Greek Notions of the Soul

• Homer (8th century BC) : Soul to distinquish living from dead bodies for humans only

• Thales (6th century BC) : Later applied to all living things and some none living such as magnets

• Greek Culture (5th century BC) important for desiressource of personal moral qualities such as courage engages in thinking

Hippocrates (470-410 BC)

• Observed brain injured patients.

• The brain was the seat of all of our pleasures, joys, sorrows, sensations and intelligence.

Plato (420-347 B.C.)

•Rational immortal soul in the head

•Vegetable soul in the gut

•Vital soul in the heart

Plants have vegetable soul

•Animals have that plus sensitive soul

•Humans have those plus a rational soul located in the heart

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

•Food converted to natural spirits

•Blood in the heart filled with vital spirits

•Blood into the head converted to animal spirits

•Each organ had a soul

Galen (130-201 A.D.)

Christian Church

•12th century, adopted the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and Galen

•Mortal soul was in the body

•Immortal soul in the ventricles

•Controlled universities such as Oxford

•Added much detail to brain anatomy showing that Galen’s anatomy was wrong.

•Ventricles are not the seat of the mind.

•Brain functioned through the fluids of the ventricles.

Vesalius (1514-1564 AD)

William Harvey (1578 – 1657)

•Influenced by Ibn Nafis, who had laid out the principles and major arteries and veins in the 13th century.

•First to correctly describe the circulation of blood and by doing so showed that Galen was wrong.

•Worked with Mersenne in Paris who thought there was no soul only matter.

•Worked with Gassendi in Paris who thought all matter was made of atoms.

•Mind (soul) - Body dualism with interaction at pineal gland.

•Body worked like a machine and mind (soul) was immaterial

•Sensitive soul was material

•Rational soul was immaterial

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Thomas Willis (1621-1675)

•Influenced by Descartes and others from Paris, Harvey’s ideas on circulation and anatomy of Vesalius.

•Used dissection of animals and humans to study anatomy.

•Worked with Boyle, Hooke, and others at Oxford.

•Willis suggested that brain affected the body and behavior.

•Wrote Cerebri Anatome (1664), text on the anatomy of the central nervous system.

•Retained rational immortal soul to explain mind.

La Mettrie (1709-1751)

• Homme machine: Man a machine

• “wherein the several systems of philosophers, in respect to the soul of man, are examin'd, the different states of the soul are shewn to be co-relative to those of the body, the diversity between men and other animals, is proved to arise from the different quantity and quality of brains, “