Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century

Simone Guidi is a Researcher in the Institute for the European Intellectual Lexicon and History of Ideas (CNR-ILIESI) at the Italian National Research Council. He teaches at the Roma Tre University in Italy. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the University of Coimbra’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Portugal. Simone's work focuses on the history of early modern philosophy, with special attention to the thought of Descartes, his sources and legacy.Joaquim Braga is a Researcher and Teacher in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He is a member of the Research Unit, Institute for Philosophical Studies. Joaquim's research covers the aesthetics of the body, philosophy of technology, philosophy of culture, modern and contemporary philosophy, and symbolic thought.

• Chapter 1: Introduction, Simone Guidi and Joaquim Braga.- Chapter 2: The More the Years the Less the Food: Alvise Cornaro on The Sober Life (1558), Laura Madella.-Chapter 3: The Quantification of Talents: Education, Galenic Humoralism, and Classification of Wits in Early Modern Culture, Luana Salvarani.- Chapter 4: Quali-Quantitative Measurement in Francis Bacon’s Medicine. Towards a New Branch of Mixed Mathematics, Silvia Manzo.- Chapter 5: Sanctorius’s Weighing Chair: Measurement, Metabolism, and Mind, Jan Purnis.- Chapter 6: The Rise of Quantitative Biology in the Cartesian Age: the Theories of Preformation, Mariangela Priarolo.- Chapter 7: “Nature is more subtle than any mathematician”: Giorgio Baglivi on Fluids in the Human Body, Luca Tonetti.- Chapter 8: “The Human Body Should Be Investigated in All Its Details to The Most Precise Degree…”. Leibniz on Quantification in Medicine, Osvaldo Ottaviani.- Chapter 9: Data vs Mathesis: Contrasting Epistemologies in some Mechanizations and Quantifications of Medicine, Simone Guidi.- Chapter 10: The Pulse Watch and the Physician’s Senses: John Floyer on the Quantification of the Body, Marco Storni.- Chapter 11: Against the Quantification of the Living: Hegel’s Critique of Romantic Naturphilosophie in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Gaetano Basileo.- Chapter 12: Measuring the Mind: The French Debate on Fechner’s Psychophysics in the Late 19th Century, Denise Vincenti.