John Locke on Respiration JONATHAN WALMSLEY
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چکیده
During the early part of his career as an academic in 1660s Oxford, John Locke trained as a physician. Acquainted with some of the most brilliant researchers of his day— Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Richard Lower and Robert Hooke—and an active member of the scientific community, Locke was part of a generation that revolutionized natural philosophy. He never published a natural philosophical work, but in the extant manuscripts from this period there is evidence that he was deeply concerned with the subject of respiration and avidly pursued this interest in collaboration with his more distinguished contemporaries. Locke’s work in this field has been treated by both Kenneth Dewhurst and Robert G Frank. There are, however, good reasons for re-visiting this subject. Dewhurst’s transcription of ‘Respirationis usus’, Locke’s major essay on this topic, was inexact. Whilst a prolific and enlightening scholar, Dewhurst’s research was inaccurate in several important matters of fact and interpretation, muddling the chronology of Locke’s work and erroneously attributing scholastic theories to ‘Respirationis usus’. Frank in Harvey and the Oxford physiologists provides a superb account of the origins of modern
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John Locke on Respiration
During the early part of his career as an academic in 1660s Oxford, John Locke trained as a physician. Acquainted with some of the most brilliant researchers of his day— Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Richard Lower and Robert Hooke—and an active member of the scientific community, Locke was part of a generation that revolutionized natural philosophy. He never published a natural philosophical wor...
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