Crafted Bodies_interpretations of Corporeal Knowledge in Light of the Technological Imagination in Antiquity__the Renaissance and the Present

8/6/2019 Crafted Bodies_interpretations of Corporeal Knowledge in Light of the Technological Imagination in Antiquity__the R

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UNUAGE, LITERATUREANDUNGUISTICS Gr&"IW .......................324..............................ultural 0326...........................hpical 0327Business Administrotion...................eneml . 031 O........................ccwnting 0272..........................anking 0770Monogement ......................0454...........................arketing 0338.....................ond ion Studies 0385Ail U U J.........ilinguol and Multiculturol 0282Businma ................................... 688...................mmu ni~ y ollego O275.........uniculum ond Instruction 0727Eo+ rhildhwd ........................051 8...............................la~&bry 0524Finonce .................................... 277Guidance and Cw nd in g .........0519k l t h .....................................0680....................................igher 0745Histwy of .................................0520-HomsEcomics ...................... 278Industriol ................................. 0521............on uoge and Litsroture 0279~ 0 L o t i c s...........................%

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PHYSIC AL SCIENCESPure Sciences

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BiOl%rol ............................. 306Anotomy ........................... 287Biosbtistics .........................308................................abny 0309.................................ell 0379Ecdogy ............................. 329........................n t o m o ~ o ~ ~ 0353Gensiics ............................ 369Lmnaay ........................ 0793Microbioogy ......................41 0Mdaulor ...........................307Naimsciwe ......................31 7Ocaonogmphy .................. 041 6Ph idw ........................433~o$otion ..........................821..............otwinory Science 0778Zodogy ............................. 472

ChemistryGenerol........................... 485. . .griculturol 0749Anolyficol .........................486.......................iochemisly 0407lnor onic ..................... ......0488~ u c k r.............................0738..............................rgonic 045%Phormoceuticol.............O491PhTicol :::..........................O494Poymer ................... 0495Rodiotion............................0754.............................athematics O405HULT H AND ENVIRONMENTALSCIENCES .............nvir onmn iol ciences 0768Heolth SciencesGenerol................................. ..........................ockoging 0549...........................etroleum 0765.......anitory ond Municipal 0554....................ystem Science 0790........................eotechnology 0428.................perotions Reseorch 0796...................loics Technology O795.....................extile Technolcgy 0994.Phsics . ~.............................enerol 0605............................coustics 0986ducotion .....................Holpib l Monogrnt ...HiimnnD d w m e n l ..... ~Ifr&&~ ond.....................strORhy?ics 0606~tm osp r~c c~ence...........O408Atomic ...............................0748Elechonicr ond Eledricily .....O607.... ~Immunc.cgy ..................Medicine and Surgery ..................enhl k l t h PSYCHOLOGY................................enerol 06'il................................ehwiorol 0384..................................linicol 0622..........................evelo~mentol 0620Ex riment01 0623......nd)ultriol ::::::::::::::::::::::::::':0624...............................erlonolity 0625............................hysiolog~col 0989.........................~~ch~b io logy 0349...........................svchometrics 0632

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EARTH SCIENCES.....................iq(sochwnisry 0425.......................wchmistry 0996 ...........................o d i d w 0574Recreotion ..........................0575


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Crafted Bodies:Interpretations of CorporealRnoV:ledge in Light of

the Technological Imagfnalimv LwiAntiquity, the Renaissance a d he Y =sent

Master of Arts, 1995Alan Cantor

Department of EdzcationUniversity of Toremo

AbstractThis thesis is about Western scientific disco~irbes, rwent and past, that

structure and vitalize corporeal knowledge. My st rd te~yor decphering th e b o d ~,to view it through th e interpretive grid of everyday technologies. The ideas andconceptual categories suggested by cer tain technologies motdize new .understandings about the constitution, functioning, powers a;id limits of the body.

Every civilization, J. David Bolter writes, "possesses a characteristic se t ofmaterials, techniques and devices th at help to shape i ts cultural outlook"(1984,p.16). These he calls defining technologies: technologies tha t capture the imaginationof thinkers and reform their ideas about nature. Defining technologies alter thephysical means of life and establ ish new epistemological frameworks. Their effectsare felt materially and symbolically.

In this thesis 1 recount t he influence of three defining technologies- he--nual crafts of Antiquity, thc ~!.-ichine uring the Renaissance, and the digitalcompuLer in the present- n Western scientific ideas of bodily structure andfunctioning. 1describe t he movement of technological ideas into scientific discoursesand the concomitant merging of these technologies with our bodies. This thesis askshow technologies are represented linguistically, how new systems for making senseof our bodies are produced, and how the new representationdself-representationsachieve the st atus of truth.


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1wish to thank Roger Simon for his conscientiour: supervision and resolutecommitment to me and this project. 1am also grateful to Jo hn Eisenberg for histrustworthy counsel and ongoing encouragement, and to Ronald Ragsdale for hiscomments on the final draft.

Chris tina Tracy's editorial guidance demystified th e writing process for me,an d he r proofreading gifts improved the readability of this thesis. My discussionswith Arleen Schenke stimulated my thinking and led m e to deeper understandingsof th e more difficult ideas 1grappled with in th is thesia. Critiques of individualchapters by Helen Simson, Carol McBride, Daniel Vokey, Alice Pit t, and AlastairPennycook helped sha ie my approach and sharpen my analysis. Leslie Gotfrit andRoy Lyster were steadfast in friendship and ingenious a t inciting creativity.

Special thank s to my parents, Lee and Edith Cantor, whose encouragementand generosity helped make thi s thesis possible. Isaac, Sa rit and Oren Cantorsparked my imagination by inviting me to join in their journeys to worlds of ta11mountains, magical forests and humongous castles.

1dedicate this thesis t c the memory of my grandmother, Fanny Chodorcove(1901-19881, who always believed in me.


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ContentsAbstract 1Acknowledgments 2Chapter 1 Introduction 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The Problem an d its Context 1I I.A History of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .II .Thesis O rganization 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .V Limitations of the Stud y 9Chapter 2 The Pre-Mechanistic Body 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Introduction: Ch apte r Overview 12II .Theory of Ideas (Underlying Fom s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15III.An Organicist Natura l Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Technological Context of Ancient and Medieval Eu rope . 18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ovement an d Life 20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Teleological Scienc e 21

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .V. God as th e Firs t C ause 23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .he Cosmos 25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .he Heavenly Bodies 25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .he Ear th 26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .he Bodies of Men a nd W omen 26V.The Struc ture of Ma tter an d Technologies of Mixing . . . . . . . 27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ntological St atu s of Ma tter 28Na tural M agic and Alchemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .he Constitution of Matter 31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .lementalism 31Humourialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Pneumology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37...........................I.Symbolic Correspondences 38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ausation 38Doctrine of Sign ature s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Macrocosm-M icrocosm Analogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .IL Chapter Sum mary 42Chapter 3 The Body as Machine . 451 I ntr od uc tic n: C ha p te r O v e ~ e w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

II.Technology an d Epistemology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48Modern Science and M echanistic Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . 48Technology and P ower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49Defining Technologies in the Modern Age . . . . . . . . . . . . 50. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ower Technologies 51Autonomous M achines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52The A rticulation of Mechanistic Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . 54The Sp read of Mechanical Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Ontological Assum ption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Epistemological Assumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Methodological Assum ption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62The Mechanical R eeducation of Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64


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. . . .ummary: The Mechanical Repatterning of Reality 65III.The Failing Plausibility of Macrocosm-Microcosm Theory . . 68The Breakdown of Macrocosmic Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69The Breakdown of Microcosmic Theory m d the MechanicalRepatterning of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Humanist Challenges to the Tradit ion Sources of MedicalAuthority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Tho Body in Pieces: Dissection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74The Circulation of Blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8IEen Descartes and Treatise of Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85The Ascent of the Machine-Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90Iatromechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90The Evolution of the Machine-Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92The Body of Modern Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94IV Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96Chapter 4 The Body as Cornputer 981 Introduction: Chapter OveMew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98II.Three Post-Newtonian Sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100The Demise of Mechanism a s a Philosophy of Nature . . . . . 100Quantum Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103Special Relativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105General Systems Theory (GST) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

