Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2024

Nutrition et circulation aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles : de l’analogie à la loi, d’une faculté végétale à une force plastique, puis élastique

Résumé

The category of vegetative life is used structurally and continuously by medicine to characterise the fundamental phenomenon of life, but its reference and meaning have changed historically. From Antiquity to Renaissance medicine, vegetative life initially concerned the embryo and nutrition; after Harvey’s discovery of blood circulation (1628), it moved into the field of circulation, now thought of as a fundamental function common to plants and humans. How and why did the nutritional approach migrate towards the circulatory approach between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Three physicians, Vesalius (1543), Harvey (1650) and Malpighi (1671), can shed light on the evolution of the vegetative system in man as a characteristic of a style of medical thought. Even if the content and epistemic context evolve, the category of the vegetative draws a fundamental continuity in the need to mobilise plants in order to know and understand human life. However, by importing the analogy between the vegetative and the human into a nature governed by laws and into an “elastic” conception of life as a force, Malpighi now conceives of circulation as a characteristic law of the living, and thus transforms the meaning of the analogy. Circulation brings plants and all living things within the regime of the laws of nature, which structures all science modelled on mechanics.
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Dates et versions

hal-04916820 , version 1 (28-01-2025)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04916820 , version 1

Citer

Sarah Carvallo. Nutrition et circulation aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles : de l’analogie à la loi, d’une faculté végétale à une force plastique, puis élastique. Arnaud Macé, Sarah Carvallo. L’humain et le végétal: Processus et formes de vie partagés, Presses universitaires de Franche Comté, pp.133-174., 2024, 2385491052. ⟨hal-04916820⟩
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