Closing the Circle: How Harvey and His Contemporaries Played the Game of Truth,Part 1

I wish at the outset to acknowledge Dr Jerome Bylebyl's kind permission to read a preliminary draft of his forthcoming book, “William Harvey: From heartbeat to circulation”, and his agreement to my citation of the points indicated below (hereafter cited as Bylebyl, forthcoming). I have done so according to the chapters and page numbers of the copy at my disposal. Beyond this, he is not responsible for any conclusions reached here.

Harvey William , Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (Frankfurt, 1628). It is delightfully ironic, and perhaps not entirely irrelevant that, in Latin, Harvey himelf uses “invenio” which, of course, can mean either. See, for example, his Exercitatio anatomica de circulatione sanguinis (Cambridge, 1649), 5. Kenelm Digby referred to “Harvey, who hath invented … that … doctrine of the circulation” (Two treatises on the nature of bodies and … Man's soule (London, 1645), First Treatise, 291).

The origins of the idea are comprehensively covered by Bylebyl, forthcoming (ref. 1).

It is generally conceded that the circulation was widely accepted by the time of Harvey's death in 1657. For a prima facie case to that effect, see French R. , William Harvey's natural philosophy (Cambridge, 1994), passim, but esp. pp. 378–83. 1 hope to examine this phenomenon in much greater detail in the future. At the same time, French's book gives us a rich account of the remarkably diverse and conflicting views of Harvey's contemporaries, making it very hard to account for that rapid consensus within a fully constructivist account. Also see my review of French in Physis, xxxiii (1996), 357–62.

For some earlier analyses of rationality in De motu cordis, see Woodger J. H. , “An analysis of Harvey's De motu cordis et sanguinis”, in his Biology and language (Cambridge, 1952), 75–92; Plochmann G. K. , “William Harvey and his methods”, Studies in the Renaissance, x (1963), 192–210; Toellner R. , “Logical and psychological aspects of the discovery of the circulation of the blood”, in Grmek M. D. Cohen R. S. Cimino G. (eds), On scientific discovery (Dordrecht, 1980), 239–59; and Mowry B. , “From Galen's theory to William Harvey's theory: A case study in the rationality of scientific theory change”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xvi (1985), 49–82. On the role of rationality in knowledge production more generally, see Hollis M. Lukes S. (eds), Rationality and relativism (Oxford, 1982). Throughout this analysis in Part 1, I shall be using ‘rationality’ and its cogates in a more restricted and stronger sense that is akin to (but not quite synonymous with) ‘logic’, rather than in its broader sense of ‘reasoning’ in general.

Harvey , op. cit. (ref. 2, 1628), 41. For the problems of translation and interpretation of this passage, see Bates D. G. , “Harvey's account of his ‘discovery’”, Medical history, xxxvi (1992), 361–78.

The actual phrase “forceful systole” was also used in connection with another author by Bylebyl J. J. , “Nutrition, quantification and circulation”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, li (1977), 369–85, p. 382. For fuller references to Bylebyl's many discussions of the concept behind this phrase, and its connection with Harvey's work, see my Part 2, refs 48 and 49.

“The forceful systole, the question of quantity and the resultant circulation were both a historical and logical sequence that had convinced Harvey and which he hoped would convince his readers” ( French , op. cit. (ref. 4), 184, emphasis added). As will be only partially evident in the sequel, this work is much indebted to French's path-breaking study of the reception of the circulation.

Bylebyl , forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 9, 24f. and 43f.

“ut in circuitu, quodam modo moveri sit necesse”; “de circulationis dubitandi locum esse non videtur reliquum”; and “circum ire ut concedant necesse habeant”, respectively. For the Latin see Ferrario E. V. Poynter F. N. L. Franklin K. J. , “William Harvey's debate with Caspar Hofmann on the circulation of the blood”, Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences, xv (1960), 7–21, pp. 14f. All texts were read in the original language but, for quoted passages, a previous translation is used and acknowledged if I see no reason to alter it. In this case the translations are by Whitteridge G. , William Harvey and the circulation of the blood (London, 1971), 248–52.

Bylebyl , forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 9, 20f.

French , op. cit. (ref. 4), 118–20.

On the history of the notion that the pulse is caused by the expulsion of something from the heart during contraction, see Bylebyl, forthcoming (ref. 1), especially chap. 2.

