The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the Inquirer - Cambridge Scholars ...

Lastanosa as an Example of His Time: Natural History and Medicine
de Montmor (c.1600-1679). Montmor, too, came from a wealthy family,
in his case one related to the greatest families in France. Like Lastanosa,
too, Montmor received an excellent classical education, and he became a
great patron of scientists and philosophers, providing his clients with “an
infinity” of machines and instruments with which he had stimulated his
own curiosity in the teasing out of details in nature for thirty years. In the
late 1650s, Samuel Sorbière prepared a plan for the organization of
meetings in the form of nine articles, with the goals of the meetings to
avoid “the vain exercise of the mind on useless subtleties; rather, one
should always propose the clearest knowledge of the works of God and the
advancement of the conveniences of life, in the arts and sciences that best
serve to establish them.” For such reasons, the Académie Montmor is
sometimes called the forerunner of the Académie royale des sciences. 14
Whatever Lastanosa’s achievements may be, then, he cannot compare with
great French patrons such as Peiresc or Montmor (or with Dutch ones like
Constantijn Huygens) for encouraging the new philosophy.
Finally, Lastanosa also seems to have avoided one of the implications
becoming clear in the new philosophy of his day. The investigations of
people involved with medicine were not only very important for focusing
attention on the material details of nature, but sometimes for leading them
to support ideas that bordered on philosophical materialism. For instance,
in alchemy the idea that had been at its center--that the material substances
supporting bodily life are expressions of deeper, immaterial forces which
are interconnected by webs of sympathy and antipathy, and properly
discerned through allegory--was being challenged by the middle of the
17th century, as materialistic alternatives being developed. Paracelsus and
most of his followers, such as Oswald Croll, made much use of symbolism
and explanations based on divine mysteries, not unlike the Baroque
“typology” discussed by Canizares. 15 But even in the later 16th century,
some writers were doing their best to strip spiritualist explanations away
from the careful descriptive work of understanding chemical processes. In
the work of the Dutch physician, technician, and philosopher Isaac
Beeckman, for instance, one can see his appropriation of “atomism” to
explain such things. 16 Many early 17th-century philosophers were deeply
impressed by the power given by such concepts to explain chemical
transformations without the need to invoke immaterial powers. The
philosophical debates remained deep in controversy, but one of their
consequences was to raise further skeptical questions about spiritualist
explanations for chemical transformations. 17
In other parts of the medical sciences, similar processes were at work.
The case of William Harvey is an interesting example: he had travelled to
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