| Over a century of scholarship has focused on the Oxford natural philosophers who carried forward the implications of William Harvey's De motu cordis (1628). This scholarship has yielded crucial scientific information and a wealth of primary sources. Much of the scholarship, however, suggests that the Oxonians engaged in a confrontation between old and new. Traditions relating vital heat, spirit, passions and the rational soul to the human heart appear to have been forced aside by these advocates of the new experimental philosophy. This dissertation views the work at Oxford as an encounter rather than a conflict. The goal of the Oxford Group was to reconcile biblical and classical beliefs about the heart with the mechanical worldview, experimental philosophy and Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. The Introduction presents three problems inherent in analysis of the Oxford Group. First, the symbolic position the heart has held for over two millennia makes it difficult for historians to determine how to interpret some passages in the Oxford corpus. Second, it is often assumed that the mechanical philosophy eliminated unseen faculties from the heart. Finally, underestimation of the importance of tradition during the Scientific Revolution has led to selected reading of the Oxford corpus. Chapters One and Two consider ancient and medieval notions of the heart, respectively. Chapter Three argues that the ‘Harvey-Descartes Controversy’ has been overstated and analyzes traditional assumptions the two held in common. Chapter Four presents the work of the Oxford Group as a successful integration and between old and new ideas about the heart and blood. |
