Medicine and Philosophy: the longue durée of the humoral theory
Evelina Miteva / Martin Lenz
Why do we think, feel or interact the way we do? Historians of philosophy often study such questions in relation to metaphysical, physical or psychological theories. Accordingly, human behaviour is taken to have been conceptualised mainly in reference to talk about essential or general physical and psychological dispositions. However, in recent years this picture has undergone crucial changes: lurking in the background of explanatory models are medical assumptions whose exposition often sheds new light on ancient, medieval and modern debates. To what extent, for example, are theories of imagination driven by medical considerations? Did Albert the Great’s account of melancholy shape the Renaissance debates of creative genius? Should Hume’s account of scepticism be understood in the light of humoral theory? The scholastic controversies inter medicos et philosophos should not just be seen as a debate between two separate camps, but rather as a point of mutual influence. It is precisely the interaction between the two disciplines that we wish to shed light on. Focusing on humoral theory in philosophical explanations, this workshop aims at stimulating exchange between historians of philosophy and experts in natural philosophy whose work often speaks more to one another than meets the eye.
Introduction and questions for the round table
We are lucky to have groups of experts working in different periods. On the one hand, it would be helpful to get an idea about the evolution of issuesrelating to humoral theory. On the other hand, we’d like to see how we can learn more about the hidden aspects that shape the discoursesand debates in philosophy and medicine as well as related fields respectively. Our experience is that our research often speaks, unbeknownst to us, to the questions of other researchers. In the case of medicine, this is no accident. In fact, it is Evelina’s and my hypothesis that medical theories shape and inform theoretical turns taken by philosophers. Let us look at a simple example: While we might think of scepticism as a philosophical stance or idea that relates to epistemology, Hume and others can be shown to see this as a state related to physiological, i.e. humoral, dispositions. For a long time, historians have taken such talk to be owing metaphorical conventions: So when Hume speaks of the “contagion of opinion” he might just mean that certain ideas travel quickly. But what if he really thinks that the mechanism by which opinions spread is the same as the mechanism by which diseases spread? This would require us to rethink the way we read such expressions and devote careful study to the medical theories in the background.
To facilitate the discussion, we would like to ask you to consider the following questions throughout our workshop.
- Are there common aspects, problems, terms or questions that inform the debates in your area? Are there surprises? If yes, what are they and what made you overlook them earlier?
- Are there well-known issues in philosophy / medicine that you think could be illuminated by our joint approach?
- Is there any specific lacuna that you would expect to be addressed by further research?
- Do you have ideas for specific collaborations / projects?
Medicine and Philosophy – Abstracts
Marilena Panarelli (Salento)
How to be a scientist while tasting. The role of sapor in the investigation of medicaments
During the Middle Ages the doctrine of humors became more embedded in the medical system and in the investigation of nature in general, as some other theoretical arrangements, like that of the doctrine of flavours, were strictly connected to it. Although the categorization of flavours was first attempted during the Antiquity by Aristotle and Galen, it was completely arranged in the field of Arabic medicine. In order to inspect how the doctrine of flavours developed, some significant texts will be taken into account, like Isaac Israeli’s De diaetis universalibusand Avicenna’s Canon, which are both sources of Albert the Great’s De vegetabilibus, on which the analysis of this paper will focus primarily. In these texts, flavours are not dealt with as just simple sensible perceptions, but as signs of the temperament, that is the complexio of the object to which they refer. In this respect, it is possible to state that flavours became an epistemological instrument for medical research. The case of Albert the Great’s De vegetabilibus is then peculiar, because he explicitly connects the term saporwith the term experimentum:flavour is namely the only way to have an experimentum of plants and their virtues, or better, according to AlbertSapor est quod certissimum dat experimentum: it is actually the most certain way to know which kind of medicinal properties a plant has.
Evelina Miteva (Cluj-Napoca)
Natural Philosophy between Medicine and Metaphysics? Albertus Magnus’ System of Sciences
In his famous prologue to his Physics commentary, Albert sketches his plan to comment on all of Aristotle’s works for the benefit of his Dominican confreres and the Latin-speaking scholars. In the completion of this plan Albert however is not simply following Aristotle’s steps, but amends the Aristotelian corpus by treatises of his own on those topics that were not covered by the Philosopher, or in the cases in which the pertinent works were not any more available at his time. The works that Albert wrote to “complement” Aristotle happened to be some of his most copied and transmitted texts, e.g., De vegetabilibus, De nutrimento et nutrito, De intellectu et intelligibili. By supplementing the Aristotelian corpus, Albert was envisages to establish a system of sciences. A particular attention in this system is paid to the branch of natural philosophy.
