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Descartes, Boyle and Mechanical Philosphy
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Descartes, Boyle and Mechanical Philosphy We can say that the earth has a vegetative soul, and that its flesh is the land, its bones the structure of the rocks...its blood is the pools of the water...its breathing and its pulse are the ebb and flow of the sea.1 `This image of 'Nature' was presented by a man who is perceived as having one of the most mechanical minds of his day. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), often described in Biographical Dictionaries as, amongst other things, an 'engineer'2 and remembered for his dabblings in the realm of flying machines as early as the sixteenth century, was a man who understood the world to be an organic entity. That the earth for da Vinci, 'has a vegetative soul',3 highlights the impact mechanical philosophy would have on society, 'as the sixteenth century organic cosmos was transformed into the seventeenth century mechanistic universe'.4 Da Vinci's view of the...
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