This essay aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the relationship between theories of imagination in mechanist embryology and theories of imagination in Late Aristotelian embryology, by examining a Conversation about a monstrous birth that took place in the late 1660s at the Bourdelot Academy. This Conversation, in which the participants debate the Discours touchant les forces de l’imagination by the Protestant physician Pierre de Galatheau, represents a little-known episode in the reception of Descartes’ L’Homme and of La Forge’s Remarques, confirming that embryology is the most difficult chapter of Cartesian medicine.
Rapetti, E., On Cartesian Embryology: A Debate on Monsters at the Bourdelot Academy, in Fabrizio Baldassarr, F. B. (ed.), Descartes and Medicine: Problems, Responses and Survival of a Cartesian Discipline, Brepols, Turnhout 2023: <<THE AGE OF DESCARTES (DESCARTES)>>, 377- 392 [https://hdl.handle.net/10807/229041]
On Cartesian Embryology: A Debate on Monsters at the Bourdelot Academy
Rapetti, Elena
2023
Abstract
This essay aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the relationship between theories of imagination in mechanist embryology and theories of imagination in Late Aristotelian embryology, by examining a Conversation about a monstrous birth that took place in the late 1660s at the Bourdelot Academy. This Conversation, in which the participants debate the Discours touchant les forces de l’imagination by the Protestant physician Pierre de Galatheau, represents a little-known episode in the reception of Descartes’ L’Homme and of La Forge’s Remarques, confirming that embryology is the most difficult chapter of Cartesian medicine.
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