John Locke on Respiration

Abstract

During the early part of his career as an academic in 1660s Oxford, John Locke trained as a physician.1 Acquainted with some of the most brilliant researchers of his day—Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Richard Lower and Robert Hooke—and an active member of the scientific community, Locke was part of a generation that revolutionized natural philosophy. He never published a natural philosophical work, but in the extant manuscripts from this period there is evidence that he was deeply concerned with the subject of respiration and avidly pursued this interest in collaboration with his more distinguished contemporaries. Locke's work in this field has been treated by both Kenneth Dewhurst and Robert G Frank. There are, however, good reasons for re-visiting this subject. Dewhurst's transcription of ‘Respirationis usus’, Locke's major essay on this topic, was inexact.2 Whilst a prolific and enlightening scholar, Dewhurst's research was inaccurate in several important matters of fact and interpretation, muddling the chronology of Locke's work and erroneously attributing scholastic theories to ‘Respirationis usus’.3 Frank in Harvey and the Oxford physiologists provides a superb account of the origins of modern physiology, weaving together the work of numerous thinkers across several decades.4 Whilst much more accurate than Dewhurst, Frank did not furnish a revised version of ‘Respirationis usus’.5 In presenting the views of different thinkers as part of a larger research project, Frank did not always highlight the contrasts of opinion between researchers as perhaps he could have, and the subtleties of Locke's position get somewhat lost amongst the work of his contemporaries. For example, Frank cuts short some of Locke's notes so that the supporting material presented for his claims is omitted, tending to obscure the differences between Locke's conclusions and those of his colleagues.6 Since the completion of Dewhurst's and Frank's work, new light has been shed on Locke's natural philosophical career. Analyses of his commonplacing method have facilitated the creation of a much more accurate chronology of his reading, note-taking and experimentation.7 A survey of his commonplace books has also revealed several new notes on the subject of respiration.8 In addition, a new transcription and translation of ‘Respirationis usus’ has been prepared in the writing of this paper. Finally, scholars have recently put forward significant new interpretations of both Locke's and Boyle's natural philosophical views. Locke's relationship with Boyle in the 1660s, and its subsequent impact on the Essay concerning human understanding, has long interested intellectual historians. Historians of philosophy have generally supposed that Locke directly adopted Boyle's mechanical philosophy as a result of their collaboration in this period.9 Historians of science and medicine have recently sought to portray Boyle's own adherence to the mechanical philosophy as more complex than previously supposed.10 Simultaneously, research on Locke's medical outlook in the mid-1660s shows him to have been sceptical of Boyle's views on a number of important issues related to mechanism.11 Locke's work on respiration provides further detail on his natural philosophical outlook and on his relationship with Boyle at this time. Further, it provides a stimulating snapshot of the rapid, fluid and complex forces at work in the “scientific revolution”, by someone who would become one of the period's most eminent men.