Latin Manuscripts of Francis Glisson (1). Philosophical Papers: Materials Related to "De Natura Substantiae Energetica" (On the Energetic Nature of Substance), 1672 (review)

This volume continues the series of publications from Francis Glisson’s manuscripts in the British Library that began with Andrew Cunningham’s edition of some of the English manuscripts (English Manuscripts of Francis Glisson (1): From “Anatomia Hepatis” [The Anatomy of the Liver], 1654, 1993). At least two more volumes are planned, one each of the English and Latin manuscripts.

The present volume contains transcriptions of papers related to Glisson’s massive philosophical treatise De natura substantiae energetica, published in 1672. These consist mainly of two substantial treatises: Sloane MS 3314, titled Tractatus de inadaequatis rerum conceptibus (Treatise on inadequate concepts of things); and Sloane MS 3313 (with an additional chapter in Sloane MS 3308), titled Disquisitiones metaphysicae, sive conceptus inadaequati metaphysici (Metaphysicial disquisitions, or inadequate metaphysical concepts). The editor, Guido Giglioni, has also included a draft dedication (in English) to De natura substantiae energetica, and several drafts of Glisson’s title page to that work, which show his difficulty in precisely describing its topic.

The draft preface to De natura substantiae energetica gives some indication of the scope and aims of that work, which, as Glisson states, came to “involve the whole body of natural philosophy” (p. 3). Certainly his topic, “a metaphysics of being,” was large and ambitious. Glisson’s formulation centered on perception and thus went to the heart of the concerns of the new philosophy of the seventeenth century. As he began this work, he says, he realized he had to go back (like Descartes) to the fundamentals of philosophy and discuss “the nature and origin of inadequate conceptions” and “the general nature of entity” (p. 3). Having accomplished these two tasks, however, he apparently decided not to add to the weight of his treatise by including these preliminary exercises, and they remained in manuscript form—though in such a polished state that, as Giglioni surmises in his introduction, Glisson may have considered publishing them separately.

Giglioni dates De inadaequatis rerum conceptibus as the earlier of the two. It consists of Glisson’s theory of knowledge, which he defines as a kind of anatomy: the intellect literally dissects the objects of perception into the inadequate concepts of the title, which the intellect can then comprehend. Anatomy such as Glisson regularly practiced on the body was thus a model of the way in which knowledge was acquired. The second treatise, Disquisitiones metaphysicae, discusses the nature of being and the distinction between “ens rei” (real being) and “ens rationis” (being of reason). Glisson particularly engages with, and largely refutes, the opinions of the sixteenth-century Scholastic Francisco Suarez.

As with Cunningham’s edition, Giglioni’s editorial hand is light. As he states, this is a “working edition” (p. viii) and not a scholarly analysis. He has regularized spelling and corrected some errors, but his aim is simply to reproduce Glisson’s text, including deleted words and passages. His short introduction gives some background to the texts and briefly explains their contents and relation to the larger work. He has prefaced each of the main treatises with a substantial and very useful summary in English, and includes indexes of concepts, proper names, and quoted works. I cannot pretend to have plowed through the Latin word for word, but a sampling found no obvious errors, and the typeface is clear and easy to read—much easier, no doubt, than the original!

This edition and Cunningham’s are welcome additions to the primary source material on early modern medicine and natural philosophy. The Cambridge Wellcome Unit is to be commended for making these available to scholars in this era of profit-minded publishing.