Further Reading

ANYONE WISHING TO read a conventional chronological account of Harvey’s ‘life and times’ can turn to Keynes’ Life. Easily surpassing his predecessors, Power and Chauvois, Keynes is meticulous and exhaustive as a biographer. I have relied on his vast mine of information throughout the compilation of this book.

To twenty-first-century eyes, however, the account of Harvey’s quest offered by Keynes (and also by his predecessors) appears anachronistic, animated as it is by the positivistic and ‘Whiggish’ beliefs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – the idea that authentic knowledge can only be arrived at through experiment and the senses; and the conviction that the store of ‘scientific’ knowledge accumulates with time, and so ensures human progress. Keynes, like his precursors, presents Harvey as an empirical scientist, and as a thoroughly rational man, whose research proceeded logically, on a sort of inevitable progress towards truth.

Over the last fifty years, this traditional interpretation of Harvey’s quest has been revised, or rejected outright, by a number of Harvey scholars. Andrew Cunningham, Roger French, Andrew Wear and Walter Pagel (to name the foremost experts) have produced far more nuanced, historically sensitive and intellectually interesting analyses of Harvey’s endeavour. I have drawn widely on their impressive body of work throughout; without it, indeed, this book could not have been written. I recommend to the curious and intrepid general reader the works of these academics, who succeed in discussing complex and sometimes esoteric subjects in a style that is clear and accessible. As the price of their scholarly books is generally prohibitive, however, I encourage readers to try to track them down at public libraries – presuming that their local libraries remain open. Anyone interested in reading a general account of ‘science’ in the seventeenth century should consult Steven Shapin’s excellent introduction, or Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits, while those curious about scientific revolutions can read Thomas Kuhn’s classic work on the subject.

Finally, I would urge anyone interested in Harvey to read De motu cordis itself, in Kenneth Franklin’s lucid modern translation, which has been published in paperback by Everyman with an introduction by Andrew Wear. Harvey’s masterpiece can be enjoyed not only as an account of his researches, and of the formulation of his great theory, but also as a fine and fascinating work of seventeenth-century literature and philosophy. His clear, vivid prose returns us to a time in which ‘science’ was a sister study to ‘humanities’ disciplines, and benefited profoundly from that close relationship.