Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, History of Science, 60 (4), 2022, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2020 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the History of Science page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/hos on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Medicine, connoisseurship, and the animal body
AU - Wragge-Morley, Alexander
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, History of Science, 60 (4), 2022, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2020 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the History of Science page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/hos on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
PY - 2022/12/1
Y1 - 2022/12/1
N2 - This essay reconsiders the links between medicine, connoisseurship, and aesthetic theory in early eighteenth-century Britain. Taking a satire on the body of the physician and collector John Woodward as its starting point, I show that medicine and connoisseurship shared a deep preoccupation with the possibility that the animal body could excessively influence the workings of the mind. Pursuing this line of argument, moreover, I will reconsider the place of mind–body dualism in eighteenth-century British medicine and aesthetics. With the exception of materialists such as the philosopher-physician Bernard Mandeville, medics and aesthetic theorists tended to identify the exercise of judgment with the operations of a disembodied mind, unsullied by the embodied mechanisms of the lower body. In practice, however, the insistence that the most refined forms of judgment depended on the presence and activity of a disembodied, immaterial soul was less meaningful than it seems. When confronted by failures of judgment, medics and connoisseurs alike sought explanations in the mechanisms of the animal body. Whether or not they believed in the immateriality of the soul, they pictured the mind as a malfunctioning animal machine, to be cured through the material agency of medical therapeutics.
AB - This essay reconsiders the links between medicine, connoisseurship, and aesthetic theory in early eighteenth-century Britain. Taking a satire on the body of the physician and collector John Woodward as its starting point, I show that medicine and connoisseurship shared a deep preoccupation with the possibility that the animal body could excessively influence the workings of the mind. Pursuing this line of argument, moreover, I will reconsider the place of mind–body dualism in eighteenth-century British medicine and aesthetics. With the exception of materialists such as the philosopher-physician Bernard Mandeville, medics and aesthetic theorists tended to identify the exercise of judgment with the operations of a disembodied mind, unsullied by the embodied mechanisms of the lower body. In practice, however, the insistence that the most refined forms of judgment depended on the presence and activity of a disembodied, immaterial soul was less meaningful than it seems. When confronted by failures of judgment, medics and connoisseurs alike sought explanations in the mechanisms of the animal body. Whether or not they believed in the immateriality of the soul, they pictured the mind as a malfunctioning animal machine, to be cured through the material agency of medical therapeutics.
KW - Connoisseurship
KW - animal studies
KW - apes
KW - dualism
KW - embodied knowledge
KW - history of medicine
KW - history of science
KW - materialism
KW - medical satire
KW - mind–body relationship
U2 - 10.1177/0073275320949001
DO - 10.1177/0073275320949001
M3 - Journal article
VL - 60
SP - 481
EP - 499
JO - History of Science
JF - History of Science
SN - 0073-2753
IS - 4
ER -