The Philosophical Doctors: Huarte De San Juan, Pereira And Sabuco De Nantes

The philosopher doctors They are independent thinkers with medical training, who assume the Hippocratic-Gallenic doctrine of typological differences based on constitution and temperament as the cause of psychological behaviors.

Medical Philosophers: a summary of their lives and contributions

Next we are going to get to know several of these Medical Philosophers who, during the Late Middle Ages and the Modern Age.

1. Gómez Pereira (1500-1560)

Gómez Pereira was a Castilian doctor who can be considered a precursor, almost a century ahead, of Descartes. In his workAntoniana Margarita”, makes thought the essence of the soul and defends the automatism of animals. The following phrase, prior to the famous Cartesian “cogito”, may give an idea: “I know that I know something, and whoever knows exists: therefore I exist”.

2. Sabuco Olive from Nantes

Oliva’s workNew philosophy of the nature of man” (1587) was attributed to her father, Miguel, who was blind, which gives an idea of ​​how unusual it was for a woman to sign a scientific work.

It is written in the form of a conversation between three shepherds and can be considered a treatise on the passions and their relationship with physiological life. Establishes psycho-somatic or psycho-physiological interaction as an explanation of all types of human behaviors. It also defends the effectiveness of verbal therapy along with other organic therapies.

3. Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529-1585)

Patron of psychology in our country, he is one of the Spanish authors who has achieved greater universal projection for his work.Science wit test”, published in 1575. Huarte’s work was translated into Latin, English, French, Italian and Dutch, and was republished in some of these languages.

It is based on the doctrine that all souls are equal, with the cerebral temperament being the cause of the different abilities of man, according to the predominance in him of the primary qualities (heat, humidity and dryness). Dryness favors wisdom or intelligence, humidity favors memory, and heat favors imagination.

Huarte calls himself a “natural philosopher” and as such he wants to look for the particular causes of any effect. Even recognizing that God is the ultimate cause, he is interested in natural causes, and he avoids explanations of a supernatural nature. It will be up to the scientist to discover the cause-effect relationship between things.because there are ordered and manifest causes from which such an effect can arise“.

Huarte is an empiricist thinker. He therefore adopts the position Aristotelian-Thomist by defending the idea that if souls are equal, individual differences appear due to the difference between bodies. Matter thus constitutes the differentiating principle. Huarte rejects the previous existence of a soul capable of knowing Ideas. He recognizes, however, that the soul – both in its rational aspect and in the sensitive and vegetative aspect – is wise, without being taught by anyone. He establishes a mediating instrument in the brain regarding the abilities of the soul, which affects all kinds of skills.

He is the creator of the first evolutionary psychology by admitting that the temperament of childhood is more suitable for sensitive and vegetative souls than for the rational one, in order to, little by little, acquire a temperament more inclined to imagine, understand and remember. In the elderly, understanding dominates because they have a lot of dryness and little humidity, the lack of which causes their poor memory, while the opposite would happen to the young, which is why childhood would be more suitable for learning languages, an activity that according to Huarte depends on the memory.

Huarte can also be considered a pioneer of eugenicssince the temperament would depend on the seed of the parents and, subsequently, the lifestyle.

The notion of temperament dates back to Greek thinkers. Hippocratesin the 5th century BC, explains health as the balance of four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. If heat and humidity (air) predominate, a sanguine temperament results. If the cold and dryness (earth), typical of phlegm, the phlegmatic; If the heat and dryness (fire) typical of yellow bile, the temperament will be choleric, and if the cold and humidity of black bile (water) predominates, the temperament will be melancholic. (See Table 1).

Huarte combines the Theory of the Humors of Hippocrates with the powers of the “rational soul” that Aristotle established: memory, imagination and understanding.

Memory passively receives and retains data. For the brain to be a good instrument of this faculty, the humidity. The imaginative, according to the Aristotelian notion, is the one that writes the figures of things in memory, and the one in charge of introducing them and recovering them from memory. For the brain to be a good instrument of this faculty, heat must predominate in it: “The heat lifts the figures and makes them boil, where everything that there is to see in them is discovered.”

Understanding requires that the brain be dry and composed of very subtle and delicate parts. They are tasks of understanding to infer, distinguish and choose.

These three powers are mutually exclusive: with memory and the predominance of humidity, understanding is lost, which requires dryness and heat, and vice versa. He who has a great imagination may not have much understanding either because the heat that it requires “consumes the most delicate part of the brain, and leaves it hard and dry.”

Huarte refutes Cicero’s opinion that all the arts could be achieved with study, since they are based on principles that can be learned. For Huarte there are three types of genius: the intelligent, the memorious and the imaginative. Each job, on the other hand, will require a certain type of ingenuity.

A preacher needs understanding to reach the truth, memory to quote phrases from others and good imagination to know how to teach eloquently and attract attention, so a good preacher should have great understanding and a lot of imagination. However, since a great imagination predisposes one to pride, gluttony and lust, he recommends that the preacher not be excessively imaginative, as this could lead to evil and drag the faithful into it.

A good lawyer or judge will need a great memory to learn the many laws and a good understanding to distinguish, infer, reason and choose.. Although it is always preferable for a lawyer to have a lot of understanding and a short memory than the opposite.

Medicine also needs good understanding and memory, although it requires imagination for the clinical eye, the conjectures of medicine, and finding the causes and remedies for each patient.

The military profession requires a certain malice, which requires a special type of imagination that confers the ability to divine the “deceptions that come under some cover.” In his opinion, the game of chess is one of the games that most develops the imagination.

The office of king, finally, would find its ideal temperament in a “temperate man“, that is, with a compensated or balanced temperament. This is accompanied by hair that turns golden with age, and grace, grace and good figure. Other signs of this temperament are virtue and good morals.

If coldness and humidity predominate in the generated body, it will result in a woman. In her life she will poorly manifest the qualities that the soul possesses to the highest degree. If heat and dryness predominate, instead a man will be born, whose qualities will be skill and ingenuity. From variations in bodily temperament, greater or lesser clumsiness in women and greater or lesser ingenuity and skill in men derive.

Huarte picks up from Aristotle the idea that desire, imagination and movements during the carnal act contribute to generating good children. According to this doctrine, wise parents usually have foolish children, because they are clumsy in the sexual act, while foolish and instinctive parents, being more skillful, can father ingenious children.

Huarte is considered a pioneer in different fields: for Menendez Pelayo is the father of the phrenology; can also be considered a predecessor of the approach of differential psychology and professional guidance and selection. He is also a pioneer, as we already said, of eugenics and age psychology.