (2011). Medical humanism and natural philosophy: Renaissance debates on matter, life and the soul (Vol. 26). Leiden: Brill.
Hutton, S. (1997). In dialogue with Thomas Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish’s natural philosophy. Women’s Writing, 4, 421–432.
Hutton, S. (2003). Margaret Cavendish and Henry More. In S. Clucas (Ed.), A princely brave woman: Essays on Margaret Cavendish (pp. 185–194). London: Ashgate.
James, S. (1999). The philosophical innovations of Margaret Cavendish. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 7, 219–244.
Keller, E. (1998). Making up for losses: The workings of gender in William Harvey’s De generatione animalium. Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 27(2), 131–162.
Keynes, G. (1966). The life of William Harvey. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lennox, J. (2006). The comparative study of animal development: William Harvey’s Aristotelianism. In J. E. H. Smith (Ed.), The problem of animal generation in early modern philosophy (pp. 21–46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, E. (2001). The legacy of Margaret Cavendish. Perspectives on Science, 9, 341–365.
McGuire, M. A. (1978). Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, on the nature and status of women. International Journal of Women’s Studies, 1, 193–206.
More, H. (1662). A collection of several philosophical writings of Dr Henry More. Cambridge: W. Morden.
Müller-Wille, S., & Rheinberger, H.-J. (2012). A cultural history of heredity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
O’Neill, E. (1998). Disappearing ink: Early modern women philosophers and their fate in history. In J. A. Kourany (Ed.), Philosophy in a feminist voice (pp. 17–62). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pagel, W. (1967). William Harvey’s biological ideas. Basel: S Karger.
Pagel, W. (1976). New light on William Harvey. Basel: S. Karger.
Park, K. (1988). The organic soul. In C. B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler, & J. Kraye (Eds.), The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pomata, G. (2005). Praxis historialis: The uses of historia in early modern medicine. In G. Pomata & N. G. Siraisi (Eds.), Historia: Empiricism and erudition in early modern Europe (pp. 105–137). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Rees, E. (2003). Margaret Cavendish: Gender, genre, exile. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Reid, J. (2012). The metaphysics of Henry More. Dordrecht: Springer.
Richardson, L. (1980). Academic theories of generation in the Renaissance: The contemporaries and successors of Jean Fernel. PhD Dissertation, The Warburg Institute.
Roger, J. (1963). Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle. Paris: A. Colin.
Rogers, J. (1998). The matter of revolution: Science, poetry, and politics in the age of Milton. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Sarasohn, L. T. (1984). A science turned upside down: Feminism and the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish. The Huntington Library Quarterly, 47(4), 289–307.
Sarasohn, L. T. (2010). The natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish: Reason and fancy during the scientific revolution. Baltimore: JHU Press.
Schaffer, S., & Shapin, S. (1985). Leviathan and the air pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Schrader, J. (1674). Observationes et Historiae. Amsterdam: Abrahami Wolfgang.
Shapin, S. (1996). The scientific revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sheppard, K. (2015). Anti-atheism in early modern England: 1580–1720. Leiden: Brill.
Smith, J. E. H. (Ed.). (2006a). The problem of animal generation in early modern philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, J. E. H. (2006b). Introduction. In J. E. H. Smith (Ed.), The problem of animal generation in early modern philosophy (pp. 1–18). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, J. E. H. (2006c). Imagination and the problem of heredity in mechanist embryology (pp. 80–99). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, J. E. H. (2011). Divine machines: Leibniz and the sciences of life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Thomson, A. (2008). Bodies of thought: Science, religion, and the soul in the early enlightenment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walters, L. (2014). Margaret Cavendish: Gender, science and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whitteridge, G. (1965). William Harvey: A royalist and no parliamentarian. Past & Present, 30, 104–109.
Whitteridge, G. (1981). Introduction. In W. Harvey (Auth.), Disputations touching the generation of animals (pp. xix–lxvi). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.
Wolfe, C., & van Esveld, M. (2014). The material soul: Strategies for naturalising the soul in an early modern Epicurean context. In D. Kambaskovic (Ed.), Conjunctions of mind, soul and body from Plato to the Enlightenment (pp. 371–421). Dordrecht: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Goldberg, B. Epigenesis and the rationality of nature in William Harvey and Margaret Cavendish. HPLS 39, 8 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-017-0134-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-017-0134-5