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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 68, Vesalius and Others:
July 12, 2004:
Let us get away from the mindless mayhem and butchery of religious superstition for a look at a scientist, Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564). Vesalius was a Flemish anatomist and surgeon who is considered to be the founder of modern anatomy. He did this the hard way by carefully dissecting cadavers and very carefully describing what he found. From that he wrote the first real textbook on anatomy, the Fabrica. It was published, with detailed drawings in 1543. The official name of the book is De humani corporis fabrica libri septem or The Seven Books on the Structure of the Human Body.
Vesalius had the proper background for this work being born into a family of doctors and pharmacists. He did some of his initial investigation at the University of Paris using cadavers from the local Paris cemeteries. It seems there was not much respect for nor protection of the deceased. We can surmise there were no natives around to declare the burial grounds sacred.
Later he attended Padua then lectured in surgery at the University. It was during his work there that he discovered the theories of Galen, an ancient Greek physician, were quite a bit astray. Until then Galen had been considered to be the anatomical authority. The problem with this was, it seems Galen had never seen the innards of a human being. Cutting up human bodies was forbidden by Roman religion. Hence, all of Galen's anatomy had been surmised from the dissection of animals other than human. Whoops!
In his work, Vesalius did a bang up job of debunking Galen with hard evidence. A gifted writer, organizer, and general all around artist he produce the Fabrica as not only a technical master piece, but an artistic masterpiece as well. Along the way, he gave anatomy a language of its own. In a word, the work was elegant.
Unlike many of the pioneers of the Renaissance, Vesalius managed to avoid offending the powers. As a result he lived the good life as a very successful physician in the service of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V. He married, traveled and had an all around good time. Later Charles V put him on easy street with a pension and made him a count to boot. None of that kept him from dying at the rather early age of 50 from some unknown illness. So it goes.
Now we can take a brief look at the French philosopher, Petrus Ramus (1515-1572). Ramus was also a logician, and rhetorician. His claim to fame was he devised a reformed version of Aristotelian logic. He and another fellow, Audomarus Talaeus rearranged one of Aristotle's works, Organon. This is more of that philosophical nit picking stuff. Organon is just a set of principles for use in scientific or philosophical investigation. Nonetheless, it annoyed the orthodox Aristotelian philosophers at the University of Paris. They conned Francis I into banning Ramus. Later the ban was lifted by Henry II and Ramus became regius professor of philosophy and eloquence at the Collège de France.
Ramus, identified logic with dialectic and emphasized the view that logic is also a method of disputation, its two parts being invention, the process of discovering proofs in support of the thesis, and disposition, which taught how the proofs should be presented. He wrote a great deal and that made him popular with the intellects of Europe. His most famous works are Dialecticae partitiones (1543), Aristotelicae animadversiones (1543), Dialectique (1555), and Dialecticae libri duo (1556).
Around 1561 he made his big mistake. He converted to Protestantism. In France that could only mean a life of persecution and it did happen. His enemies ganged up on him. He was finally murdered by hired hit men in 1572 shortly after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. This massacre was just more of the religious craziness of the Renaissance.
Now it'‘s time to take a look at a couple of French poets. These are Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560) and Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585). These guys were the leaders of a literary group calling itself La Pléiade. Du Bellay wrote their manifesto, believe it or not, called La Défense et illustration de la langue française, or, in English The Defense and Illustration of the French Language. It seems there was some kind of defensiveness about the French language as compared to Italian for producing modern literature.
Both of these poets were born to the upper class giving them the leisure to be creative. They were rather complete artists of writing. Their works consisted of odes, sonnets, satires, historical romance, and lyric poetry. In all, their effort to glorify the French language were successful. They managed to influence the sixteenth century English poets and some of their work was translated.
We can return to philosophy now with Jean Bodin (1530-1596). Bodin, was a French lawyer and a social and political philosopher. At this time there were insane wars between the Roman Catholics and some folks who were called the Huguenots. These were the French Protestant followers of John Calvin. The chaos and destruction produced by these wars was very troubling to Bodin. As a result he wrote his major work Six Livres de la République, or The Six Books of a Commonweale to argue that a well ordered state requires religious tolerance and a fully sovereign monarch.
At a time when medieval Europe was finally giving way Bodin's
work expounded the principles on which the emerging centralized
states we ultimately based. In that, he made a major theoretical
contribution to the rise of the modern nation-state.
He emphasized the principles of stable government. This came at
a time when due to the strife of civil war the idea of divine
right had a firm hold on the populace.
Bodin argued that the political bond that made every man subject to one sovereign power overrode religious differences. He had no problem with divine right as the source of the monarch's power. His case was that divine right did not deal with the exercise of that power. In his view, the political situation required that the sovereign have unlimited authority. His only conditions were that the sovereign must respect the sanctity of natural law, the fundamental laws of the kingdom, property, and the family.
This means that fundamental rights, among them being liberty and property, are extended to those governed. But, even if these conditions are violated, the sovereign still commands and may not be resisted by his subjects. Their entire duty is obedience to their ruler. Bodin allows three different classes of political systems, these being monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. This is determine by how the sovereign power is exercised. It can be by one person in a monarch, by a minority in an aristocracy, or by a majority in a democracy. Bodin himself preferred a monarchy with a subservient parliament or estates-general for advice.
According to Bodin, supreme power is the distinctive mark of
the state. This power is absolute. No limits whatsoever can be
placed on it. It matters not if the monarch is insane or stupid.
He is still the monarch. What's more the power of the monarch
does not depend on the consent of the governed. No elections allowed.
It will be interesting to notice when we look at the philosophies
of Hobbes and others, how these ideas fell through pretty much
intact. Some of them fell all the way through to the American
constitution such as the rights of liberty and property.
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