Descartes' Discours de la Méthode: Cinquième Partie
- Created by: CaraPW
- Created on: 18-04-21 17:24
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- Descartes ddlm Part 5
- The Church and censorship
- doesn’t want to reveal all of the results of his method to escape controversy and church censorship
- For the sake of caution, he describes matter by evoking a new world as not to clash with the Genesis account and does so without resorting to scholastic concepts – substantial forms and real qualities
- He re-iterates that he doesn’t question religious dogma
- Attaches his theory to continued creation, with God acting constantly to preserve the world
- Humans as automatons
- He thinks we’re very sophisticated automatons
- We can always distinguish between a man and automaton that look the same because a machine is incapable of adapting to its environment perfectly like a human
- man is endowed with reason, which is apparent when he expresses himself by both speech and signs
- Humans compared to animals
- Some animals are better than humans at performing certain actions, but this doesn’t mean they have spirits
- Animal is comparable to the machine
- Equivalence of man and animal is simply impossible to Descartes, otherwise nothing would happen after death to the human immortal soul
- Their functioning is only determined because they respond to stimuli – they have neither soul nor reason
- The heart
- Says that William Harvey (who discovered blood circulation) was wrong to imagine that the contraction of the heart was the cause of blood flow
- After dissecting hearts for about ten years, he has come up with the theory that the mechanical function of the heart is like that of a clock
- Believes that the heat of the heart is the unique principal of all biological functions
- He thinks it is the work of 'animal spirits' in the blood. They pass from the heart to the brain through the carotids and they circulate through the nerves to the muscles to cause movements by swelling them by accumulation and compelling them to contract
- The Church and censorship
- The heart
- Says that William Harvey (who discovered blood circulation) was wrong to imagine that the contraction of the heart was the cause of blood flow
- After dissecting hearts for about ten years, he has come up with the theory that the mechanical function of the heart is like that of a clock
- Believes that the heat of the heart is the unique principal of all biological functions
- He thinks it is the work of 'animal spirits' in the blood. They pass from the heart to the brain through the carotids and they circulate through the nerves to the muscles to cause movements by swelling them by accumulation and compelling them to contract
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