Rene Descartes :: essays research papers

While the great philosophical distinction between sound judgement and body in western thought can be traced to the Greeks, it is to the seminal lay d consumeof Ren Descartes (1596-1650) see figure 1, French mathematician, philosopher, and physiologist, that we owe the first positiveaccount of the mind/body relationship. Descartes was born in Touraine, in the small town of La Haye and ameliorate from the age of eight atthe Jesuit college of La Flche. At La Flche, Descartes formed the habit of spending the morning in bed, engaged in systematicmeditation. During his meditations, he was struck by the sharp contrast between the certainty of mathematics and the controversial natureof philosophy, and came to believe that the sciences could be made to yield results as certain as those of mathematics. From 1612, when he left La Flche, until 1628, when he settled in Holland, Descartes spent much of his time in travel, contemplation, andcorrespondence. From 1628 until his ill-fated trip to Sweden in 1649 he remained for the most part in Holland, and it was during this periodthat he composed a series of works that set the agenda for all later students of mind and body. The first of these works, De homine 1was completed in Holland about 1633, on the eve of the condemnation of Galileo. When Descartes friend and frequent correspondent,Marin Mersenne, wrote to him of Galileos fate at the hands of the Inquisition, Descartes immediately suppressed his own treatise. As aresult, the worlds first extended essay on physiological psychology was published only well after its authors death. In this work, Descartes proposed a chemical mechanism see figure 2 for automatic response in response to external events. According to hisproposal, external motions affect the peripheral ends of the nerve fibrils, which in turn displace the telephone exchange ends. As the central endsare displaced, the pattern of interfibrillar space is rearranged and the flow of animal spirits is thereby di rected into the appropriatenerves. It was Descartes articulation of this mechanism for automatic, differentiated reaction that led to his generally being creditedwith the founding of reflex theory. Although extended discussion of the metaphysical split between mind and body did not be until Descartes Meditationes, his Dehomine outlined these views and provided the first articulation of the mind/body interactionism that was to elicit such pronounced