De Homine
$11,000 · Offered by Manhattan Rare Books
The work was based upon Descartes' concept of 'l'homme machine', an automaton constructed by God to approximate real men as closely as possible; by means of this literary device Descartes was able to avoid the restrictions and encumbrances of traditional physiology and theology, and to explain all physical motions, except for deliberately wilful, rational or self-conscious behavior, in purely mechanical terms -Norman Without Descartes, the seventeenth-century mechanization
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