A very common analogy. See, for example, Primrose J. , Exercitationes et animadversiones in librum De motu cordis, et circulatione sanguinis (London, 1630), 71f. The analogy was very apt, not just for the physical reason that milk does behave this way when heated, but also because it was a basic nutritive juice, like the blood to which it was being compared.

Galen regarded semen as “a pneuma and like foam, so that, if ever it is emitted into the outer air, there soon appears to be much less of it than when it was first emitted” ( Galen , De usu partium, transl. by May M. T. (Ithaca, 1968), II, 641).

As early as 1616, Harvey declared that “the spirit is in the blood”, and did not think “that any spirits are separated off beyond the aerial part of the blood, wherefore the makeup (ratio) of blood is like that of hot water …” ( Harvey William , The anatomical lectures, Prelectiones anatomie universalis. De musculis , ed. with introduction, transl. & notes by Whitteridge G. (London, 1964), 142 (ff. 33r and 37v)). Elsewhere, Harvey speaks of the blood “boiling” in the ventricles, “like boiling milk”, but adds “yet quickly deffervesces with great congealing” (“magno vero concrete cito defervescit”), 250 (f. 73r). Three-quarters of a century earlier, Vesalius had apparently compared the heart and its great vessels to a well with pipes leading out from it, and to a city cistern that distributes water out through canals (J. J. Bylebyl, “Cardiovascular physiology in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries”, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale, 1969, 247f.). Concerning the gradual shift to an hydraulic model, occurring in cardiovascular physiology during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, see idem, “The growth of Harvey's De motu cordis”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xlvii (1973), 427–70, pp. 432f.

In fact, it is in connection with Hofmann's ideas that Bylebyl initially used the phrase “forceful systole”, op. cit. (ref. 7), 382. Bylebyl discusses Hofmann's views on the blood's movement, generally, on pp. 381–5. Also see French R. K. , “Alexander Read and the circulation of the blood”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, 1 (1976), 478–500, pp. 486–9.

Hofmann Caspar , Commentarii in Galeni de usu partium corporis humani (Frankfurt, 1625), see esp. pp. 95, 110, 113, and 129. Idem, De thorace, eiusque partibus commentarius tripartitus (Frankfurt, 1627), esp. pp. 39–42. Concerning the 1625 Commentary, Bylebyl has drawn attention to the fact that Hofmann's preface, and therefore probably the date when the work was actually completed, is 1618 (Bylebyl, forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 8, 64 and 66f.).

As Harvey himself admits ( Ferrario , op. cit. (ref. 10), 15).

Harvey , op. cit. (ref. 2, 1628), 40. Bylebyl (forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 1, 17–23, and chap. 8, 61–67) suggests that Harvey's marginal note, here, may be related to potential issues of priority between Harvey and Hofmann.

Though, in his old age, he may have been starting to come around. See French , op. cit. (ref. 4), 80.

Although see, for instance, Galen, op. cit. (ref. 15), II, 642. In Galenic physiology altogether, views about the movement (or lack thereof) of the blood were variable and ambiguous because it was not so much a topic in its own right, as a reasoned consequence of the resolution of other, far more important physiological questions.

The quotation is from De thorace (ref. 18), 41, but also see p. 40. His later analogy to the wind appeared first in a posthumous chapter included in J. Riolan, fils, Opuscula anatomica, varia & noua. Imprimis de motu sanguinis, eiusque circulatione vera, ex doctrina Hippocratis (Paris, 1652), entitled “Digressio, in circulationem sanguis, nuper in Anglia natam”, 357–64, p. 361.

“Quocirca arteriosus sanguis necessario ab aorta fluet ac refluet” (Nobilium exercitationum libri duodecim de subtilitate (Venice, 1621), 297). The shorter quotation above is from p. 558. In both instances, I have used translations by Bylebyl, op. cit. (ref. 7), 380f. Bylebyl also mentions another pre-Harveian author (Cesare Cremonini) who, in the context of our analysis here, saw a ‘y’ sort of problem but, quite possibly in conscious opposition to Parigiano, offered yet other way out. On the subject of subtilty, see Wilson Catherine , The invisible world: Early modern philosophy and the invention of the microscope (Princeton, 1995), chap. 2, “The subtlety of nature”.