Natural philosophy comprises, in Albert’s view, such a vast field of knowledge – from extensive and detailed descriptions of animal species, or human embryonic development, to the natural perfection of the intellect and nothing less than the status of the soul after death – that Albert saw it necessary to ponder on the task of the natural philosopher. He sought to distinguish the discipline of natural philosophy from its practical counterpart, the medicine, and from its theoretical pinnacle, the metaphysics. Confronted with the difficulties to account for the principles of a living being, as well as for the concrete manifestations of all living beings within one discipline, Albert is pressed to reflect on the definition of natural philosophy. His effort on a definition, as well as his extensive discussions on naturalistic topics, established natural philosophy as a science of the living being.
In this presentation, I would look into the text passages, which focus on the definition on “natural philosophy” and the task of “natural philosopher”. I am aiming at an exhaustive diachronic view on the formation of the notion and the emancipation of the discipline within a system of sciences within Albert’s works.
Mario Loconsole (Salento)
Alchimicorum periti operantur sicut periti medicorum: The Influence of medical Sources in Albert the Great’s Account on Alchemy
Purpose of the present study is to show how Albert the Great’s account on alchemy is highly dependent on medical sources: only in this way he was able to integrate the phenomenon of transmutation in his view on nature. Albert the Great’s De mineralibusis one of the first Latin Medieval texts in which Arabic theories on alchemy are considered and organically questioned. His idea of alchemical science ‒ conceived as the pure art of transmutation of metals ‒ was highly in debt with Avicenna’s De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum, a section of the Kitab Al-Shifaʾ translated by Alfred of Sareshel, and at the same time grounded in the principles of Aristotle’s Meteorologica IV. Nevertheless, as it is frequent in Albert’s works, his philosophical thought intersects the medical tradition creating a blend which is one of the most peculiar features of the Dominican master’s account on natural phenomena. Hence the theory of humoresand the idea of complexiobecome key concepts of Albert’s report on alchemy, in which transmuting a substance is conceived first of all as the art of purifying and balancing the elements. Thus, it becomes clear why he so often compares medicine and agriculture to alchemy: these arts share the same principles and operate imitating nature and dealing in the same way with celestial influxes and elemental powers. In this context the boundaries between living and non-living beings blur: sulphur is hot and operates like the sperm of the father as formal principle, quicksilver is cold and acts like the mother as material principle and minerals share the same features of the generation of animals.
Michele Meroni (Milan / Munich)
“Probatur per suppositionem naturalium et medicorum”: the role of spirit theory in Albert the Great’s De homine and Aristotelian paraphrases.
In his Aristotelian paraphrases, Albert the Great (1200-1280) displays an extensive knowledge of medical learning for the purpose of explaining the most diverse actions attributed to the soul bodily powers (vegetative and sensitive). In this context, the galenic theory of pneuma (spiritus), mostly vehiculated via the works of the Arabic philosophical and medical tradition translated into Latin, plays an important role. How are then we to understand the importance of such theory within Albert’s epistemological framework of natural sciences? What is the nature of medicine and its relation to natural philosophy? What is the philosophical framework that justifies the employment of medical learning? In order to answer such questions, it will be necessary to turn to Albert’s theory of the faculties of the soul, heavily influenced by Boethius and Avicenna. The philosophical framework of the faculty theory justifies the employment of the spirit theory already in Albert’s earlier De homine (1242) and – partially – De IV coaequaevis (1242-1245), where the most basic tenets of spirit theory can be found. Unlike the consistent philosophical framework of faculty theory, the nature of medicine as both a mechanical art and a part of natural philosophy can be traced only in some passages from the Aristotelian paraphrases, which make the relation between the two disciplines explicit, as opposed to the very implicit passages in Albert’s earlier works where the epistemological similarity between medicine and natural philosophy and its nature of mechanical art can only be inferred.