III.Control and Communication in the Animal and theMachine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Defining Technologies in the Late Twentieth Century . . . . 116Background to Cybernetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118Cybernetic "Machines" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120IV Cybernetic Interpretations of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

1 Cybernetic Systems a re Purposeful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123BiologicalFeedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1242.Cybernetic Systems are Extremely Complex . . . . . . . . . . 127Black Box Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128Complexity and Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1303.Cybernetic Systems are Probabilistic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132Information Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

A Body Structured by Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135V.Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140Chapter 5 Conclusion: The Body Under the Sign ofInformation 1411 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141II.The "New Age" Body and t he Cosmic Computer . . . . . . . . . . 143III The Obsolete Body of the Artificial In telligentsia . . . . . . . . 147References 150


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Chapter 1Pntroduction

1. The Problem and its ContextIdeas about the human body- ts fabric, animating forces, capacities, and th e

relation of its "inside" to it s "outside"- re products of culture. As a culturallymediated form, the body is subject to description and interpretat ion. In short,somatic knowledge is discursively crafted. The human body is an object of knowledgerendered intelligible by the sciences, philosophies, religions and mythologies of thepeople who imagine it, discuss it and plumb its mysteries.

This thesis is about Western scientific discourses, present and past, t ha tstructure and vitalize corporeal knowledge. My strategy for deciphering the body isto view it through the interpretive grid of everyday technologies -t he machines,materials and techniques with which people am pl ie and extend their own powers.The ideas and conceptual categories suggested by certain technologies mobilize newunderstandings about the constitution, functioning, powers and limits of th e body.

The most fami liar example of a technology th at informs knowledge of the bodyis the machine. Since the Renaissance a ;uccession of mechanical technologies -theclock, the steam engine, and t he factory- ave served as descriptive keys forunlocking the secrets of anatomy and physiology. The machine-body enteredWestern thought with Ren Descartes (1596-1650), who, in several of his t reatis es,compared human and animal bodies to "clocks, artificial fountains, mills, and similarmachines" (Descartes, 1971, p. 4). Descartes' premise was tha t al1 responsesconventionally believed to require the intervention of the sou1 actually occurredwithout it; instead, he proposed that life was the consequence of the movements of


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solids and fluids in smal l physiological struc tures. Thus in Descartes' Dcscriptiorr of'the Body we read:

Admittedly, it is ha rd to believe t ha t th e mere arrangement of theorgens is sufficient to produce in us al1 the movements t ha t a re notdetermined by our thoughts. Tha t is why 1shall try to prove it here,and to explain t he whole machine of our body in such a way tha t weshall have no more occasion to think t ha t our soul escites themovements... han we have to judge th at there is a soul in a clockwhich causes it to show the hours (Descartes, p. 115).

The de tai ls of Descartes' system of physiology were promptly rejected by hissuccessors, but the general mechanistic orientstion of his philosophy prevailed. I nth e 1600s' a tendency began to grow among natural philosophers to explain naturnlprocesses mechanically. One of the characteristics of the mechanical approach to thestudy of nat ure was th e reduction of al1 phenomena to ma tte r and motion. Al1activities- rom the orb iting of planets to the beating of heart s to t he collisions ofatoms- ere explained by th e logic tha t accounts for the movements of machines.

For 300 years science ha s pat terned the body on the machine. In i ts moststr ingent articulations, mechanistic science regarded mind a s an epiphenomenon ofmater ial events, an d life as t he accidental by-product of physical processes. The"machine-bnriv" was well illustrated in a 1975 National Geographical Societytelevision program, The Incredible Human Machine:

Set aside now th e poet's passion in favour of the scientists' coldanalysis. About two-thirds wate r, plus carbon, calcium, plus a fewother chemicals, al1 worth about five dollars ai; th e inflated prices ofthe mid-seventies. I n one sense, that's al1 we are , al1 of us. But rightnow your body is performing amazing feats of engineering, chemistryand physics th at no machine designed by man can duplicate (NationalGeographic Society, 1975).

In contemporary popular scientific portrayals of the body, the "parts" a re oftendepicted as machine components or elements in an industr ial process. From thesam e National Geographic program, the human ha nd receives a quintessentiallymechanistic treatm ent:


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The unique engineering design of the human body reaches its apex inthe hand. Powerful an2 precise, servant of the mind, creator ofcivilization and culture. Twenty-five joints give it fifty-eight distinctlydifferent motions and make it the most versatile inst rument on earth(National Geographic Society, 1975).After three centuries of scientific biomedicine i t is difficult to conceive of the

body as anything but a living machine. The mechanistic outlook is so deeplyengrained in the Western imagination t hat the idea of the body-as-machinestructures commonsense knowledge to this day.

Ten years aRer the broadcast of The Incredible Human Machine, a verydifferent hand was descnbed in another National Geographic Society televisionprogram, Miniature Miracle: The Computer Chip. Robotics expert Ken Salsburyremarked:

The human hand is really an amazingly complex and amazinglysubtle piece of engineering in a sense. I f you look at the amount of thehuman brain that's devoted to processing and controlling motion andinformation from the human hand, it's really a large proportion of ourbrain. And so it gives us some sense tha t to tr y and duplicate thecapabilities of the human hand is not a simple task, and that's whyworking with this [robotic] hand we've had to use a fairly largecomputer with a large amount of memory and a large amount ofcomputational capability in order to coordinate the fingers. There's alot of processing necessary to make them move smoothly, make themmove with good sensitivity (National Geographic Society, 1985).Two hands, two discourses. The former hand acquires signification in th e

language of mid twentieth-century indust ridism; the latter, in the patois of latetwentieth-century cybernetics, computer science and information theory. Thecontrast hints a t a metamorphosis undenvay in scientific thinking about corporealfunctioning and constitution.A fundamental shift is occurring in the way th t humanbody is conceived of, expenenced, represented and regulated. The body, which forthree hundred years was likened to the machine, is now increasingly compared tocommunication/computational technologies. A hybrid body, a fusion of the organismand t he computer, is taking shape in scientific discourses. The flesh of latetwentieth-century science coaIesces around a quantity called information, and


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physiological functions are increasingly described in terms of the retrieval. input,storage, processing, and output of information.

The constitution of the modern individual as an information processor is anentirely new practice of the self. There was no possibility of a reading of self bnsedon computer technology sixty years ago, for the technology did no2 esist. The digitalcomputer is a product of cybernetics, the science of control and communication in theanimal and the machine. The tendency to merge the organism with th e computer isevident in the writings of the founder of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener (1894-1964):

It is my thes is t hat the physical functioning of the living individualand the operation of some of the new communications machines areprecisely parallel in thei r analogous att empts to control entropythrough feedback (quoted in Roszak, 1986, pp. 9-10).The computer is t he most r:icent technology to redefine the boundary between

technology and th e human person. Every civilization, J. David Bolter writes,"possesses a characteristic set of materials, techniques and devices that help toshape its cultural outlook" (1984, p. 16). These he calls defining technologies:technologies that capture the imagination of thinkers and reform tlieir ideas aboutnature. Bolter records the technologization of the human person by studyinghistorically and culturally specific technological metaphors for the self: in AncientGreece through to the Middle Ages, manual and craft technologies (spinning, potteiyand carpentry); from the Renaissance until the mid-twentieth century, mechanicaltechnologies (the clock, automaton, the steam engine, the factory); and, beginning inthe late twent ieth century, th e computer. Bolter contends tha t throughout Westernhistory certa in materials, techniques and devices have acquired sufficientexplanatory power to alter the metaphysical intuitions of a culture. Using thccategories and concepts suggested by these technologies, people have produced newtheories about self, nature and the relation between the two. Like al1 othertechnologies, defining technologies a lter the physical means of life; but in addition,


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they establish new epistemological frameworks. Their effects are felt materially andsymbolically.