After the announcement of the circulation in chapter 8, the next six chapters are devoted to elaboration and defence of three “suppositions”, each of which, beginning from a hypothetical position, independently argues that the blood circulates. Nor do they correspond precisely to the x, y, and z of the categorical proposition we have been studying. See Bylebyl , forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 1, 67–76.

Logic is not “a science of truths … logic is the science of deduction” ( Hacking I. , “What is logic?”, The journal of philosophy, lxxvi (1979), 285–319, p. 290).

“Indeed, the argument is stated in such a way as to presuppose the circulation” (Bylebyl, forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 9, 24f.; see also pp. 43f.). As yet, I have encountered no seventeenth-century author who argued that you can't correlate the volume of ingested food and drink with the amount of blood in the body, or that the volume of that blood found, say, by exsanguination, cannot be equated, in turn, with the amount found in the body. Such was the invisible framework of agreement that made the controversy possible. When historical texts record disagreements that surprise us, as in some of the examples discussed in this paper, we thereby uncover our own invisible framework of what it is we have been taking for granted, but when, as in the instances mentioned here, we too subscribe to such correlations, our invisible, background consensus is much more difficult to notice.

In his The logic of scientific discovery (New York, 1934), Karl Popper contrasts the psychology of induction, which he wished to avoid, with the logic of knowledge which he wanted to pursue (p. 30). But perhaps there is a psychology of logic which targets that ‘feel’ of compulsion in the individual, as well as a sociology of the societal contributions to and manifestations of that feel. See Hunter J. F. M. , “Logical compulsion”, in his Essays after Wittgenstein (Toronto, 1973), 171–202.

In a letter to the Parisian philosopher-physician, Gabriel Naudaeus, dated August 1629, Parigiano speaks of plans to provide a number of treatises, including “De cordis et sanguinis motu ad Gulielmum Arueum” (Nobilium exercitationum de subtilitate pars altera de diaphragmate singularis certaminis lapis lydius ad Joannem Riolanum Juniorem … (Venice, 1635), 23); Bylebyl , forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 8, 40.

Parigiano , op. cit. (ref. 29), Pars altera de cordis et sanguinis motu, his commentary on chapter 4 of Harvey's De motu cordis, 415–34, esp. pp. 421f. See Bylebyl , op. cit. (ref. 7), 383f. and ftn. 58. In 1621, Parigiano had argued for a “flux” of arterial blood, produced in the spleen, into the heart via the aorta during the last phase of diastole, and then a “reflux” back into the aorta during cardiac systole. Now, in 1635, the “flux” of blood into the heart has also been reduced to merely “drop by drop (guttatim)”, and the “reflux” has been eliminated.

Ibid., 378, ftn. 38. For a detailed description of this reissuing, see the Wellcome Institute Library Catalogue.

Ibid., 384 and ftn. 59. Bylebyl noted these changes in a copy in the Welch Medical Library and alludes to others that he had seen. I found them in two copies, one in the British Library and one in the Wellcome Institute Library. However, two copies in the Cambridge University Library do not have them. In those that do, the changes seem to have been made by the same hand.

The diversity of arguments opposing the circulation was remarkable. I shall have more to say about them in Part 2. However, a discussion of all opponents in the first three decades after De motu cordis is available in French, op. cit. (ref. 4).

As a matter of fact, in a sentence immediately preceding the long passage from chapter 8 which we have been studying, Harvey himself acknowledges this.

One of Harvey's most persistent opponents, James Primrose, systematically rejected both that x and z, but actually agreed that, if Harvey's x, then z would indeed follow. See further below.

The most notable example was Descartes ( French , op. cit. (ref. 4), 184f.). I shall discuss this in greater detail in Part 2. Another was Roger Drake, younger compatriot and supporter of Harvey (ibid., 158).

See French , op. cit. (ref. 4), 138–49. Because of their uniqueness, I have not so far had access to most of the primary materials involved.

Vesalius A. , De humani coporis fabrica libri septem (Basel, 1543), 589. See Bylebyl , “Cardiovascular physiology” (ref. 16), 233. For an argument that Vesalius was not being “sarcastic' or dismissive here, see Pagel W. , “Vesalius and the pulmonary transit of venous blood”, Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences, xix (1964), 327–41.

As translated and quoted in Bylebyl , op. cit. (ref. 16, 1973), 385.

Hofmann , De thorace (ref. 18), 56.

