qui - maria vita romeo

60 Alessandro Chiessi
“animal spirits,” to conceive a mechanical interaction between different
parts of the body 30 and thus clarify the related diseases—in this case the
stom-ach and the brain as organs that, in their common interrelation, re -
fer to hypochondria and hysteria. On the other hand, differently from
Descartes, he cannot consider “heat” and the “fire without light” as causes
of digestion, because they would conflict with the experimental evidence. 31
So the “animal spirits,” with their epistemological uncertainty, are the trait
d’union between philosophy and medicine; coherent and, at the same time,
problematic correlation, just because the “animal spirits” are observable
only through the “Eye of reason.” 32
e physiological description of the human body, aiming at the treatment
of mental diseases with the elaboration of an explanatory theory,
deeply changes not only the Mandeville’s approach to medicine, but also
modifies the ontological basis of his philosophy. is radically limits the
metaphysical heritage of Descartes and opens the way to a kind of empiricism
that never completely closes the doors to supersensible. Philosophy
and medicine, soul and body, men and brutes, are argumentative couples
that involve the first enquiries of Mandeville and that will return in the later
writings with more or less predominance. e influence of Descartes, as
I mentioned and as it is possible to see reading e Fable of the Bees, is
of “heat” and the presence of a “fire without light;” for this last notion cf. also Id., Discours de la
méthode, cit., pp. 45-46; for the role of blood, various particles—the “animal spirits”—and of heat
as “corporeal principle of all movements” in digestive process cf. Id., Les passions de l’âme, cit., pp.
331-335, §§ VII-X; Id., Discours de la méthode, cit., pp. 46-55.
30 Remember that, in biology, a complete cell theory was formulated only in a recent past. Although
Robert Hooke in Micrographia (London, 1665) observed for the first time, in pieces of cork,
what he called “cells,” only in the nineteenth century with Matthias Jakob Schleiden and eodor
Schwann, before, and Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow, after, we can talk about a cell theory as we understand
it today.
31 Mandeville refers, for example, to fishes’ digestion, which cannot use “heat” for activating
this internal function. Cf. Disputatio de Chylosi Vitiata, p. A3, §§ IV-V.
32 Cf. Treatise 1711, p. 139; Treatise 1730, p. 170. e theme of an unknown part of nature and
the need of its discovery is mentioned in the Oratio scholastica: “Est ita natura comparatum, ut occulta
quadam ac blanda naturae vi atque tacita ingenii inclinatione ad diversa studia, nescio quomodo,
homines abripiantur.” Oratio scholastica, pp. 3-4. To examine this issue cf. M. Simonazzi, La malattia
inglese: la melanconia nella tradizione filosofica e medica dell’Inghilterra moderna, Bologna, il Mulino,
2004, pp. 350-351; Id., Le favole della filosofia, cit., pp. 114-115.