The Overcoming of the Cartesian Paradigm in Physiology: The Case of Burchard de Volder

Descartes' medical reception can be separated into several phases in the seventeenth century, starting with its first introduction and extending to its sophisticated refinements. This talk examines a final moment in its reception in the Low Countries in the work of the Leiden professor Theodoor Craanen who can be credited with bringing to the fore the consequences of Descartes' reduction of physiological phenomena to the interaction of invisible particles. Craanen's fellow Leiden professor Burchard de Volder, most famous for opening the first experimental cabinet in a European University, forcefully criticized Craanen's reductive approach as "speculative". As an alternative, De Volder proposed an experimental-mathematical approach to medical questions that was firmly rooted to the consideration of visible processes only, and on their interpretation in the light of mechanical principles. The treatment of respiration is a case in point, figuring prominently in this polemical exchange. If, on the one hand, the standard Cartesian treatment of respiration was based on the circular thrust of air caused by the dilatation of the thorax moved by animal spirits, De Volder proposed an account based on the elasticity of the air and on the law of Boyle-Mariotte whereby the lungs are inflated and deflated by different conditions of pressure within and outside them. By examining the dispute between Craanen and De Volder we can learn how one extreme of medical Cartesianism met resistance in the Netherlands and how English virtuosi played a hand in this resistance.