Abstract
In his De motu cordis et sanguinis (1628) William Harvey proved that he had seen farther than any of his predecessors. The names of the men on whose shoulders he stood are familiar: Cesalpino, Colombo, Fabricius of Aquapendente, and among the giants Aristotle. The roster usually does not include Galen; for, having undermined the latter's physiology, Harvey is generally portrayed as anti-Galenic.2 Yet the relation between farsighted thinkers and the giants they supplant is often characterized not merely by sharp discontinuities, but by underlying continuities as well. Although Copernicus and Newton overturned Ptolemaic astronomy and Cartesian physics respectively, they owed their predecessors significant conceptual and methodological debts. In this paper I suggest that Harvey's relation to Galen reflects a
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