In this thesis 1 ecount the influence of three defining technologies -themanual crafts, the machine and t he computer- n Western scientific ideas of bodi'iystructure and functioning. 1outline the movement and absorption of certaintechnological ideas into scientific discourses and the concomitant merging of thesetechnologies with our bodies. This thesis asks how technologies ar e representedlinguistically, how new systems for making sense of our bodies are produced, andhow th e new representations/self-representations achieve the st atus of truth. Inshort, th is thesis chronicles technological interpretations of the human body.

II. A History of the BodySince the seventeenth century the Western intellectual tradiiion ha s assumed

tha t there exists an objective, substan tive reality th at may be divined by applyingthe analytical techniques of science. This assumption, which is rooted in theepistemology of Ren Descartes and has nourished the rationalistic branches ofmodern (Cartesian) philosophy, projects the human body into the realm of thematerial , the biologically given, and th e natural ( Jaggar & Bordo, p. 4). In themodern age the body is posited as a tangible "fact" whose secrets ar e revealed only tospecialists in the life sciences.

But is a scientific description of the human body more privileged than others ,or is it just one explanation among many (Jacobus, Fox Keller, & Shuttleworth, p.7)?The idea t ha t the body is amenable only to scientific analysis is deeply engrainedin Western commonsense, and the notion tha t the body might be subject to historicalanalysis strikes many people as absurd. During an early stage of this research, 1explained to a medical doctor my inter est in historically-specific technologicalmetaphors for the body. "In a sense," 1said, "I'm studying the history of the hum anbody." He shot back, "Rubbish! The human body has no history!" His objection was


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th at only positivistic science could properly claim to investigate bodily phenornena.Further, he insisted that the body should no more be dignified with a history thnnanimals, trees, or other "naturaln objects. Histories are writ ten about human beings,not human bodies. The vicissitudes of the lives of actual people living in the renlworld is the stuff of history. By virtue of it s being a natural object amenable to thelaws of physics and chemistry, th e body is beyond the pale of history.

Over the pas t two decades, cultural critics, feminists, and ar tis ts have,without denying the merits of a scientific perspective on the body, emphasized thebody's historicity. In so doing they have contested the naturalness of the bodiesproduced by scientific discourses. In body historiography the body is never coded asnatural; i t is understood as a historical category th at must be interpreted throughthe lenses of the cultures that apprehend it. A history of the human body chroniclesthe modes by which th e body has been socially constructed. This approach does notdeny tha t "real" bodies exist, but reminds us t ha t our beliefs about reality a regrounded in th e social organization of knowledge. Cultural practices lend the bodyshape a nd substance. Far from being a fixed biological reality or a part of nature, thebody is stcidied as a cultural artifact and an object of knowledge. A history of themodes of its construction turns "the body into a thoroughly historicized andcompletely problematic issue" (k'eher, 1989, p. 11).

Michel Feher suggests a double st rategy for writing a history of the humanbody: (1) ompare earlier and foreign constructions wi th those perceived today; and(2 ) study the transformations t hat affect body techniques and the new problems thatthese practices suggest. Thus the ta sk ahead is to highlight cultural practices tha thave activated new ways to interpret the body; to show what knowledges have beenproduced; and to suggest the implications of these new knowledges.


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III. The si s Organizat ionThis work is an attempt to build on Bolter's. 1 augment his notion of defining

technologies by attending more closely to the processes by which social subjects"absorbn the technologies they encounter. The questions that interes t me include:how is one version of commonsense knowledge (e.g., the body is like a machine)replaced by another ( the body is like a computer)? What power animates an idea (t heidea of the computer) so th at i t is able to reach into people's bodies, colonize them,and finally, be taken as natural? How is this "truth" about the self reinforced andextended?

1contend tha t new knowledge is generated in the borderlands betweenconceptual categories. In this thesis I attend to tensions between the dichotomiesthat structure scientific discourses. According to Bolter, defining technologies redrawthe l ine between "personn and "naturen- his i s Bolter's crucial demarcation.However, as Bolter points out, the categories "personn and "nature" are themselvesslippery, and the very fluidity of the boundary evinces th e historical and culturalspecificity of the concepts. In this thesis 1 urn my attention to other dichotomies,thei r changing meanings, and the traffic of ideas across conceptual divides. Thus 1attend to dichotomies such as vitalisdmechanism, animate matterlinanimatematter; science/mysticism; matterlmind; and, of course, technology and th e body.

Each chapter represents a technological and epistemological shift. 1 show tha tknowledge about tlle st ructure and functioning of th e body is organized by th e ideasand categories suggested by the defining technologies of the age. However, somaticknowledge cannot be properly understood outside the context of th e philosophy andscience that gives rise to it. Thus a prerequisite for understanding the "bodyview"engendered by a particular technological imagination i s to understand something ofhow authorita tive discourses have construed "reality."


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Thus, in each chapter, 1 ocate bodyview within its worldview. 1defineworldview as th e se t of fundamental beliefs and practices th at esplain reality anddelineate what knowledges a re possible. The principles and practices th at constitutea worldview establish the grid of intelligibility through which people interpret thecosmos, the world, a nd in general, why things a re a s they are. Similarly, 1 definebodyview as a collection of core beliefs and practices tha t turn t he body into anobject of knowledge. In each chapter 1expose the connections between bodyview andworldview.

In this account there are no sudden "paradigm shifts" to a new normal science.At each juncture there are both continuities and disruptions. For esample, themechanical sciences tha t arose in th e seventeenth century were built squarely onthe foundations of the older organicist sciences. Organicist principles were, in somecases, merely translated into a mechanistic vocabulary. Yet the new mechanisticsciences suggested an enti rely different way to perceive reality. Both the transitionsan d the continuities must be taken into account if historical theories of corporealityar e to be properly understood.

1begin in the remote past. In Chapter 2, The Pre-Mechanistic Body, 1illustrate the worldview and bodyview of ancient and medieval Europe through areading of the Timaeus, Plato's cosmological myth. The myth i s an early source oftechnological ideas about th e cosmos and the body, one which profoundly irtfluencedlat er thinkers. Plato invoked the c rah technologies of his age- pinning, pottery,carpentry, and tool making- o expiain the universal order. In Plato's creationstory, the gods ar e ar tisans who fasliioned the world an d the bodies of men. Thegods' knowledge of divine technologies- lchemy and magic- nabled them toenliven thei r handiwork. The universe and everything in it was compounded fromelementary substances and brought to life by alchemist/magician-gods.

Chapter 3 , Th e Body as Machine, is concerned with the discursive evolution ofthe human body from the supernatu ral product of manual technologists to a


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machine. This chapter is critical, for in it 1depict the dominant Western worldviewand bodyview from the seventeenth century until the present. Together, themechanistic worldview and bodyview establish the epistemological ground fromwhich the West tends to interpret reality. In this chapter 1describe th e symbolicreordering of reality occasioned by the change from a science based on animis tpnnciples to one founded on mechanism, and how this development affected notionsabout the structure and functioning of the human body.

In Chapter 4, The Body as Computer, is about twentieth-century scientificdiscourses tha t organize new corporeal understandings. Cybernetics posits th at thehuman body, on a fundamental level, is a "machine" for processing information andtherefore, analogous to the digital computer. 1 ocate bodyview in th e context of theemerging post-Newtonian worldview. My aim is to document t he emergence of newunderstandings of somatic organization and operation tha t a re informed by theconceptual categories suggested by late-twentieth-century information technologies.

