Table des matières

Part one. The Éléments de physiologie - Generally, philosophically, and physiologically

• From Elements to Fragments
• Pascal and Diderot: Common Reference Points
• Instinct
• Pleasure, Thought, and the Definition of the Human
• Limbs and Body: Subordination and Independence
• Illness
• Change, Variation, and Monstrosity
• Perfection/Perfectionnement
• Fragmented Disorder

• How to Use This Chapter
• a. Nature, Order, and Natural Patterns
• b. The Necessary Order of Nature
• c. The Order of Nature: Unchanging or in Flux?
• i. The Gouty Man and the Fire
• ii. From Recycled Cases to the Specific
• d. Matter in Flux
• e. The Natural Processes of Material Transformation
• i. Reproduction
• ii. The Beginning and End of Death
• iii. The Beginning and End of Sensation
• f. Knowledge Derived from the Senses
• i. Knowledge from the Senses: Anti-Abstraction
• ii. Sensory-Deprivation Fictions
• g. Multi-Tasking and Levels of Awareness: Thinking and Walking
• h. Selfhood and Memory
• i. The Pursuit of Happiness

• Major Debates in Physiology: Mechanism and Vitalism
• ‘Il faudroit enfin un Descartes ou un Leibniz’
• Introductory Physiologies: Structures and Contents

Part two. The Éléments de physiologie, 1790–1823

• Quotation and Allusion
• Naigeon’s Strategy

• The École normale of 1795, its rise and demise
• Garat’s Lectures on the Analysis of Human Understanding
• a. The Variation of Sensations
• b. Misleading Senses; Senses Which Correct Each Other
• c. Perfecting the Senses, in Particular, the Sense of Touch
• d. Perfecting the Senses: The Eyesight of the Savage Who Sees a Ship Far Out at Sea
• e. Memory and Imagination
• Saint-Martin’s attack on Garat

• Cabanis and the Éléments de physiologie
• Destutt de Tracy and the Éléments de physiologie