Panni les aspects remarquables de l'Aristarque (1644) de Roberval, on relève la répétition fréquente dans le texte de l'abréviation« P.N.E.M.». Ces lettres signifient « pondere, numero et mensura ». Ces mots sont tirés du Livre de la Sagesse, XI, 20: « Pondere, mensura, numero Deus omnia fecit » (Vulgate). Ce verset est cité chez beaucoup d'auteurs qui veulent louer Dieu Géomètre. Cependant, Roberval n'est nullement pieux. Il s'agit donc ici de savoir pourquoi il se sert de « P.N.E.M.» dans son (...) texte. Roberval se montre-t-il ainsi solidaire de ses confrères mathématiciens du Collège royal, dont le verset serait la devise? (shrink)

The mainstream rationale for equating brain death (BD) with death is that the brain confers integrative unity upon the body, transforming it from a mere collection of organs and tissues to an organism as a whole. In support of this conclusion, the impressive list of the brains myriad integrative functions is often cited. Upon closer examination, and after operational definition of terms, however, one discovers that most integrative functions of the brain are actually not somatically integrating, and, conversely, most integrative (...) functions of the body are not brain-mediated. With respect to organism-level vitality, the brains role is more modulatory than constitutive, enhancing the quality and survival potential of a presupposedly living organism. Integrative unity of a complex organism is an inherently nonlocalizable, holistic feature involving the mutual interaction among all the parts, not a top-down coordination imposed by one part upon a passive multiplicity of other parts. Loss of somatic integrative unity is not a physiologically tenable rationale for equating BD with death of the organism as a whole. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Melon and the Dictionary:Reflections on Descartes's DreamsAlan Gabbey and Robert E. HallThe interpretation of dreams is rarely answerable to either evidential or settled theoretical control. When the phantasms of the dreaming mind seem unaccountable, as they often do, they seem to belong to a mental world beyond the reach of historical, philosophical, or scientific analysis, a world for which the rules of methodological engagement seem inappropriate, rather (...) than merely impossible to observe. So in advance we ask the reader's indulgence if we appear somewhat to ignore the historian's normal duty to transmute favored speculations into well-argued conclusions based on solid evidence. We do have evidence to present, however, and indeed one or two conclusions that seem to us compelling. But if skeptics question their value, at least they will do so without envy, since they will not want to chase after our speculations on the Dreams—unless with the intention of chasing them and us out of the Cartesian arena altogether.Most of that arena is set aside for exegetical tussles with the respectable philosophizing of the Meditations, the Discourse on Method, and The Principles of Philosophy or The Passions of the Soul. But for some of the liveliest Cartesian games, you must move to that part of the arena where biographers, psychologists, psychoanalysts, and historians have fun with the "petit registre en parchemin," as the Stockholm Inventory describes it.1 This notebook contained [End Page 651] the twelve-page Olympica, in which Descartes recounted the three Dreams, announced his discovery of the foundations of "a wonderful science," and in the margin of the manuscript noted a year later his emerging understanding of "the foundation of a wonderful discovery." Later we'll rerun a few of the Olympian performances of previous interpreters, as preliminaries to a couple of our own interpretative games.First let us recall what happened on Saint Martin's Eve, the night of 10 November 1619, in Descartes's twenty-fourth year.2 In the days preceding that night Descartes's concern with the search for truth gave him much mental torment which the society of his friends could not dissipate. This tired him so much that his brain became inflamed: "he fell into a kind of enthusiasm, which left him in such a state that his depressed spirit was ready to receive dreams and visions." Retiring to bed "full of enthusiasm" from "having found that day the foundations of a wonderful science," Descartes (Baillet tells us) had three dreams "which he imagined could have come only from on high." In Dream I, while he was walking through the streets, his imagination was haunted by terrifying phantoms (fantômes). A severe disabling weakness in his right side forced him to bend over to his left so that he could continue toward his destination. Ashamed of walking in that way, he tried to straighten up, but a strong whirlwind spun him round three or four times on his left foot. Still more terrifying was the thought that he was falling at every step because of the difficulty in dragging himself through the streets.Then seeing a college with open gates, he entered, seeking relief from his afflictions, and intending to pray in the college chapel. But he had passed someone he knew without hailing him. He tried to return to greet him and was hurled back by the wind blowing against the chapel. At the same time he saw in the middle of the college courtyard another person who greeted him civilly by name, and told him that if he cared to look for Monsieur N., "he had something to give him." "M. Descartes imagined that it was a melon that someone had brought from some foreign country." But even more surprising was the fact that those who gathered round him to talk were standing straight and firm on their feet, whereas he was still bent over and staggering about, even though the wind which had threatened several times to blow him over had now greatly abated. At this point he awoke to feel a pain that made him fear that all this was the [End Page 652] work of... (shrink)