1conclude, in Chapter 5,with a suggestion on how to enr ich Bolter's notion ofdefining technologies. Applying t he approach, 1speculate on the implications of twodifferent cybernetic repatternings of the human body.

IV. Limitations of the StudyIn attemptiiig this project, 1was acutely aware of the problem of attempting to

transla te, a s it were, the knowledges and beliefs of the cultures of other places andtimes into terms comprehensible to a reader living in the present. How can thetheories of the distant past be faithfully represented in the languages andconceptual categones of the late twentieth century? Since 1am not a scholar of theClassic, Medieval or Renaissance periods, my attempts to unders tand the variousdemarcations 1 explore in this thesis (natureJculture, humadnon-human,technologyhodies, and so on) have been, of necessity, drawn principally from


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secondary sources. My readings of bygone interpreta tions are alreadyinterpretations.

Similarly, the meanings of the categories of which 1 peak- cience,mysticism, nature , culture, technologies, bodies- re not fixed, but historically andsocially specific. The meanings of each. of these terms has shifted substantia lly overtime, a problem compounded by the fact t ha t the meanings of each have changed inrelation to the others. Errors of presentism (the writing of past history in terms ofthe present) have, inevitably, crept into my writing.

To compensate for these limitations, 1have attempted to research and writegenealogically. Genealogy refers to the method of historical analysis employed byMichel Foucault in hi s later works to record the history of interpreta tions. Foucaultemphasizcd tha t intellectual history is not a his tory of ideas, but the history of therituals of power th at uphold the valourized interpretations. While my method isprobably best characterized a s a critical reading of historical texts, my approach hasbeen informed by Foucauidian analytics.

Much of this thesis consists of descriptive overviews of influential systems ofthought that have produced new theories about the body. The desire to portray thewhole of "Greek scientific thoughtn or "European Mechanistic Philosophy" is adanger. 1know tha t 1 isk oversimpXying or essentializing diverse historical eras,peoples, philosophies, mythologies, cosmologies, sciences, and systems of knowledge.Undoubtedly, my choices of textual resources have skewed my interpretations. 1cannot hope, nor do 1claim, to provide a definitive reading of any past epoch.Foucault is helpful here, to a point, in his articulation of the powerknowledge nexus.A definitive reading is illusory; tr ut h is never "outside power, or lacking in power."We always operate within ideology. Methodologically, this means shifting attentionfrom the ideas themselves to the social relations thatproduce the ideas. Thu s 1havemade little att empt to ferret out truths about the body. Instead 1 have tried to drawattentior! t o the struggles over the meaning of the body.


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In addition, my study is circumscribed by t he gendered, Eurocentric biases ofmany of my sources. The texts 1drew upon were mostly written by men or from amasculinist perspective, and few of the authors mention the contributions of Jewishand Islamic scholars on the development of Western scientific thought. 1have triedto address these limitations by including, where possible, footnotes andparenthetical comments to draw attention to these absences.


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Chapter 2The Pre-MechanisticBody

He put bone together as follows. He sifted out ear th tha t was pure andsmooth, kneaded i t and steeped it in marrow; next he piaced i t in fireand then again into water, then back into fire and then again intowater, and by this r.epetition of the process tendered it insoluble byeither. From the resul tant substance he formed a spherical bonysphere to contain th e brain...- lato, pp. 101-2

1. Introduction: Chapter OverviewChapter 2 is a n encapsulated view of the body from Greco-Roman antiquity

until the Renaissance. Both the subject and time frame are vast, and 1do notpretend to present an encyclopedic history of the body for this period. My goal hereis to portray, in broad strokes, what 1believe to be the most salient features of thepre-mechanistic body. However, the human body cannot be deciphered outside of thesystem of rationality tha t makes i t comprehensible. Therefore it will be necessary tosketch the contours of the pre-mechanistic worldview.

Characterizing a worldview, too, is a monumental task, but a simplification ispossible. To illus tra te th e worldview and bodyview prevalent in Western Europeprior to the Renaissance, 1consider the defining technologies of ancient andmedieval Europe. Spinning, pottery and carpentry are Bolter's candidates for thedefining technologies of th e ancient world; to his list 1add two other technologiesthat helped to organize pre-mechanistic discourses on nature: alchemy and naturalmagic- ublime technologies of physical and metaphysical mixing.

1 llustrate the pre-mechanistic body primanly (but not exclusiveIy) through areading of the Tirnaeus, lato's (ca. 428-ca. 348 BCE) cosmological myth. 1chose the


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Timaeus for three reasons. First, th e myth i s an early source of technological ideasabout the cosmos and the body. Plato invoked th e technologies of his age to explainthe universal order. Throughout, God is described as a craftsman, a maker and afashioner. He and his demiurges (lesser gods created by God) were spinners, potters,carpenters, farmers, and tool makers who first ffamed the body of the world, thenthe bodies of men. (Women and animals were made later.) But i t was the demiurges'knowledge of alchemy and magic, 1wil' ergue, tha t enabled them to animate theirhandiwork. According to Plato, t he world and everything in it was ompounded fromelementary substances by alchemismagician-gods.

Second, Plato's cosmology affords a view (albeit distorted through thedarkened lenses of time and place) of "sciencen (natural philosophy) prior to the riseof mechanistic philosophy. TheTimaeus is Plato's rational account of a divinecreation. Many of his ideas were derived or borrowed from earlier andcontemporaneous thinkers, and a s such, the Timaeus reflects, in the main, theassumptions tha t undenvrite th e physics, psychology, astronomy, physiology andmedicine of his day. From the Hellenistic age until th e Renaissance, naturalphilosophy was built on the organicist, animist and vitalist foundations reflected inthe Timaeus.The universe was regarded a s a living animal, and al1it contained wasseen as alive. These early ideas about nature stood in sharp contrast to those tha temerged during the Scientific Revolution, when a new picture of real ity gradualiycame into focus. Based on a philosophy of mechanism, nature was likened to amachine: the universe consists of lifeless matter and motion th at obeysmathematical laws.

Third, the Timaeuswas a n extremely influential document in the developmentof European thought. The work was known in Antiquity, and two different Lat intranslations sw-vived the collapse of the Roman Empire. Most important medievallibraries possessed one or both editions, and consequently, th e Ximaeus was studiedand quoted throughout the Middle Ages. I t was Plato's only dialogue- nd one of


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the few works of Greek antiquity- nown in t he West during the "Da rk and earlyMiddle Ages (Lee, in Plato, p. 7).For over a thousand years the work eserted greuterinfluence than anything else in Plato. Both neo-Platonism (the dominant Europeanphilosophy between CE 250 and 1250) and early Christianity accepted the authorityof the Timaeus.Despite Plato's polytheism, Church fathers easily assimilated Plato'screator-god into the god of Genesis. After the thirteenth century, when Platonismand neo-Platonism were eclipsed by Church Aristotelianism, Plato's theology

1remained vita l in gnostic and hermetic thought. The humanist revival of classicalscientific and medical texts was stimulated, in par t, by the undercurrents of Platonicphilosophy t ha t had suMved in th e Latin West. The cosmological outlook ofRenaissance luminaries the likes of Copernicus and Kepler can be traced, in part, totheir familiarity with the Timaeus andlor Platonic philosophy (Mibansky in Plato, p.22; Debus, 1978, p. 11). In addition to providing a creation myth, t he Timaeus is thesource of the Atlantis legend. Plato's precise descriptions of the antediluvian worldincited the imaginations of hundreds of authors from the nineteenth centuryonward. Owing to its influence on ancient, medieval and modern European thought,the impact of Plato's cosmology can be said to be continuous from it s publicationuntil t he present (Lee in Plato, p. 7; Russell, p. 157).

