Etienne Lepicard’s ‘An Alternative to the Cosmic and Mechanic Metaphors for the Human Body? The House Illustration in Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)

摘要

In the Early Modern period, the new mechanical philosophy profoundly influenced the way people imagined their bodies. Descartes' striking description, in his Traite de l'homme , of the body as 'an earthen machine' echoes around the contemporary literature, lingering into the twenty-first century. Over the past fifty years, and provoked by the ubiquitous presence of the computer, cyborg literature has revisited the idea of the machine-man and considered its sinister ramifications. It is not surprising then that so-called mechanical bodies have been a key discussion point in recent years for inter-disciplinary scholars of the arts and sciences, and that the research of early modern scholars has been prominent in cross-period discussions. At the last conference run by the Association for the Medical Humanities, in September 2006, Margaret Healy delivered a plenary on 'Writing, Illness, and Contemplating Machine Bodies Prior to Descartes' in which she discussed Montaigne's fascination with water technology in relation to his trouble with the stone. A year later, at the conference held by the Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science at the University of Glamorgan, Jonathan Sawday gave a stimulating lecture on anti- machines, with special reference to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester's thoughts about his body as a malfunctioning sex-machine