Journal of the History of Philosophy

312 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY He discovered no new facts and taught with conviction many errors. After all he was a rationalist" (p. lOO, my italics). Evidently, implicit faith in scientific knowledge by accretion and some sort of crude empiricism is still cultivated in spite of the Kuhns, Lakatoses, Laudans, and Feyerabends, not to mention orthodox Popperians. 2 Descartes stands condemned of taking that old "high priori road"--after all, he was a rationalist. Nor is Lindeboom appeased by Descartes's efforts to establish his credentials as an anatomist. A "professional" would never dispute the evidence of systolic contraction, but then Descartes, we are told, was not really a "scientist"; he was a philosopher, and a rationalist to boot. Were he not thus misguided, the facts no doubt would have spoken eloquently and irresistably for themselves. But what of the role of medicine in an integrated Cartesian research program? Did Descartes seek to establish the principles of rational medicine as he did those of "rational mechanics"? What is the difference between conceptual--that is to say, methodological, ontological , and world-view suppositions--and more narrowly empirical issues in Descartes's program for natural philosophy? Of these factors we get no inkling in Lindeboom's pages, as indeed we get little encouragement for bothering with Descartes's medical views at all. As painful as it is, I am obligated to note that the text is flawed by inconsistencies in translation, uneveness in style and syntax, and also typographical errors. Exactly why the author elected to append L. A. Post's translation (1916) of the DescartesPlempius correspondence (pp. to4-92 ) is not clear to me, especially since Lindeboom himself pays only cursory attention to it in his text and forgoes the opportunity to annotate it in the appendix. From the impressive list of publications by the author listed in his own bibliography, I am inclined to think that this most recent effort has suffered rather severely in expansion. It does not work as a book. HOWARD R. BERNSTEIN Wesleyan University Merle Curti. Human Nature in American Thought: A History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 198o. Pp. xvii + 453- $25 .oo. This is an excellent analysis of an important, difficult theme, with expert information and interpretation. The first half is devoted to American history during its early development, when the term "human nature" was used casually in general literature with no precise meaning; it was a term of reference, not an "idea" in the technical Larry Laudan, for one, speaks of the "acknowledged failure" of logical empiricism to deal with the historical aspects of scientific rationality and growth in Progressand its Problems(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977) p. 3. Harold I. Brown examines the paradigm shift to the "new philosophy of science" in Perception,Theoryand Commitment(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977). No doubt, Lindeboom's apparent disregard of recent philosophy of science is not unique. Actually, Lindeboom's historiographical posture is Sartonesque, which to my mind can no longer be regarded as a compliment. BOOK kWVlWWS 313 sense, which it became later for the natural and social sciences. The second half tells the history of the generation of a basic science of human nature used as a critical idea. Since much of American philosophical literature of historical importance is treated in the first half, I shall confine most of my review to that part. This story takes us back to the Puritans of Plymouth who, fleeing from a corrupt culture, believed that human nature had become so corrupt that man became entirely dependent on his Creator for escape from his "human nature." But Curti points out that as other types of Puritans arrived from England (instead of from the refuge in Holland) they began to assert more confidence in human nature. The bombastic Magnaliaof Cotton Mather, for instance, relies to a considerable extent on the "human nature" of Puritans. The Southern settlers, too, to whom Curti refers briefly, had different experiences and different conceptions of "human nature." An important figure in the history of New England was Jonathan Edwards, and Curti presents his ideas about human nature in some detail. But he omits the later parts of...