A cosmology, by definition a theory about the origins of the universe, isimplicitly a theory of nature. The Timaeus is not scientific in th e modern sense ofthe word, but th e myth does suggest the epistemological ground from which peopleinterpreted thei r world. Contained within Plato's creation myth, like tiny invisibleseeds, are many assumptions out of which rational explanations of the world havegrown. It is these g e m s of knowledge 1 consider here, for they imply culturally andhistorically specific ideas about physis (nature). What assumptions vitalized a pre-mechanistic discourse on nature? What a re t he unacknowledged knowledges- heunseen and unspoken beliefs- ha t lie buried in the pre-modern worldview andbodyview?


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1 use the Timaeus also to illustrate macrocosm and microcosm from theHellenic period to the Renaissance. Conceptions of nat ure that originated with theGreeks coloured early Europe's unders tanding about the body. Plato's cosmologyauthorized the metaphysical presuppositions t ha t undenvrote these ideas. My objectis to reveal the metaphysical "glue" that held together ancient an d medieval theoriesabout the universe and the body by enumerating the interlocking knowledges tha tlent them shape and substance. In this way, pre-mechanistic conceptions of bodilyconstitution and functioning are elucidated.

1do not regard thi s exercise as the search for the origins of the idea of thebody a$ defined by a particular technological imagination. 1view the Timaeus not asa source of technological metaphors, but as a point of discursive production. It is notthe metaphors themselves tha t are of concern, but the grid of intelligibility and therules for deciphering that the metaphors lay down. 1 assume that Plato's rhetoricreflects the requirements of a "rational" discourse on nature; i t is Prato's system ofrationality tha t 1 ry to render intelligible

II. Theory of Ideas (Underlying Forms)A key assumption of ancient Western philosophy is the belief in t he reality of

underlying Forms (or Ideas). Plato's theory was a synthesis of Heraclitus' doctrinetha t nothing is permanent in the sensible world, and Parmenides' belief in atimeless, changeless rea lity (Russell, p. 123) .The Platonic theory of Ideas hadenormous eflect upon subsequent siges. The persistent dualism so deeply etched inthe Western outlook continually affirms th e influence of Plato's theory of Ideas onlater thought: Aristotelian philosophy, neo.Platonism and Christianity are but threemajor philosophical systems that borrowed and built on Plato's dilalistic doctrine.

The terms of Plato's theory of Ideas were se t out in th e beginning of theTimaeus.Plato distinguished two sepa rate orders of reality: Ideas (or Being)- ure,eternal , unchanging thoughts in the mind of God; and Opinions (or Appearances)-


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Ideas imperfectly perceived by mortals. To know reality, one must have knowledge ofsomething that actually exists. Only th at which is eternally unchanging is real. Theworld a s presented to the five senses is not fully real, for sensory impressions aresubject to interpretation. The physical world is but a secondary reality, andknowledge of i t is bound to be imprecise (Lee, in Plato, p. 40). No knowledge ofreality can be obtained empirically. On th e other hand, Ideas are reai, for they areeternal ly the same. Only intelligence, aided by reason, can apprehend t rut h (p. 40).Intelligence and reason are the organs of perception of the soul.

Ideas a re archetypes of al1 th at is experienced and known in the physicalworld. Consider an apple. It might t as te sweet, or appear red, la rge or sphericol; butthese judgrnents Say nothing of its reality. At other times, under differentconditions, or to other people, the same apple might seem tar t, or orange, or small,or pear-shaped. The senses provide opinions, not fixed knowledge about the apple.Its reality exists in the mind of God as the ideal, transcendental Apple; or as theirreducible qualities of Redness, Largeness, Roundness, and so on.

Plato writes of Ideas both as ideal models and a s pure abstractions. In theTimaeus Plato portrays the created world as an imperfect copy of a divinely-conceived archetype. The world itself is not eternal, "for it is visible, tangible, andcorporeal, and therefore perceptible by th e sensesn (Plato, p. 41). The demiurges whocrafted the world looked to the celestial blueprint for guidance. The world was"constructed on the patte rn of what is apprehensible 8y reason and understandingand eternal ly unchanging" (p. 41).Plato's heavenly iueals are numbers, trianglesand geometric proportions, and things in the s ens ibl ~ orld are replicas of or aremade up of these perfect forms. Goodness, beauty, regularity and exactitude indexthe proximity of an object to it s ideal, which is godly perfection (Dijksterhuis, p. 76).

Many pre-modern philosophical and religious systems adapted or modifiedPlato's theory of underlying forms. Aristotle, whose philosophical system formed thebackbone of ancient and medieval science, rejected Plato's rationalism in favour of a


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more empirical approach to knowledge. He opposed Plato's dichotomy of perfectforms and imperfect appearances, proposing instead t ha t form existed in individualobjects rather than in a separate transcendent level of reality (Merchant, p. 13).Later, the contrast between eternal ideas and the transient objects of the sensesbecame the starting point for much neo-Platonic speculative enquiry (Flew, p. 273).Chris tian beliefs about the immortality of the soul also had their origin in Plato.Both Platonism and Christianity regarded th e sensible world of time and space as

1less sutstantive than a perfect level of reality. For Fiato, othenvorldliness wasmetaphysical: truth, beauty and wisdom were to be found in the suprasensible realmof ideas. For the Church fathers, othenvorldliness was temporal: the afterlife.

A more enduring legacy of th e ancient belief in underlying forms is the beliefthat mind (or soul) and body are separate. Implicit in the theory of Ideas is the viewth at there exists two independent, separable, irreducible, unique realms (Angeles,p.661, one perceived by th e mind or soul, the other by the bodily organs of perception.In the Tirnaeus,flesh is subordinate to the soul, for God created the soul before thebody. Ancient and medieval science applied the doctrine of mind-body duality to al1departments of nature . Al1 mat ter, i t was believed, consisted of a mater ial substanceinfused with mind or spirit.

III. An Organicist Natural PhilosophyNatural philosophy before the Renaissance was, for the most par t, animistic

and organicist: animism assumes that matter is alive; organicism explainsphennmena on the basis of an analogy to living things. Roth imply that the cosmos isa vast creature; tha t everything is in some sense alive and sensitive; tha t matter i simbued with a vital, nonmaterial spirit (mind or soul); and t ha t al1 objects possesspsychologies (or consciousness). Organicism also implies th at wholes cannot bebroken down into pieces; tha t the function of the whole causes and coordinates theactivity of the parts; and that the parts that constitute a whole (body, society, and so


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on) are crucially interdependen t. These idea s were upheld, in various fornis, byvirtually al1 Greek, medieval and ea rly Renaissanc e thinkers.T e c h n ol o g ic a l C o n t e x t o f A n c i e n t a n d M e d i e v a l E u r o p e

My aim he re is to show how th e defining technologies of the ancient worldsubs tantia ted a belief in a l iving universe. My argum ent will unfold in thr ce stnges:first, 1will review th e technological context of th e ancie nt world and identify tliedefining technologies. Then, 1will show how th e chara cter of these technologiessubs tantia ted a teleological und ersta ndin g of natu re. Finally, 1will outline th cimplications of animistic natu ral philosophy on an u nde rstan ding of t l ie cosn~ os,hc.heavenly bodies, th e ear th , society and the h um an body.

Technology, a s 1use t he word h em , is to be understood a s people's ert'orts tocontrol the enviro.:ment in which they live an d work. Al1 technologies havc a so urceof power, and a m ean s for regulating, controlling, or focusing the power in order toperfonn w ork. For example, a mechanical watch receives power from a tensedmainspring; the energy of the spring is control led by an escapement or othermechanical regulator. A refrigerato r is powered by electricity; i ts tem pera ture isregulated by a thermo stat . In purely ins t rume ntal term s, any technology can bcresolved into vectors of power an d control.

