Rene Descartes, Perception, 1633

Perception of arrow and apple. Descartes originally planned to publish De homine (L'homme et un traitte, Treatise of Man) in 1633, but hearing of GalileoE??s condemnation by the Church, he became concerned for his own safety and refused to have it printed. The first edition of this work appeared 12 years after his death. Descartes visited butcher shops to study specific animal organs, and practiced dissection and vivisection to explore the workings of major organ systems. In the 1630s, he assisted in the dissection of human cadavers to explore how bodies, animal and human, work. Descartes gives detailed descriptions of the nervous system and its interactions with the muscles to create movement in response to stimulus. Though we now know that many of these details are wrong, the idea of the body as a kind of animal machine that functions according to physical laws was an immense advance over the previous scholastic notions based on Aristotle. Treatise of Man was finally published in 1662, 12 years after he died. Rene Descartes (March 31, 1596 - February 11, 1650) was a French mathematician, philosopher and physiologist

Picture No

12696453

Media ID

47670637

Size

4500px x 3100px (1.5MB)

Credit

Science Source/Mary Evans