The chapter emphasizes the complexity of the relations between philosophy and science in the eighteenth century, as they must be seen against the background that, in the early modern period, as in the preceding centuries, philosophy generally included physics or natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics. Showing the variance in attitudes among Leibniz, Newton, and Locke on how to draw a line of division between metaphysics and physics with regard to a sample of topics, this chapter draws attention to the divergent (...) starting points of British and German metaphysical conceptions in the course of the eighteenth century. Tracing a trajectory of such conceptions in Britain – Berkeley, Hume, Cullen – and contrasting it with the position of Kant in Germany, this essay records the trembling or perhaps even crumbling of metaphysics caused by the growing tensions between metaphysics/philosophy and natural philosophy/science. In the end, this state of affairs led to a remarkably indifferent attitude toward metaphysics (Cullen) and, alternatively, to a radical critique of its epistemological foundations (Kant). (shrink)

This chapter discusses various bases of mechanical philosophy generally known as virtual work, virtual speeds, and explanations why some machines can lift heavy loads with small force. This chapter further explains the theory of the five simple machines and the general statistical principle or GSP. Finally this chapter explains how physics grew out of the trunk of mechanics. Finally this chapter explains that theoretical mechanics depends on physics as its nomological foundation which in turn depends on metaphysics. The chapter ends (...) concluding that it has always been normal to include Descartes' laws of nature, as part of the story of the evolution of modern mechanics. (shrink)

Discrepancies between the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) and the adult and pediatric diagnostic guidelines for brain death (BD) (the “Guidelines”) have motivated proposals to revise the UDDA. A revision proposed by Lewis, Bonnie and Pope (the RUDDA), has received particular attention, the three novelties of which would be: (1) to specify the Guidelines as the legally recognized “medical standard,” (2) to exclude hypothalamic function from the category of “brain function,” and (3) to authorize physicians to conduct an apnea (...) test without consent and even over a proxy’s objection. One hundred seven experts in medicine, bioethics, philosophy, and law, spanning a wide variety of perspectives, have come together in agreement that while the UDDA needs revision, the RUDDA is not the way to do it. Specifically, (1) the Guidelines have a non-negligible risk of false-positive error, (2) hypothalamic function is more relevant to the organism as a whole than any brainstem reflex, and (3) the apnea test carries a risk of precipitating BD in a non-BD patient, provides no benefit to the patient, does not reliably accomplish its intended purpose, and is not even absolutely necessary for diagnosing BD according to the internal logic of the Guidelines; it should at the very least require informed consent, as do many procedures that are much more beneficial and less risky. Finally, objections to a neurologic criterion of death are not based only on religious belief or ignorance. People have a right to not have a concept of death that experts vigorously debate imposed upon them against their judgment and conscience; any revision of the UDDA should therefore contain an opt-out clause for those who accept only a circulatory-respiratory criterion. (shrink)

Most people in the philosophical world have combed, perused, written about, taught from, or at least heard of or wondered about the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. So it’s surprising that until now there has been no full-scale study of these famous letters, though there are lots of articles that deal with various aspects of the exchanges. Perhaps it’s even more surprising because Ezio Vailati has shown how to manage a serious and ordered analysis of these exchanges. I suspect there are one or (...) two historians of early modern philosophy who are wishing they had had the same idea as Vailati and brought it to fruition. This is a welcome volume, combining analytic thoroughness with solid documentation. (shrink)

From the start, I followed the case of Jahi McMath with great interest. In December 2013, she clearly fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for brain death. As a neurologist with a special interest in chronic brain death, I was not surprised that, after she was flown to New Jersey, where she became statutorily resurrected and was treated as a comatose patient, Jahi's condition quickly improved. In 2014, her family reported that she sometimes responded to simple motor commands. I shared the general (...) skepticism regarding these reports, assuming that the family was in denial and was misinterpreting spinal myoclonus (a rapid, involuntary twitch generated by the spinal cord) as volitional. The family had noticed that when Jahi's heart rate was above eighty beats per minute, she was more likely to respond, as though the heart rate reflected some sort of inner level of arousal. So they began to make video recordings. I have been privileged to be entrusted with copies of these recordings, forty‐eight of which proved suitable for assessing alleged responsiveness. All have been certified by a forensic video expert as unaltered. The first thing that struck me was that the great majority of the alleged responses were not spinal myoclonus. In fact, they did not resemble any type of spontaneous, involuntary movement described in patients paralyzed from high spinal cord lesions. (shrink)

At its inception, “brain death” was proposed not as a coherent concept but as a useful one. The 1968 Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death gave no reason that “irreversible coma” should be death itself, but simply asserted that the time had come for it to be declared so. Subsequent writings by chairman Henry Beecher made clear that, to him at least, death was essentially a social construct, and society could define (...) it however it pleased. The first widely endorsed attempt at a philosophical justification appeared thirteen years later, with a report from the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research and a seminal paper by James Bernat, Charles Culver, and Bernard Gert, which introduced the insightful tripartite scheme of concept, criterion, and tests for death. Their paper proposed that the correct concept of death is the “permanent cessation of functioning of the organism as a whole,” which tenuously remains the mainstream concept to this day. In this essay, I focus on this mainstream concept, arguing that equating brain death with death involves several levels of incoherence: between concept and criterion, between criterion and tests, between tests and concept, and between all of these and actual brain death praxis. (shrink)