Consider both th e technological landscape of Plato's Greece, and the men ns bywhich its technologies were powered an d controlled. Th e intellectual a nd a rtisticachieve men ts of the Hellenic Age notwithstanding , ma inland Greece rem:iinedprima rily an ag ricultural and sea faring civilization (Russell , pp. 29-30).Wlieelcdtransportat ion wa s rare (Bol ter, 1984).Devices to harness the ene rgies of niiture(power technologies) had not yet been invented. The clock and o ther au hn om ou stechnologies (m achines th at co ntain their own principle of motion (B eau ne, p. 431))were scarcely conceivable. Metallurgy w as sti l l in i ts infancy. The availubility undcost of raw ma teria ls l imited w hat rould be conceived of and built . Iron wiis fur


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scarcer in the south of ~ u r o i ehan in the north, and consequently, the metal washardly used in Greece and Rome (White, p. 40). The basic concepts of Newtoniandynamics -mass, velocity and acceleration- ould have been utterlyincomprehensible (Lee, in Plato, p. 13).In other words, ancient Europe possessedlittle of the technological imagination of later times. The mental frameworknecessary to receive mechanical and industrial ideas simply dici not exist; and oncethe ideas were glimpsed, they spread very slowly. Lynn White Jr. demonstrates tha tthe incorporation of new technological innovations into people's ways of thinkingsometimes required hundreds or thousands of years. The mechanical crank, forexample, "is extraordinary not on!y for it s late invention between 816 - 8341, orarriva1 from China, but also for the almost unbelievable delay, once it was known, inits assimilation to technological thinking" (White, p. 110).'

Ironically, the Hellenic age invented many of the technical aids th at were tofigure prominently in lat e medieval and early Renaissance reconceptualizations ofnature. Hero of Alexandria constructed a miniature windmill and a working steamturbine, but these devices were regarded a s little more than toys. The Cam and theLhree basic gear systems (star, crown and worm) were devised by the Greeks, butwere not developed into sources of power. These devices left no impression onsubsequent technological developments (White, pp. 79-80), and were not definingtechnologies in their t ime.

What, then, were the defining technologies of the ancient world? What devices,materials and techniques sparked th e imaginations of contemporary thinkers andsuggested themselves as explanations for the workings of nature? In Greece andRome, says Bolter, the defining technologies were those associated with the crafts-

'The conceptual difficulties posed by the crank might possibl relate to the ancient conviction thatcontinuous rotary motion was appropriate only to heaven ly godies, while rectilinear andreciprocating motioii were thought natural for things living in the sublunary p lane. To use a crank.our tendons and muscles mu st relate themse lves to the m otion of celestial objects, an exercise fromwhich humans long recoiled (White, p. 115).The technological imagination wa s bounded by thenssumed predispositions and lim ita t~o ns f the flesh. (A description of sublunary-supralunarytheory nppears on page 69.)


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the manual technologies. Greek artisans used potter's wheels, lathes, drop spindlesand the like; their primary materials were clay, wood and wool. Carpentry, pottery-making and spinning are Bolter's candidates for the defining technologies of pre-Renaissance Europe. "In the ancient world," Bolter writes, poets and philosophers

observed the drop spindle and potter's wheel an d were struck by th euse of rotary motion and of human or animal power. From theseobservations came support for the rotating universe, t he animatenature of the s tars , Aristotle's theory of form and matt er (pp. 16-71.'I'ypically, a spinner, potter, or carpenter worked a matena l by setting i t in

motion. Then, guided by an image of the desired product, the craftsperson drew out,cut, shaped, or th envi se modified the material until i t conformed, more or less, tothe original idea. Control over the creative process was exercised by the art isan'sintellect. The power to se t the maten al in motion was supplied by the arti san,slaves, or animals. The manual technologies were controlled by an exercise of thewill; their ultimate source of power was the body of a lihn g creature. Beforemachines developed into significant forms of power (during the late Middle Ages),th e body was the prime technology in Western Europe.Movement and Life

The living creature's ability to initiate motion was key in pre-mechanisticformulations of nature. Movement was seen as a sign of life. Humans or animalsmoved so long as they lived. Therefore, whatever moved- r whatever was capableof imparting - as alive. Viewed from the present, the link between motionand life seems simplistic because non-living locomotion is p ar t of our dailyexpenence; autonomous machines ar e integral to modern industnalized societies.But in th e ancient world, al1 work was performed by virtue of m ~ s c l e s , ~otmechanisms.

Muscles are "the contractile fibrous bands or b undles th atproduce mouement in Iltrclunirnd body"(Concise Oxford D ictionary, 1984,my ernphasis).

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The association between motion and vital activity carries with it th e idea tha tmovement must be caused: motion results from the application of a force to anobject. Increase the force and the object moves faster; remove the force and motionstops altogether. This assumption i s explicit in Plato: "For it is difficult, or ra therimpossible, for what is moved to exist without what causes it s motion" (Plato, pp.81-2) .~ lato recognized both external and internal causes of motion. The externalcause, necessity (or mechanical necessity), occurs when one body collides with andimparts i ts motion to a second. Things th at happen by necessity ar e chaotic, aresubject to no law, and serve no purpose or reason. The internal cause is self-propelled motion, motion originating in the th ing itself and not imparted by an youtside thing (Russell, p. 159; Angeles, p. 180). The internal cause of movement isthe sou1- ovement init iated by an act of will (Plato, pp. 64-5, p. 96). Sou1 (ormind) is the only self-mover. Every self-moving body embodies a non-materialprinciple which is regarded as the essence of its reality.

Plato accepted both necessity and mind a s causal agents; but of the two, heascribed greater importance to causes that operate intelligently (Plato, p. 64).Aristotle built h is en tire scientific edifice on the same assumption. He defined nature(physis) as "the source of movement of natura l objects, being present in them eitherpotentially or in complete reality" (Merchant, p. 11).The assumption t ha t intelligentcauses take precedence over mechanical causes persisted in Western science for thenext 1503 years; i t was overturned during the Scientific Revolution.ATeleological Science

Thus the sciences of pre-Renaissance Europe constructed reality teleologically.Natura l phenomena were explained not by means of prior causes, but by ends , aims,

Aristotle also took this posit ion. He tau ght t hat a projecti le launched a t an angle to the e art hfollows a perfect straight-l ine trajectory. Vortexes in the a ir buoy i t up to keep i ts p ath true. Afterreaching its zenith, the rojecti le immediately drops perpendicularly to the earth. In fact , aprojectile follows a paragolic trajectory, and air hindors, nct assists, i ts motion. Th e G re e b had nonotion of mom entum , i.e., a quan tity of motion related to its mass, t ha t keeps a body moving oncethe motive force is removed, no r could they conceive of ai r as a retarding force. In Newtonianphysics, m~menturn eeps a body in linear motion until th e body is disturbed by a n extern al force.


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or intentions. Nature does nothing in vain; nature is purposeful; nature alwaysmoves toward goals. Every object has its "natural" place, the place it belongs "bynature." It is the nature of heavy objects to seek the centre of the ear th, and thenature of smoke to rise to the heavens. A body "knows" its place, and naturallyendeavours to return there. An object accelerates as i t approaches it s destination.The sun'r natu re is to traverse the heavenly orb; a human's, to walk on the ground; atree's, to be rooted in the earth . Physis also has to do with growth, with changes insize or quality. It is the nature of an acorn to grow into an oak tree; the oak tree isits end, the sake for which the acorn exists (Russell, p. 214). Nature belongs to thatclass of causes that operate for the sake of something (p. 215). In a sense, futureevents "cause" present ones.A will, mind, or intellect directs al1 of the processes ofnature.

Nature was seen a s a vital force, the source and fashioner of al1 living things(Taylor, p. 8).From the Hellenic era onward, nature was thought alive. Collingwood

For the early Greeks quite simply, and with some qualifications for al1Greeks whatever, nature was a vast living organism, consisting of amaterial body spread out in space and permeated by movements intime; the whole body was endowed with life, so that al1 its movementswere vital movements; and al1 these movements were purposive,directed by intellect (quoted in Bolter, p. 23).In general, the worldview of ancient and Medieval Europeans was animistic,

organismic and vitalistic. "[O]i;r world..."wrote Plato in the concluding paragraph ofthe Timaeus, is a visible living creature, it contains al1 creatures tha t are visibleand itself is an image of the intelligible; and it ha s thus become a visible god,supreme in greatness and excellence, beauty and perfection, a single, uniquelycreated heavenn (1981, p. 124).