Vlad Ile (Cluj-Napoca)
“Mirum est si intellectus noster omnem scientiam accipiens ex phantasmate”. Transcending natural philosophy or disregarding metaphysics? Albert the Great on humors, reason and intellect
Albert`s so called “anthropology” is putting the human being on the top of a hierarchy of living things in virtue of a unique feature – i.e. the possession of the intellect – that offers the possibility to transcend the changing realm of nature and to rise its possessor to the dignity of his creator. Although, scholars have argued by Albert`s use of the doctrine of intellectus adeptusfor the independence of the human intellect from matter and consequently from the body and senses, his works of natural philosophy seem to give us a different perspective. In De animalibus, mediating between Aristotle`s cardiocentric and Galen`s cerebrocentric theories of what we can call today “psychological“ activities of the soul, both assimilated through the Arabic tradition, Albert is considering the brain as the divine member of the body responsible for the operations of sensation and, to a certain degree, of intellection. Such being the case, the entire humoral activity of the human body has a direct influence on the activity of the intellect, in spite of its divine and transcendent nature. Accordingly, the main purpose of my study is to point out how the classical humoral theory is integrated by Albert the Great in some of his works of natural philosophy for an explanation of the intellect in the framework of his human psychology. First, according to Albert`s division of sciences, we will show if a natural explanation of the activity of the intellect is possible without resorting to a metaphysical explanation. Then, we will argue from various examples how and to what extent different affections of the brain could condition the function of the intellectual activity.
Henryk Anzulewicz (Bonn)
Albert the Great on Natural Dispositions of the Human Ability for Scientific Investigation
Albert the Great identifies the ability for scientific investigation as theanthropological difference, situating it innately in the human faculty of the intellect. Moreover, more particular conditions, such as the psychophysiological constitution, and the climates and natural spaces in which humans reside, co-determine their abilities for scientific investigation on an individual level. Indeed, Albert reflects upon the interplay between cosmological, climatological and geographical conditions and the human psychophysiological qualities, their intellectual capabilities, and their natural desire to know. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Albert provides detailed natural explanations of the individual human abilities for knowing, and attributes particular dispositions for different types of knowledge to psychophysiological characteristics. In my paper, I will outline development of Albert’s view and pay special attention to the increasing differentiations of his systematic reflections. I will emphasise how Albert combines philosophical with medical knowledge in an increasingly way in order to do justice to the individuality of humans as well as of their specific nature.
Chiara Beneduce (Rome)
Humoral Theory in John Buridan’s Natural Philosophy
This paper shows some relevant traits of the humoral theory as employed by John Buridan († 1361 ca.) in his works on natural philosophy. The focus will be especially on Buridan’s use of the concept of “complexion” as connected to the theory of humors in his commentaries on Aristotle’s Parva naturaliaand on pseudo-Albert the Great’s De secretis mulierum. Buridan’s intensive application of the humoral theory to core bio-medical topics such as health and illness, life expectancy, and women’s physiology will ultimately emerge, towards an acknowledgment of Buridan’s acquaintance to the medical tradition in the shaping of his natural philosophy.
Gabriella Zuccolin (Pavia)
Keynote Lecture: Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Complexion
The medical theory of complexio was not confined to the restricted field of medicine during the Middle Ages: it conveyed a precise anthropology, in which not only the health of the human being comes into play, but, within certain limits, its very nature, or rather the way in which this specific nature manifests in a variety of individual dispositions. What each individual is, ultimately depends on her/hiscomplexio. This peculiar medical anthropology crosses disciplinary boundaries and enters the strictly theological field, through a series of sometimes unpredictable implications that affect the place of human beings in the Universe, eschatology, demonology and even Christology. My contribution will try to give an account of some of these aspects with respect to Thomas Aquinas. The different places in which Thomas dwells on the theme of bodily complexio, and considers its different implications in both the intellectual and moral field, show a kind of assimilation of medical anthropology (indirectly through Galen, but mainly through Avicenna) within his own horizon of thought, constituted by Aristotle’s natural philosophy and Aquinas own theological requirements.
Laura Cesco-Frare (Salerno)
Girolamo Cardano on Black Bile and its Role in Prophecy and Mental Illness
In the lively debate among Renaissance thinkers on the power of imagination and its role in the visions and rites performed by witches, Girolamo Cardano (1501 – 1576) presents a very peculiar interpretation.
Being both a philosopher and a physician, he gives credit to the humoral theory which considered witches as affected by a mental illness, a disequilibrium of black bile that caused in turn a dysfunction in the imaginative power; however, given his cosmological convictions, he points out its function in the prophetic process. Black bile works like a mirror, which can reflect or distort the images that from the nerves arrive to the internal wits and are collected in the imagination. While Cardano’s definition of imagination fails to be constantly congruent, the Hippocratic and, above all, Galenic influences on his works are strong and evident: humoral theory is the medical structure on which Cardano develops his philosophical opinions, so that prophetical visions happen only in determined physical and humoral state. Due to the different input that comes from the outer world during sleep, visions or delusions often occur as dreams and they depend on alimentation, social life and equilibrium of humours.
Focusing on his encyclopaedic works (the De subtilitate and the De rerum varietate), this intervention aims to highlight how Cardano contributed to the debate on imagination proposing a thesis that balances both medicine and philosophy, fusing the humoral theory with a cosmological structure derived from Neoplatonism and an Aristotelian (and Avicennian) organization of the inner wits and of the process of perception.
