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In this wide-ranging and stimulating book, a leading authority on the history of medicine and science presents convincing evidence that Dutch commerce-not religion-inspired the rise of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harold J. Cook scrutinizes a wealth of historical documents relating to the study of medicine and natural history in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, Brazil, South Africa, and Asia during this era, and his conclusions are fresh and exciting. He uncovers direct links between the rise of trade and commerce in the Dutch Empire and the flourishing of scientific investigation.Cook argues that engaging in commerce changed the thinking of Dutch citizens, leading to a new emphasis on such values as objectivity, accumulation, and description. The preference for accurate information that accompanied the rise of commerce also laid the groundwork for the rise of science globally, wherever the Dutch engaged in trade. Medicine and natural history were fundamental aspects of this new science, as reflected in the development of gardens for both pleasure and botanical study, anatomical theaters, curiosity cabinets, and richly illustrated books about nature. Sweeping in scope and original in its insights, this book revises previous understandings of the history of science and ideas.

Abstract Why did Descartes not publish his chief physiology work during his lifetime? Descartes considered that the physiological and medical conclusions that could be drawn from his philosophy were fundamental to his intellectual project, and an apparently complete work was circulating among friends in 1641 but was only published more than a decade after his death, as De Homine (1662) and Traité de l'Homme (1664). This paper argues that Princess Elisabeth's careful consideration of his physiology raised questions about whether the common interpretation of his philosophy as dualistic was correct, implicating it in some of the most dangerous arguments of his generation. Her questions served as a warning, in a moment when the personal papers and even the liberty of the Frenchman were threatened. Descartes had no interest in becoming a medical Galileo, and listened to the princess, leaving the work unpublished.

The “new philosophy” of the seventeenth century has continued to be explained mainly on its own terms: as a major philosophical turn. Twentieth-century modernism gave pride of place to big ideas and reinforced the tendency to explain the rise of science in light of new ideas. Such orientations subordinated medicine (and technology) to sciences that appeared to be more theoretical. In attempts to persuade historians of science of the importance of medicine, then, many authors took an approach arguing that the major changes in the history of medicine during the so-called scientific revolution arose from philosophical commitments. Yet because medicine is also intimately connected to other aspects of life, its histories proved to be recalcitrant to such reductions and so continue to offer many possibilities for those who seek fresh means to address histories of body and mind united rather than divided.

The history of the body is of course contested territory. Postmodern interpretations in particular have moved it from a history of scientific knowledge of its structure and function toward histories of the various meanings, identities and experiences constructed about it. Underlying such interpretations have been large and important claims about the unfortunate consequences of the rise of a political economy associated with capitalism and medicalisation. In contradistinction, this paper offers a view of that historical process in a manner in keeping with materialism rather than in opposition to it. To do so, it examines a general change in body perceptions common to most of the literature: a shift from the body as a highly individualistic and variable subject to a more universal object, so that alterations in one person's body could be understood to represent how alterations in other human bodies occurred. It then suggests that one of the chief causes of that change was the growing vigour of the market for remedies that could be given to anyone, without discrimination according to temperament, gender, ethnicity, social status or other variables in the belief that they would cure quietly and effectively. One of the most visible remedies of this kind was a ‘specific’, the Peruvian, or Jesuits’ bark. While views about specific drugs were contested, the development of a market for medicinals that worked universally helped to promote the view that human bodies are physiologically alike.

Medicine was one of the chief empirical and philosophical sources for early modern political economy, helping to move analysis from moral to natural philosophy, and Mandeville was educated as a physician. He adopted a materialistic view of the body and passions that could be found at Leiden and a few other places at the time. When he emigrated to London, he also became embroiled in some of the heated political debates about the best kind of medical practice, joining the party that sought new medical methods from the empirical observation of experts like himself, who used their knowledge to intervene in the physical bodies of their patients rather than to persuade them to alter their ways of life. Skilful politicians were like skilful physicians, requiring them to understand the bodily passions. His politics therefore remained concerned with the nature of persons rather than societies.

Pour étudier la «révolution scientifique», l’approche traditionnelle a consisté à rechercher ses causes dans l’histoire des idées. Les travaux d’Alexandre Koyré en sont un exemple saisissant. Malheureusement,ce type d’approche a conduit les historiens des sciences à négliger – voire à éviter consciemment – d’aborder la manière dont les évolutions de la vie matérielle ont affecté les valeurs culturelles,évolutions qui,au début de la période moderne,ont incité les philosophes naturels non plus à rechercher les causes premières,mais à décrire de manière détaillée des «faits bruts». Les activités scientifiques à l’œuvre à Amsterdam montrent clairement de tels changements.Dans un de ses discours,Casparus Barlaeus,l’un des plus grands philosophes hollandais des années 1630, montre que non seulement les activités commerciales et scientifiques se soutiennent l’une l’autre, mais qu’elles proviennent de la même source, à savoir d’une sorte de désir d’explorer le monde. Dans l’univers commercial d’Amsterdam et d’autres villes hollandaises,la quête du Bien est de plus en plus associée à celle des biens matériels;en conséquence,la «philosophie spéculative» est de plus en plus liée à la production, à l’accumulation, et à l’échange d’informations précises, autant d’éléments qui s’érigent en méthodes et en contenus de la philosophie naturelle. Même Descartes fut séduit par cette approche. The most influential approach to studying the so-called scientific revolution has been to seek its causes through a history of ideas.Alexandre Koyré’s work is one of the best examples of that line of inquiry. Unfortunately,such methods have led most historians of science to overlook – or even to consciously avoid – examination of the ways in which changes in material life affected cultural values,which in the early modern period shifted the attention of natural philosophers from seeking out first causes to describing «matters of fact» in precise detail.The kind of scientific activities evident in Amsterdam show such changes clearly.In an oration of one of the best Dutch philosophers of the 1630s,Caspar Barlaeus,the activities of commerce and science were seen not only to support one another but to flow from the same source,a kind of love of investigating the world.In the commercial milieu of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities,the pursuit of «the good» became increasingly associated with «goods»;consequently, «speculative philosophy» became increasingly associated with the production,accumulation,and exchange of accurate information, which changed to methods and content of natural philosophy.Even Descartes was persuaded by the power of this view.