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W .God as the First CauseHow did the living universe come into existence? In Plato's cosmology, the first

cause is God. Movement (or activity) betokens life, and God is the originator of al1movement. Plato believed in a complementaq relationship between activity andrepose; one cannot exist without t he other (Plato, p. 82).Therefore the originator ofmotion must itself De unmoved. God is, in Anstotelian terms, t he "unmoved mover"(Russell, p. 180)who created a living cosmos. The moving (and therefore living)universe is t he handiwork of a divine artisan.

The Timaeus was th e first Greek account of a divine creation (Lee, in Plato, p.7). In describing the deity as a craftsman, Plato introduced a new image for God.Earl ier Greek cosmologies had been either mythological ( the origin and developmentof the universe were explained in the language of sexual reproduction and growth)or evolutionary (the universe was accounted for in t e m s of unplanned developrnentarising from its material organization). Although elements of th e earlier tropessurvive in the Timaeus, Plato's myth introduced the idea tha t th e cosmos wasbrought into existence by the deliberate, constructive activities of God (p. 8).Thedemiurges, using their hands or simple tools, worked the raw materials of theprimordial universe to create order, syrnmetry, beauty, goodness and purpose.Drawing on the thoughts of earlier cosmologists, Plato synthesized a n endur ingdivine artificer.

Mythological cosmologies were premised on the belief th at matter grows intothe world by virtue of an inherent reproductive power (Lee, in Plato, p. 8).Hesiod,for example, wrote of gods and goddesses who begat children, and of th e earth whogave birth to "high mountains and unharvested sea" (quoted by Lee, in Plato, p. 8).Storyteller Beulah Swayze (p. 3)summarizes a number of early Greek cosmologieslike this:

Out of Chaos emerged Earth, th e mother of a11, Uranus t he Sky andthe depths of the Undenvorld. Ear th, t y her own efforts, caused the


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mountains, valleys, trees? beasts, birds and fishes to appear. Bu t itwas fiom the mating of Earth and Sky th at t he first monsters wereborn...A different tradit ion, originating in the fourth century BCE, yielded an

altogether different understanding of nature. Atomism was an early attempt to posita natural istic science free of superna tura l and occult influences. Leucippus (450-420BCE) and his younger contemporary Democritus (460-370 BCE) produced the firstunequivocally atomistic cosmology (Flew, p. 203). The atomists sought to explain theworld without introducing t he idea of purpose or final cause (Russell,p. 84). To theatomists, the world and it s processes a re entire ly attributable to lawfully operatingmaterial forces. Everything tha t occurs is due to necessity. Such accounts excludeth e principles of intelligence or design fi-om the worldview; the world is a product ofunplanned development arising fi-om its material organization.

The Timaeus s a n assertion of the opposite view: the power behind theuniverse is divine purpose. Plato's cosmology is a theological and teleological accountof the origins of the world and of the phenomena of nature (Lee, in Plato, p. 7) . Thestory needs a creator to prove the intelligibility of the universe. Plato believed thatthe universe was comprehensible because we can, after all, understand it . Platoaccounts for the intelligibility of the cosmos by positing a divine intelligent forceunderlying it.

God is th e architect of the cosmos and its sustaining cause. His enduringexistence guarantees the persistence of the universe; if God were to withdraw hissupport, everything both animate and inanimate, would "collapse into non-existence" (William Temple, quoted in Flew, p. 80).

In Plato's cosmology, God creates and susta ins a living universe. Theorganicist and anirnistic predilections of pre-mechanistic science are apparent inPlato's descriptions of the creation of the cosmos, the heavenly bodies, the ea rth andthe bodies of men and women.


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The CosmosGod "created a single visible living being, containing within itself al1 living

beings" (Plato, p. 43). Like a living creature, the cosmos is "visible, tangible, andcorporealn p.41), ut because of its excellence and completeness Plato ascribes itthe status of "a blessed godn (p. 46). God ensures the continuity of his creation bymaking it totally self-contained, for "it was better for it to be self-sufficient thandependent on anything else." The creator gave the universe no eyes, for "thereremained nothing visible outside it;" no ears , for there was nothing audible beyondits outer edge; no nose, for "there was no surrounding air which it needed to brea thein;" no moiith nor organs of digestion, for the animal "was designed to supply its ownnourishment from its own decay." The universe needed no hands "as it had no needto grasp anything or defend itself," nor feet or legs, for its natural circular motionbefits a god (pp. 45-614

God turned the body of the divine animal as a carpenter turns wood on a lathe.Thus he created an orbiting (i.e., moving and therefore living) sphere (p. 46), "afigure tha t has the greatest degree of completeness and uniformity... and gave it aperfectly smooth external finish al1 round ..."(p. 45). The demiurge produced thematerial of the world-sou1 by a complex process of metaphysical and mathematicalmeasuring, cutting and mixing. He wove together world-soul and body, thusdiffusing the sou1 throughout the body (pp. 46-50).

The Heavenly BodiesPlato describes the Sun, the stars and the five planets as living creatures, and

tells how the divine Artificer. made and bound together their bodies and souls. TheSun and planets exist for the purpose of marking time (Plato, pp. 52-51, to provide "a

There were for Plato seven distinct physical motions: uniform circular motion, up, do m , forwards,backwards, right an d le& . Continuous circular motion, as exhibited by the heavenly orb, the sta rs,the sun and the m oon, was deemed perfect and eternal, and therefore a godly prerogative (Lee, inPlato, p. 45). By co nt ra t, the six rectilinear motions were thou ht proper and correct for sublunarybodies, i.e., anything that moved within the atmosphere of the ia rt h, including animals andhumans. See also page 69.


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moving image of Eternity" (p. 51). The retrograde motion of the planets is accountedfor, partially, by the independent exercise of the ir wills (Lee, in Plato, p. 14).The Earth

The living Earth, too, was created by God, and acts a s foster-mother to thecreatures who inhabit it (Plato, p. 55). She is "the first and oldest of the gods bornwithin the heaven" (p. 56). From Greek antiquity until the Renaissance the geocosm(ear th) was regarded as alive. It was comrnonly held t ha t t he world-organisnireasons, has sensations, and generates otherl iving beings. Springs were likened toblood vessels, and other fluids to sweat, saliva, mucus and other lubricants. Metalsand minerals were thought to grow in its veins. A widely held alchemical%elief wasth at base metals grow into gold in the earth's matrices (wombs) (Merchant, pp.20-7). he ear th even had i ts own eliminbdon system. "The tendency for both [theearth and the human] to break wind caused earthquakes in the case d he formerand another type of quake in th e latter" (p. 24).The Bodies of Men and Women

God ordered his demiurges to create man, saying "turn your hands, a s isnatura l to you, to the making of living things, taking a s your mode1 my own activityin creating you" (Plato, p. 57). The divine artificers began by binding the immortalsoul to the mortal body:

[They] took the immortal principle of the mortal creature, and inimitation of their own maker borrowed from the world portions of fireand earth, water and air- oans to be eventually repaid - ndwelded together wha t they had borrowed; the bonding they used wasnot indissoluble, like tha t by which they were themselves heldtogether, but consisted of a multitude of rivets too small to be seen,which held the par t of each individual body together in a unity. Andinto this body, subject to the flow of growth and decay, they fastenedthe orbits of the immortal soul (Plato, p. 59).

Alchemy is described on page 29.


