Medicine and the science of soul

• Published in: Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 2009, Vol.26 (1), p.129-154
• Main Author: Hankinson, R J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Bates, Don; Galen; Greek World; History of Medicine; History of medicine and histology; History, Ancient; Humans; Medicine; Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical; Science; Soul; Theory
• ISSN: 0823-2105; 2371-0179
• DOI: 10.3138/cbmh.26.1.129

Central to Don Bates's thesis about the role of medicine in the Scientific Revolution is the Greek concept of psyche. This article explores this connection in relation to Galen. Paradoxically, Galen declined to commit himself to any particular view of the soul's real nature, and held aloof from both materialist and Platonic positions. His medical approach, however, offered a way through these difficulties: we may not know what the soul is, but we know it exists, because we can see what it does. Medicine can also reveal other truths about the soul, such as the location of its various parts in the brain, heart and liver, or its transmission through the nerves. Different souls exhibit different "powers," i.e., causal postulates conceived in relation to their specific effects. Thus the soul can be a proper object of scientific inquiry if one concentrates on its evident manifestations, and seeks to make causal and categorical sense of them within a general theory of functioning. Galen's stance can be compared to some positions of Galileo, and even to La Mettrie, who claimed Galen's support for his contention that the powers of the soul are affected by bodily conditions. Both of them concentrate on the evident facts of animal and human life; both put their considerable medical learning to work to make sense of these facts; and they shared a common aversion to dogmatism. Though Galen, unlike Galileo, would make some place for talk about substances and essences in science, he is in some respects more modern than many thinkers of the Scientific Revolution in his willingness to accommodate a wide range of modes of physical causation.