Life from Death

argument about anatomy as the pure pursuit of truth. Arnaud argues that the knife of the anatomist is the weapon of truth; in doing so he transforms his argument for anatomy wholly into an argument for dissection. He says, "It by the power of ANATOMY, that the Surgeon surpasses many philosophers, whilst armed with his dissecting knife, truth's best discoverer, he can with ease over turn [sic] their hypotheses, and confound their sophisms." 7° This sentence links the act of discovering inextricably with the "dissecting knife " Without dissection to support it, anatomy cannot fully engage in the pursuit of truth because it lacks "truth's best discoverer." This is the first time in the speech Arnaud uses the word "dissection" in any of its forms. He cannot speak of the production of truth within the field of anatomy without using it though, because dissection is the means by which anatomists explore the frontier of the human body. To value dissection is to value an experimental approach that will "over turn" the claims of sophist natural philosophers. Arnaud now argues both within the Liberal Arts discourse, where the investigation of truth is the highest objective of study, and within an experimentalist discourse, where the observation and testing of natural phenomena, particularly in unknown spaces, 71 to acquire truth is the highest ideal. In claiming dissection as a means to truths about the obscure internal worlds of the body, Arnaud connects it with one of the components of the sublime. 70 Arnaud 7. 71 Unknown spaces include the heavens, the "world" of microbes and anything else not normally visible to the naked eye.