Skip Nav Destination
Close Modal
Update search
NARROW
Format
Journal
TocHeadingTitle
Date
Availability
1-1 of 1
Barnaby R. Hutchins
Close
Follow your search
Access your saved searches in your account
Would you like to receive an alert when new items match your search?
Sort by
Journal Articles
Does Descartes Have a Principle of Life? Hierarchy and Interdependence in Descartes’s Physiology
UnavailablePublisher: Journals Gateway
Perspectives on Science (2016) 24 (6): 744–769.
Published: 01 November 2016
Abstract
View articletitled, Does Descartes Have a Principle of Life? Hierarchy and Interdependence in Descartes’s Physiology
View
PDF
for article titled, Does Descartes Have a Principle of Life? Hierarchy and Interdependence in Descartes’s Physiology
Descartes repeatedly refers to a “principle of life” and appears to make grand claims for its role in his natural philosophy. These claims have been taken at face value in the literature. This paper argues that there is no single principle underlying the operation of the Cartesian body. I show that Descartes’s account of physiology explains the operation of the living body through multiple interdependent systems, with no one system more fundamental than any other. As such, Cartesian physiology is incompatible with a hierarchical conception of a body whose operations are driven by a single underlying principle.