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Evoking images of potters engaged in their craft- r alchemists practisingtheirs- lato describes how the demiurges created the human body, star ting withthe marrow (which is regarded as th e substance tha t houses the soul), the bones andthe skull:

[Tlhe purest fire, water, a ir and earth...he mixed in due proportion toproduce marrow, as a kind of universal seed for mortal creatures ofevery kind...and he moulded into spherical shape the part of themarrow... that was to contain the divine seed and called it the brain,indicating tha t when each crea ture was completed the vesse1containing the brain should be the head...And round 'train andmarrow, for which he first constructed a bony protective covering, hewent on to frame our whole body...He put bone together as follows. He sifted out eart h tha t was pure andsmooth, kneaded it and steeped it in marrow; next he placed it in fireand then again into water, then back into fire and then again intowater, and by this repetition of the process tendered i t insoluble byeither. From the resultan t substance he formed a spherical bonysphere (sic) to contain the brain ...(Plato, pp. 101-2).

In a similar vein, Plato details how the demiurges put together t he rest ofman's body. The image of man tha t emerges is th at of a privileged creature. He isthe handiwork of alchemist-gods; his structure reflects both the form of the universe(e.g., both skull and universe a re spherical) and i ts composition (e.g., both are madeof the same materials). In death, righteous men become one with t he s tars.Cowardly or immoral men are reincarnated as women. Women's bodies wereconstructed by the demiurges by piercing a channel through men's bodies. In thisview, women a re fiawed men, both morally and phys i~logical ly.~

V. The Structure of Matter and Technologies of MixingDivine intelligence is a t th e root of Plato's conception of the universe. The

visible cosmos -the heavenly orb, the stars, the Sun, the planets, the ear th and itsinhabitants- ere brought into existence by God. But divine purpose alone cannotaccount for al1 of creation. Intelligence pervades and vitalizes everything, but there

An incisive analysis of the relationship between scientific conceptionsofwomen's bodies andcultural altitudes toward women a peors in Martin (1987). See also Lange (1983); Harding (1986);Jacobua. Fox Keller & ~huttlewortg(l990).


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is more to the universe than mind-stuff. God crafted the cosmos from physicalmatter . In pre-mechanistic natu ral philosophy, matte r was utterly unlike its moderncounterpart. 1will discuss the constitution of matter in a moment, but first, 1 willconsider the ontological statu s of mat ter in a living universe.Ontological Status of Matter

In Plato's portrayal of the universe, matter has i ts own integrity. Mat ter ismalleable, but not infinitely so. The recalcitrance of matter constrains even God.Unlike the omnipotent God of Genesis who created the universe ex nihilo, theDemiurge manufactured the living cosmos by refashioning the mater ials found inthe primordial chaos. In Plato's philosophy divine purpose and necessity ar ecooperative causes. Necessity is subordinate to divine purpose, but mat terestablishes the paramete rs within which God can operate (Plato, p. 96). Like ahuman craftsperson, th e gods did the best .they could give~ ihe materials availableto them.

The Demiurge and the lesser gods do not transcend the universe, but arerooted in it and bound by its laws. In contras t, th e biblical God stands outside ofNature, and nothing limits his sovereignty (Tarnbiah, pp. 6-7). Intimate knowledgeof the laws of natu re enabled Plato's deities to shape the universe. In some of thescientific traditions indebted to Platonism, the secrets of nature known to the godswere also intell igible to humans of religious an d philosophic miens. Directapprehension of the super-sensible, unchanging, eternal realm of Ideas gavephilosophers access to God's thoughts, and thus to godlike powers. Magic andalchemy are examples of divine-sciences practised in ancient, medieval andRenaissance Europe.Natural Magic and Alchemy

Natural or ritual magic (theurgy) was t he empirical science of the propertiesand uses of plants, herbs, stone and other nat ura l substances (Dijksterhuis, p. 158).


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In Renaissance Europe, magicians were charged with the task of explaining theseemingly inexplicable forces of nature- agnetism, magnification and steampower. Magic was integral to neo-Platonism, the dominant European philosophybetween circa 250 - 1250 (Flew, p. 244). Neo-Platonic natural magic presupposed ahierarchically structured cosmos, and assumed tha t terrestrial changes wereinfluenced by the celestial heavens and could be produced artificially by humanmanipulation of natural objects, in which these influences inhered (Merchant, p.105). Renaissance magicians conceived of nat ure as a vital or magic force th at couldbe tapped and directed to achieve practical goals. The magician's powers werethought to be natural , God-given and available to al1 (Boas, p. 21). Magic was closelyassociated with religion, for the search for the hidden truths in created natu re ledthe practitioner to greater knowledge of the Creator (Debus, p. 137).

Aichemy was an ancient and medieval philosophy combining an occultcosmology with practical chemical experimentation. I t originated independently inChina and Hellenistic Egypt, and remained a legitimate and recognized branch ofphilosophy in Europe and the Islamic world for more than 1500 years. Alchemistsattempted to replicate the chemical keys of life. The universal panacea, the elixir oflife, and the means of transmuting base metals into gold were three of the powerssought by practical alchemists (Flew, pp. 8-91.

In the Timaeus the demiurges were alchemists and magicians, masters ofmatter, and interpreters of the secrets and hidden powers of Nature. The deities'knowledge of metaphysical, numerological and physical mixing enabled'them toenliven the chaos.k omplex technology of combinatorials explains how t he cosmoswas made. In describing the manufacturing of nature, Plato demonstrates a noverarching concern for proportion and number. In a living universe, al1 parts musthold together if the integrity of the whole is to be maintained. Therefore constituentelements must be present in proper mathematical and geometrical balance. Mixing


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and blending describe how matter holds together. Magic and alchemy weretechnological explanations of the way nature was thought to work.

Plato's origin story lies within t he organicist framework of the mythologicalcosmologists, but also rests partially outside it. The traditional gods of Greekreligion were the progenitors of nature; nature was borne of their bodies. Platoshifted the emphasis from the reproductive capacities of divine bodies to theproductive possibilities of divine hands and minds. Plato ascribed to God the powerto fashion a living universe. The ar tisan metaphor is compatible with theorganicistic framework, bu t marks a decisive break with it: natu re i s no longer bornalive; it is made alive.

Plato retained th e animistic and pantheistic flavours of the mythologicalcosmologists, but merged them with the evolutionary cosmologists' belief inmechanical necessity. The effects of this synthesis were far-reaching, for Platoassigned to matter a new ontological status. In a purely organicistic framework,mat ter was inherently alive; now, matter was only potentially alive. Plato'sphilosophy deprived matter of some of its former vitality, render ing it passive,modifiable by human agency. The Timaeus authorized the belief in a kind of Natureth at could be technologically altered.

Neo-Platonic natural magic and alchemy are two expressions of the urge tomanipulate Na ture that flourished during the Middle Ages. Beginning in theRenaissance, the project of control over nature assumed a new direction whenHumanist scholars overlaid the old sciences with a new mechanistic understanding.Modern science was the eventual outcome of the grafting of mechanistic sensibilitiesont0 a devitalized Nature. Both the ancient occult practices and modern sciencesought to tap th e inherent energies of nature (Berman, 1990, pp. 222-3).

In Pla to we see an ear ly instance of science's propensity to blur and blendphysis (al1 tha t occurs in the na tura l order of things) and techne (al1 which is created


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by humans) (Angeles, p. 213).Technologies- rtifacts, materials and techniques-become incorporated into discourse on nature; but by the same token, the discoussesbecame ontologically dependent on these technologies.A culture's definingtechnologies become so deeply etched into it s explanatory strategies t ha t i t becomesdifficult to construct rational explanations of nature in any other terms.The Constitution of Matter

Let us return now to t he question of the composition of matter to observe howknowledge about matter, from Greek antiquity until the Renaissance, was justifiedin terms of alchemical and magical mixin

Documents

Crafted Bodies_interpretations of Corporeal Knowledge in Light of the Technological Imagination in Antiquity__the Renaissance and the Present