Doina-Cristina Rusu (Groningen)
Humours, Spirits and Forms. Explaining Physiological Processes in the Early Modern Period
In a recent article, Sergius Kodera claimed that the discovery of the distilling apparatus in the late middle ages provided an empirical model for the physiological process of the formation of spirits in human body, and as a result, the concept of spirit “eclipsed the importance accorded to the traditional four bodily humours” (Kodera, 2012, p. 41). In this paper I want to challenge this hypothesis by analysing on the one hand the processes involved in the formation of spirits and humours, and on the other the physiological processes explained by making appeal to spirits or humours. I will claim that for most authors, the model for the formation of spirits were evaporation and rarefaction. The cooling device, which constituted the innovation of the distilling apparatus, was able to turn the vapours back into liquid, but since spirits were rarefied matter, the alcohol resulted was more associate with humours than with spirit. This means that the spirits “eclipsed” the humours not because of this new technique of cooling alcohol (or spirit of wine), but because several authors trying to explain physiological phenomena considered the spirits to have more explanatory power than the humours. This explanatory power has to be analysed in a framework in which the Aristotelian form was criticized, and spirits – active, subtle, and material – were able to take over some of the vital and cognitive functions of the Aristotelian form. In order to prove my hypothesis I will look at Hieronymus Brunschwig, Bernardino Telesio, and Gianbattista della Porta.
Alexandra Baneu (Cluj-Napoca)
Pelbartus of Themeswar on Health, Illness and Healing
How did a 15thcentury Observant Franciscan from Central Europe define health (sanitas)? But more importantly, how did he describe illness (infirmitas)? Furthermore, how did he understand his own affliction and its cure?
These are the aspects that I shall attempt to tackle while presenting the Sanitas entry of the second volume of the Rosarium of Pelbartus of Themeswar. Despite being in essence a theological encyclopedia inspired by the structure of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, with a first volume on Trinity, a second on creation, a third dedicated to Christology and a fourth about the sacraments, the Rosariumuses the general theme of each volume to discuss whatever issue could be broadly included within its scope. This is why the second book, while explicitly dealing with creation, touches upon many subjects that seem to belong to the field of science rather than to that of theology (one can find entries on minerals, animals, fish, etc.).
Theentry that constitutes my main focus (Sanitas) begins with a threefold definition of health, follows this up with a division of illness into corporeal and spiritual, and includes a short description (in some cases only a mention) of about 75 illnesses. This is followed by an enumeration of the signs of illness in an apparently healthy person.
A detailed account of this subject, such as the one proposed, will shed new light on how Pelbartus described his own affliction and healing. According to his testimony in the Stellarium, he had been ill from the plague before being saved through the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary. From a historical perspective, however, my endeavor will showcase an interesting example of how medical knowledge reached the Buda studium of the Observant Franciscans, to whom we know the Rosarium to have been addressed.
Laura Georgescu (Groningen)
On Diagnosing Philosophical Humours
The way to knowledge is an embodied way. To form “proper”, “correct” beliefs about God’s
creation, it is not sufficient to follow the “rules” of any given philosophical method, because one’s temperament, physical constitution and daily habits are constitutive of the way to knowledge. In fact, the very possibility of following the “rules” of a method ultimately entails constant medical self-preparation. In the absence of the “proper” preparation of one’s mind and one’s body, on the way to knowledge, one would certainly become the victim of error.
Many seventeenth-century natural philosophers entertain such an account of how to go about
acquiring knowledge. But how can one know that one is performing the right kind of sel preparation, and not going down a path that leads to delusion and illusory knowledge? Perhaps with some philosophers, like Descartes, it can be argued that the answer is rather straightforward (though, arguably, the execution of the actual preparation is not at all straightforward): in Descartes’ case, philosophical doubt. But, for others, the answer is not directly available: it has to be searched for within the history of philosophy (or, better said, the history of knowledge) itself. The history of philosophy becomes the laboratory test patient, used to diagnose the diseases a knower should avoid in order to learn something about the “proper” way to knowledge. Here again the mind and body are entangled. And, because these intellectual diseases are embodied, the history of philosophy is not merely about the products of one’s thought, but also about the “humoral” and “temperamental” profile of the philosophers themselves.