: American society traditionally has assumed a univocal notion of "death," largely because we have only one word for it and, until recently, have not needed a more nuanced notion. The reality of death-processes does not preclude the reality of death events. Linguistically, "death" can be understood only as an event; there are other words for the process. Our death vocabulary should expand to reflect multiple events along the process from sickness to decomposition. Depending on context, some death-related events may (...) constitute a more obvious discontinuity than others and more justifiably may be considered "death" within that context. There is no reason to assume a priori that there must be an overarching, unitary concept of death from which all diagnostic criteria must derive. Regarding organ transplantation, the relevant question is not "Is the patient dead?" but rather "Can organs X, Y, Z . . . be removed without causing or hastening death or harming the patient?". (shrink)

Essay review of Arrigo Pacchi: Cartesio in Inghilterra. Da More a Boyle. Roma: Editori Laterza 1973. Pp. xv + 272.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 273-274 [Access article in PDF] Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch, and William R. Newman, editors. Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. viii + 610. Cloth, $186.00. The nineteen papers of this weighty (handsomely produced, but expensive) volume are mostly devoted to the views of one thinker or group of persons on "corpuscularism" (see 17ff.), in (...) either physics or mathematics, with few synthetic or diachronic studies. Only a quarter of the volume is devoted to the medieval period: Danielle Jacquart on minima in the Salerno school of medicine (twelfth century); the late George Molland on Roger Bacon's and Grosseteste's "corpuscular tendencies"; Charles Lohr on Ramon Lull; John Murdoch on minima naturalia in the medieval and Renaissance periods; and the greater part of William Newman's study of corpuscularian conceptions in "Aristotelian alchemy" from Geber to Sennert. The early-modern part includes studies on mostly expected figures: Francesco Patrici, Giordano Bruno, the Northumberland circle, Francis Bacon, David Gorlaeus (a little-known Dutch theology student; 1591-1612, sic), Daniel Sennert, Honoré Fabri, Galileo, Gassendi, Charleton, Boyle, Locke, and Homberg. Alan Gabbey more generally distinguishes different patterns of explanations in mechanical philosophy.As far as I can judge, the authors are knowledgeable and competent, and the studies make important contributions. But just because this is a high-quality volume produced with the ambition of making a step toward rewriting the history of a major chapter in the history of science, its two significant and principled deficiencies must be pointed out.The volume follows the intention of "show[ing] the debt of early-modern matter theory to previous traditions and thereby [explaining] its bewildering heterogeneity" (back cover). Now, the study of the corpuscular traditions in the pre-modern period is certainly an important desideratum (although this volume again attends chiefly to the early modern corpuscularians). But the motivation and perspective here announced—the medieval period [End Page 273] is to be studied because early modern science is indebted to it—are astoundingly Whiggish. Worse: the study of the entire Arabic-Islamic tradition is dismissed, on the grounds that "Islamic atomism does not seem to have been of any influence upon Christian fourteenth-century atomism" (8): this is not only Whiggism, but also frank and explicit euro- and Christian-centrism, which in the beginning of the twenty-first century is simply stunning. The method amusingly consists in affirming the consequent: presupposing that "Islamic atomism" did not influence the West and early-modern science, no scholar was asked to examine whether or not this was indeed the case, with the congenial result that the volume seemingly confirms the initial presupposition. Q.E.D. Similarly and no less regrettably, the fact that (ps.-) Geber's Summa Perfectionis is not, as Lasswitz had thought, the translation of an Arabic work is here used as grounds on which to dismiss altogether his claim concerning the importance of the Arabic input (13, but see also 293). This way, incomprehension between civilizations is reinforced instead of being reduced, and I believe we did not need September 11 to know this.The thusly dismissed Mu'tazilite school of Islamic theology had important repercussions in Judaism, so that referring to it as "Islamic atomism" is misleading (see notably Hagai Ben-Shammai, "Studies in Karaite Atomism," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 6 [1985]: 243-93). The volume's forty-page cumulative bibliography, for which the editors are to be congratulated, reflects the volume's parochial viewpoint: H. A. Wolfson's important The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), with some 150 pages on atomism, is not included; nor is the (English version of the) landmark study by the late S. Pines, Studies in Islamic Atomism (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1997; the original 1936 German version is mentioned). Wolfson's study, incidentally, shows that the editors' presupposition (8) that the Kalâm tradition could have influenced the West only via the Latin translation of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed is unwarranted, for Isaac... (shrink)