William_Harvey2


		The Rational Argumentator A Jounal for Western Man-- Issue IX
			William Harvey: The Bridge to the Scientific Revolution: Part II G. Stolyarov II

Harvey�s theories were subject to stringent dispute on the part of the Galenic school during the discoverer�s lifetime. Peter Landry reveals that Harvey himself ignored his critics for the majority of his career, refusing, like Ayn Rand�s Howard Roark, to become mired in pleading his case to men who had already rejected the epistemological means, observation and the scientific method, by which to process the content of Harvey�s breakthroughs and recognize the validity thereof. However, in 1649 he at last published a small volume where he presented thorough counters to his critics. Within a year, the truth of Harvey�s propositions was grasped by the majority of the medical and scientific community. Harvey was the rare fortunate genius whose prowess was recognized during his lifetime and fueled his further explorations, as the elderly physician acquired at interest in embryology and accurately predicted the cellular interactions involved in the generation of offspring two hundred years before sufficiently powerful microscopes developed to verify his correctness� with no substantial flaws in his interpretation! Once again, Harvey deduced his theory from stringent exploration of animal anatomy, as documented in his 1651 book, Essays on the Generation of Animals. Harvey �s contributions to the progress of medicine and the cohesion that he established between descriptive observation and extrapolative theory are best documented by Sir William Osler, who notes that after Harvey �no longer were men to rest content with careful observation and with accurate description; no longer were men to be content with finely spun theories and dreams, which �serve as a common subterfuge of ignorance�; but here for the first time a great physiological problem was approached from the experimental side by a man with a modern scientific mind, who could weigh evidence and not go beyond it, and who had the sense to let the conclusions emerge naturally but firmly from the observations." As is evident, Harvey was the essential bridge between Aristotle and Descartes, between the ancient and modern worlds, whose re-evaluation of ancient techniques and their refinement marked a waypoint on the path of advancement, beyond which medical discoveries and technologies accelerated with never-before-seen swiftness. And to think that one of Harvey�s contemporaries wrote that "'twas believed by the vulgar that he was crack-brained, and all the physicians were against him"! The Galenic physicians, who elevated authority above objectivity, are long dead and forgotten. So are the grimy, jeering mobs that mocked Harvey in slum taverns and to whom Harvey rightly paid no heed. Harvey, an illustrious example of a man who deemed his own cognition an adequate means of comprehending reality, not needing the sanction of a committee of witch doctors and orthodox medievalists, remains a prominent name in the field of medicine, as his discoveries are not mere temporary paradigms, but rather eternal truths that will be just as valid in the twenty-second century as they had been in the seventeenth. Harvey was one of the forebears of rational, absolute, Western medicine. Can we today preserve his legacy in a sea of statism, subjectivism, and collective delusion? Sources: Gregory, Andrew. �William Harvey�s Reception.� Available December 20, 2002: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/gregory/215/handouts/h04_wh2.doc. J. Johnson, W. Hepburn, J. Crawford. �William Harvey.� Available December 20, 2002: http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/Museum/harvey.html. Landry, Peter. �William Harvey (1578-1657).� Available December 21, 2002: http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Science/Harvey.htm. Wiegand, Susan. �William Harvey (1578-1657).� Available December 20, 2002: http://www.accessexcellence.org/AB/BC/William_Harvey.html.


G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator. He is also a writer for Objective Medicine, a philosophical forum for advocating the right of physicians to freely practice their trade, at http://www.objectivemedicine.org. Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at [email protected].

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