The Sacred, Immortal Soul and Aristotle's "Mistakes" in Comparative Anatomy
Nataliya Shok, Doctor of Historical Science, Professor of the Department of the History of Medicine, National History and Culturology, I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation
The influence of various schools of natural philosophy on the development of a given discipline is of central importance to history of science methodology. For example, the works of Aristotle play an important role in the advent of physics and biology. Aristotle is an observant researcher and describes his approach to learning about the natural world in the following way: “a particular man is a “substance” to no less a degree than a particular bull is”. This methodology leads to the development of experimental methods of inquiry, including comparative anatomy, and represents an important step towards the establishment and understanding of pathology in medicine.
Aristotle, like Empedocles, believed that the source of an organism’s ability to rationally control its spontaneous functions was located not in the brain but in the heart. He rejected Plato’s theory, which located the rational parts of the soul in the brain, speculating instead that the heart was the point of origin of the body’s nerves. Anatomical discoveries of the day revealed the existence of certain entities – the nerves – which were the seat of the intellect and used to control the various parts of the body. Since the time of Alcmaeon it was known that there was a connection (consisting of nerves) between the sensory organs and the brain, a connection which was confirmed in Aristotle’s time by the anatomical discoveries being collected at the Lyceum.
Aristotle was unable to recognize that nerves originate in the brain. One critic of Aristotle’s anatomical position was Galen, who outlined his opposition in his work “On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato”. This purely theological idea had great epistemological significance for the subsequent development of medicine as a science.
Aristotle’s incorrect interpretation of the available anatomical data gathered from observations of the heart was the consequence of the theoretical necessity of locating the center of rational activity in the heart in order to reject Plato’s doctrine of the immortality of the higher, rational parts of the soul located in the brain. Aristotle criticizes Plato. This criticism is necessary for rejecting the doctrine that the world was created in accordance with definite laws and, moreover, for explaining the foundational character of teleological principles in Aristotle’s system.
The inconsistency of his inferences, which were based on an incorrect theoretical framework and a rejection of empirical evidence, lead Aristotle to incorrect conclusions about the anatomical and physiological structure of the human body. This phenomenon raises the issue of shifting the history of medicine’s approach from a “conception of conflict” between science and religion to a “conception of complexity” in their interrelation. The dominant conflict conception has for many years prevented the adoption of a complex approach to the reconstruction of the medical history of antiquity and hampered the effort to arrive at an objective evaluation of the contribution of Aristotle’s ideas to the development of medical knowledge, keeping in mind the continuation of his ideas within Christian civilization.
The influence of various schools of natural philosophy on the development of a given discipline is of central importance to history of science methodology. For example, the works of Aristotle play an important role in the advent of physics and biology. Aristotle is an observant researcher and describes his approach to learning about the natural world in the following way: “a particular man is a “substance” to no less a degree than a particular bull is”. This methodology leads to the development of experimental methods of inquiry, including comparative anatomy, and represents an important step towards the establishment and understanding of pathology in medicine.
Aristotle, like Empedocles, believed that the source of an organism’s ability to rationally control its spontaneous functions was located not in the brain but in the heart. He rejected Plato’s theory, which located the rational parts of the soul in the brain, speculating instead that the heart was the point of origin of the body’s nerves. Anatomical discoveries of the day revealed the existence of certain entities – the nerves – which were the seat of the intellect and used to control the various parts of the body. Since the time of Alcmaeon it was known that there was a connection (consisting of nerves) between the sensory organs and the brain, a connection which was confirmed in Aristotle’s time by the anatomical discoveries being collected at the Lyceum.
Aristotle was unable to recognize that nerves originate in the brain. One critic of Aristotle’s anatomical position was Galen, who outlined his opposition in his work “On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato”. This purely theological idea had great epistemological significance for the subsequent development of medicine as a science.
Aristotle’s incorrect interpretation of the available anatomical data gathered from observations of the heart was the consequence of the theoretical necessity of locating the center of rational activity in the heart in order to reject Plato’s doctrine of the immortality of the higher, rational parts of the soul located in the brain. Aristotle criticizes Plato. This criticism is necessary for rejecting the doctrine that the world was created in accordance with definite laws and, moreover, for explaining the foundational character of teleological principles in Aristotle’s system.
The inconsistency of his inferences, which were based on an incorrect theoretical framework and a rejection of empirical evidence, lead Aristotle to incorrect conclusions about the anatomical and physiological structure of the human body. This phenomenon raises the issue of shifting the history of medicine’s approach from a “conception of conflict” between science and religion to a “conception of complexity” in their interrelation. The dominant conflict conception has for many years prevented the adoption of a complex approach to the reconstruction of the medical history of antiquity and hampered the effort to arrive at an objective evaluation of the contribution of Aristotle’s ideas to the development of medical knowledge, keeping in mind the continuation of his ideas within Christian civilization.