Man a machine / by Julien Offray de La Mettrie. French-English ; including Frederick the Great's "Eulogy" on La Mettrie and extracts from La Mettrie's "The natural history of the soul" ; philosophical and historical notes by Gertrude Carman Bussey.
- Julien Offray de La Mettrie
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Man a machine / by Julien Offray de La Mettrie. French-English ; including Frederick the Great's "Eulogy" on La Mettrie and extracts from La Mettrie's "The natural history of the soul" ; philosophical and historical notes by Gertrude Carman Bussey. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![and astronomer. He is celebrated for the invention of the pendulum clock which could measure the movements of the planets, for the improvement of the telescope, and for the development of the wave-theory of light. His principal work is Horologium Oscillatorium (1673).* 84. Julien Leroy (1686-1759) was a celebrated French watch- maker. He excelled in the construction of pendulums and of large clocks. Some have attributed the construction of the first horizontal clock to him, but this is doubtful. Among many other inventions and improvements of clocks, he in- vented the compensating pendulum which bears his name.*^ 85. Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782) was a French mech- anist. From his childhood he was always interested in mech- anical contrivances. In 1738 he presented to the French Academy his remarkable flute player. Soon after, he made a duck which could swim, eat, and digest, and an asp which could hiss and dart on Cleopatra's breast. He later held the position of inspector of the manufacture of silk. In 1748 he was admitted to the Academy of Sciences. His machines were left to the Queen, but she gave them to the Academy, and in the disturbances which followed the pieces were scattered and lost. Vaucanson published: Mecanisme d'un fliiteur auto- mate (Paris, 1738).«' 86. [Descartes] understood animal nature; he was the first to prove completely that animals are pure machines. Contrast this with La Mettrie's former reference in L'histoire na- turelle de Tame to this absurd system 'that animals are pure machines.' Such a laughable opinion, he adds, has never gained admittance among philosophers... .Experience does not prove the faculty of feeling iany less in animals than in men.^ It is evident that La Mettrie's opposition to this 'absurd system' was based upon his insistence on the similarity of men and animals. In L'homme machine he argues from the same premiss, that animals are machines, that men are like animals, and that therefore men also are machines. ^ Condensed from the Century Dictionary, Vol. IX. ^ Translated and condensed from La Grande Encyclopedie, Vol. 22. *^ Translated and condensed from La Grande Encyclopedie, Vol. 31. w L'histoire naturelle de I'ame, Chap. VI.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21172432_0219.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
