WILLIAM HARVEY, M. D. 43 



by reading Harvey retrospectively as if his work were merely 

 the beginning of what came afterwards, tends to miss what is 

 more basic: that Harvey's discovery like most scientific dis- 

 coveries results from a scientific methodology which is related 

 to one's education, philosophy, habits, and experience as a 

 scientist. Rather than relate Harvey's discovery to the past out 

 of which it emerged, the modem reader acts as if it sprang 

 de 710V0 from a pair of eyes newly able to observe through 

 the Renaissance liberation from the medieval blinders that 

 enveloped this age. 



The following comments are characteristic of those made by 

 critics who dissociate Harvey's demonstration from the tradi- 

 tion of his predecessors. Harvey " with one blow demolished 

 the structure, compounded of metaphysics, far-fetched analogy, 

 and mysterious ' principles ' and ' spirits,' which constitute 

 the method of medieval biology." Harvey's method was char- 

 acterized " by the rigid exclusion of mysterious forces and 

 agencies." ^ " Harvey . . . never entirely emerged from the 

 mystifying language of his contemporaries, and even regarded 

 himself as a loyal Aristotelian, but he builded better than he 

 knew." ^ 



The contemporary translator of the most widely read version 

 of Harvey's classic on The Motions of the Heart and the Blood 

 — an outstanding scientist in his own right — has this to say: 



In his more scientific passages, Harvey is remarkably terse and 

 ' snappy,' in the current style. In his philosophical discussions he 

 becomes vague and his sentences grow beyond control ... At the 

 same time, he tried to complete his demonstrations by metaphysical 

 arguments based on the traditional teleology. This was the anti- 

 thesis of the method by which he had achieved such brilliant 

 success in the preceding chapters . . . There is a good discussion of 

 the comparative and embryological aspects of the subject, and then 

 a peculiar use of the traditional authority of Galen as evidence. 

 One may find almost all kinds of logic in Harvey." 



* Franklin Fearing, Reflex Action (Baltimore: William & Wilkins, 1930), p. 29. 



® A. Wolf, A History of Science, Technology and Philosophy in the 16th and 

 17th Centuries (London, 1935) , p. 415. 



^° Chauncey D. Leake, An English Translation with Annotations of De Motu 

 Cordis (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1931), Translator's Preface. 



