This edited volume features 20 essays written by leading scholars that provide a detailed
examination of L¿Homme by René Descartes. It explores the way in which this work developed
themes not just on questions such as the circulation of the blood but also on central
questions of perception and our knowledge of the world. Coverage first offers a critical
discussion on the different versions of L'Homme including the Latin French and English
translations and the 1664 editions. Next the authors examine the early reception of the work
from the connection of L'Homme to early-modern Dutch Cartesianism to Nicolas Steno's criticism
of the work and how Descartes' clock analogy is used to defend two different conceptions of the
articulation between anatomical observations and functional hypotheses. The book then goes on
to explore L'Homme and early-modern anthropology as well as the how the work has been
understood and incorporated into the works of scientists physicians and philosophers over the
last 150 years. Overall readers will discover how the trend over the last few decades to
understand human cognition in neuro-physiological terms can be seen to be not something
unprecedented but rather a revival of a way of dealing with these fundamental questions that
was pioneered by Descartes.
