Anatomia comparata e fisiologia dei sensi interni. L’animismo di Claude Perrault e la storia naturale degli animali nella prima Académie royale des sciences di Parigi

In January 1667 Claude Perrault submitted to the Académie royale des sciences of Paris a Projet pour les expériences et observations anatomiques, preamble to the Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux (1671-1676) and to the Essais de physique (1680-1688), aiming at a radical methodological renewal of physiology and comparative anatomy, based on clear distinction between “facts” and “hypotheses”. By affirming a causal role of the soul in the functional regulation of all life processes, Perrault frees himself from the Cartesian hypothesis of living automata. This move is not the symptom of a bizarre and incoherent mixture of animism and mechanism. Instead, it responds to one of the most debated issues in the second half of the 17th century science of life: the need to find a principle of integration and control of the organic processes, which cannot be revealed by simply breaking down into pieces the body machine.