This is what my talk will focus on. I will show how (less known) philosophers such as Thomas
Browne, Joseph Glanvill, and (early on) Margaret Cavendish use the (Galenic) humoural theory to diagnose mistakes and prejudices that had invaded the ways to knowledge of their time. I suggest that such a medical attitude to the history of philosophy can be found in many early modern philosophers – an obvious example is Bacon’s theory of idols and his approach to history of philosophy in Temporis partus masculus (c.1603). What motivates my focus on Browne, Glanvill, and Cavendish is their commitment to articulating a history of philosophical error tied to the communal human dispositions of particular philosophical schools. The discussion will show that, for someone like Glanvill, for instance, belonging to a particular philosophical school cannot simply be reduced to knowing what the school teaches, or how it practices its philosophical positions; rather it involves an infestation of one’s humoural constitution. It is in this embodied sense that “experimenter” or “sceptic” or “speculator” (and so on) become labels for philosophical ways of being – and not just labels for systems of beliefs.
Li-Chih Lin (Groningen)
Spinoza’s Anatomy of “Pomum”: The Physical-Physiological Mechanism of Language
By providing an analysis based on the second part of the Ethics,I show that in the Ethicslanguage is underpinned by a physical-physiological mechanism.I maintain that Spinoza’s conception of language is not at odd with but neatly fits into his account of human mind characterized by the doctrine of conatus.
I begin with E2p18sch, in which by taking the Latin word “pomum” as an example, Spinoza presents an analysis of the formation of a word. A word has not only an articulated acoustic feature but also other correlated corporeal inputs. In the given case, the articulated acoustic feature is the sound of “pomum” and the visual impact is the image of fruit. In Spinoza’s account, to be a semantic entity is to be combined with other collective physical impacts, such as the visual image or the flavor of fruits. Then, secondly, my emphasis will be on E2p17, in which Spinoza employs a physiological account—such as the phrasing of “fluid,” and “traces” on the “soft” parts of human bodies—for the underpinning mechanism of the formation of a word.I show that such a mechanism is built up through the doctrine of conatus working at the physiological level. The formation and the function of word are rooted in the physical-physiological interactions that are characterized by the striving of individuals and the conflicting states among different individuals in the physical-physiological context. In the end of this paper, we can see that by emphasizing the physical-physiological mechanism, Spinoza holds onto a language scheme that is very different from the traditional linguistic triangle which proposes the mirage between language and world. Instead, for Spinoza, language results from and refers back to a corporeal mechanism.
Martin Lenz (Groningen)
Why Do We Share the Vulgar View? Hume on the Medical Norms of Belief
Perhaps most beliefs are like contagious diseases that we catch. – When philosophers talk like that, it’s easy to think that they are speaking metaphorically. Looking at debates around Hume and other philosophers, I’ve begun to doubt that. There is good reason to see references to physiology and medical models as a genuine way of philosophical explanation. As I hope to show, Hume’s account of beliefs arising from sympathy is a case in point. Arguably, Hume thinks that we adhere to certain views such as the vulgar view because othersaround us hold it. But why, you might ask, would other people’s views affect our attitudes so strongly? If I am right, Hume holds that deviating from this view – for instance by taking a sceptical stance – will be seen as not normaland make us outsiders. Intriguingly, this normality is mediated by our physiologicaldispositions. Deviation from the vulgar view means deviation from the common balance of humours and, for instance, suffering from melancholy. In this sense, the vulgar view we share is governed by medical norms, or so I argue. The source of the vulgar view cannot be given in experience or any empirical beliefs. Now if this is correct, we have to ask what it is that makes us hold this view. There is nothing natural or evident about it. But if this view is not self-evident, why do we hold it and why is it so widespread? According to Hume, most of the beliefs, sentiments and emotions we have are owing to our social environment. Hume explains this by referring to the mechanism of sympathy: “So close and intimate is the correspondence of human souls, that no sooner any person approaches me, than he diffuses on me all his opinions, and draws along my judgment in a greater or lesser degree.” (Treatise3.3.2.1) Many of the beliefs we hold, then, are not (merely) owing to exposure to similar experiences, but to the exposure to others. Now how exactly is the “contagion” of manners and opinions explained? Of course, a large part of our education is governed by linguistic and behavioural conventions. But at the bottom, there is a physiological kind of explanation that Hume could appeal to. Corresponding to our mental states are physiological dispositions, temperature of the blood etc., the effects of which are mediated through the air via vapours which, in turn, affect the imagination of the recipient. Just like material properties of things affect our sense organs, the states of other bodies can affect our organs and yield pertinent effects. This is why Hume can claim that a crucial effect of sympathy lies in the “uniformity of humours and turn of thinking”. In this sense, a certain temperament and set of beliefs might count as pertinent to a view shared by a group.