Machine, mind and language in post-cartesian natural history of animals. Claude Perrault (1613-1688) and the early parisian Académie royale des sciences

This paper considers the reception of the Cartesian bête-machine doctrine in Claude Perrault’s comparative anatomy and zoological studies, carried out at the early Académie royale des sciences. Perrault rejects both the Cartesian hypothesis of beasts as mere automata and of Pineal Gland as siège de l’âme within the human brain, by affirming a causal role of the animal soul - conceived as an immaterial agent spread in the whole body - in the functional regulation of all life processes, including animal language. Animals have an “internal reasoning” that guides their actions, according to Perrault, and the inflexions of their voices are proper to make their intentions known each other