Descartes, Corpuscles and Reductionism: Mechanism and Systems in Descartes' Physiology

Abstract

I argue that Descartes explains physiology in terms of whole systems, and not in terms of the size, shape and motion of tiny corpuscles (corpuscular mechanics). It is a standard, entrenched view that Descartes's proper means of explanation in the natural world is through strict reduction to corpuscular mechanics. This view is bolstered by a handful of corpuscularmechanical explanations in Descartes's physics, which have been taken to be representative of his treatment of all natural phenomena. However, Descartes's explanations of the 'principal parts' of physiology do not follow the corpuscular-mechanical pattern. Des Chene (2001) has identified systems in Descartes's account of physiology, but takes them ultimately to reduce down to the corpuscle level. I argue that they do not. Rather, Descartes maintains entire systems, with components selected from multiple levels of organisation, in order to construct more complete explanations than corpuscular mechanics alone would allow.

Mechanical Philosophy: Science of Mechanics

“…Structural explanations of, for example, physiological features could be coupled with an independent role for the animal soul (Des Chene 2005). They did also often rely on structural features that provided crucial boundary conditions for the behavior to be explained, but that were not in turn reduced to a micro-corpuscular level (see (Hutchins 2015) for Descartes' explanation of the circulation of the blood, which depended on the presence of pores and fibers and assumed the lengthening of the heart). The latter aspect is especially interesting when looked at from the perspective of the science of mechanics, which also depended on certain structural features of machines that needed to be assumed to successfully carry out its explanatory reductive program, such as the presence of inflexible lever-arms that could transmit forces throughout the system.…”

Life as Concept and as Science in Early Modern Thought

“…What we see in this gradual shift from funnels and pulleys to springs and their interaction (and the higher-level properties that result, like health) is, first, a process of complexification, whereby the properties of the living body, mechanistically analyzed, gradually become determined by the properties of the system as a whole (Duchesneau 1982;Hutchins 2015). Granted, just because Ménuret first uses mechanistic language and then moves upward, as it were, to health doesn't mean that all 11 Fontenelle (1730, p. 16).…”

Life as Concept and as Science in Early Modern Thought

“…What we see in this gradual shift from funnels and pulleys to springs and their interaction (and the higherlevel properties that result, like health) is, first, a process of complexification, whereby the properties of the living body, mechanistically analyzed, gradually become determined by the properties of the system as a whole (Duchesneau 1982, Hutchins 2015. Granted, just because Ménuret first uses mechanistic language and then moves upwards, as it were, to health doesn't mean that all such levels merge in a night in which all cows are grey.…”