Ibid. , 41. See also his Digressio (ref. 23), 362, where, apparently with approval, he cites another of Harvey's opponents, Primrose, to the same effect. Harvey, too (for example in his anatomical lectures, f. 44r. or, for that matter, in the passage we are analysing), made frequent appeals to nature's wise governance, but, as in one of his rejoinders to Hofmann (“Natura potius distinctum & determinatum vellet, quam indeterminatum et confusum in ipsis vasis”, Ferrario, op. cit. (ref. 10), 16), under certain conditions, he endowed that wisdom with a mechanical tendency, in the sense of its pursuing regularity rather than contingency. This issue is extensively discussed by C. J. Cook, “Text and context: The philosophical structure of the writings of William Harvey illuminated by disputes in Renaissance philosophy”, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, 1995, passim, but, for example, p. 177.

For a problem with a venous return, even within the context of Galenic teaching, see Bylebyl , forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 11, 54f.

See Robin Horton's concept of “push-pull causality”, in his “Tradition and modernity revisited”, in Hollis Lukes (eds), op. cit. (ref. 5), 201–60, pp. 228ff. I am not convinced that the Harvey story fully supports Horton's suggestion of a “primary theory” that is more-or-less invariable from culture to culture. In any event, I prefer the term “folk” to leave open the possibility of a fairly strong “cultural quotient” ( Hacking I. , in London review of books, 7 Sept. 1995, 9), even at this level of “commonplace views”, and I prefer the nebulousness of “physics” to “causality”.

The heart as a fountain is a trope that goes back at least to Plato. Harvey himself used it analogously, just a few paragraphs after the passage we are analysing (also see p. 59 as well as “fowntayn” (Whitteridge, op. cit. (ref. 16), 250)). However, I do not mean to suggest that this had anything to do with how he came to think of the circulation. For a marvellous exposition of the most likely analogies for various aspects of the circulation, see Bylebyl, forthcoming (ref. 1), esp. chap. 12. The broader social context of Harvey's work in England is discussed by C. Webster, “William Harvey and the crisis of medicine in Jacobean England”, in Bylebyl J. (ed.), William Harvey and his age: The professional and social context of the discovery of the circulation (Baltimore, 1979), 1–27.

Reasoning that includes folk quantification, i.e., quantification by intuition or “guestimate”, a feat we frequently perform in the kitchen.

In an undated manuscript, Harvey wrote that, considering the amount of blood the heart “receives … at every expansion”, and “the many beatings of the heart in half an hour”, the blood “must of necessity come round about”. I have used the text as printed in Keynes G. , The life of William Harvey (Oxford, 1978), 445. However, the argument here, besides recording Harvey's private thoughts rather than his public claims, is not quite the same as in the passage we are examining, being more akin to the tautology type of linkage. For a detailed analysis of it in the context of the Aristotelian logic in which Harvey was no doubt engaging, see Bylebyl, forthcoming (ref. 1), chap. 11, 32–35 and 49f., and for its relation to the formulation we are discussing, chap. 12, 32–34.

But including vitalistic forms of folk physics. Also mixed into the physiological discourse of the day, was a large amount of “learned” physics that ran counter to folk intuitions. For example, the Galenist belief that blood flows into the heart through the pulmonary vein, while fuliginous vapours simultaneously pass out into the lungs through the same vessel, was, to Harvey's folk-physics way of thinking, absurd (Harvey, op. cit. (ref. 2, 1628), 16f.).

The character of the resistance of both Parigiano and Hofmann strikes me as being partly motivated this way, although one cannot help noting also that, as authors committed in print to alternative ideas shortly before 1628, powerful personal interests were also at stake. For an extensive review of such personal interests on the part of many of Harvey's opponents, see French , op. cit. (ref. 4).

Primrose, op. cit. (ref. 14), 71.

For example, Bloor D. , Wittgenstein: A social theory of knowledge (London, 1983), esp. chap. 6, “Compulsions, conventions and codifications”, 112–36.

In addition to his massive rebuttal of 1630, he continued to take on one supporter of the circulation after another, over the next decade. See French , op. cit. (ref. 4), passim, but esp. pp. 114–21.

Hacking Ian , “The self-vindication of the laboratory sciences”, in Pickering A. (ed.), Science as practice and culture (Chicago, 1992), 29–64.