Juan Gomez writes…
As readers of this blog know, I have been exploring the application of the ESD framework for interpreting the history of philosophy and science in early modern Spain. Throughout the past 18 months or so I have been sharing my research and thought on the experimental/speculative divide in Spain, the application of the experimental method in medicine and natural philosophy by the Novatores, and the attacks on the “new philosophy” by Spanish scholastic thinkers. It is time to take stock on the ESD in early modern Spain, and I want to begin by focusing on one particular issue in this post.
One of the purported advantages of applying the ESD framework is that, unlike the terms “rationalist” and “empiricist,” the terms “experimental” and “speculative” were in fact the terms used by early modern philosophers. However, as is evident in a number of my posts, it seems that in early modern Spain the rationalist/empiricist distinction is used by the players in the debate. Could this perhaps mean that the ESD framework is not that appropriate for the Spanish context? I don’t believe this is the case. Let’s start by examining the use of the empiric/rationalist distinction I have referred to in previous posts.
Almost all of the figures involved in the intellectual debates in early modern Spain were either within or had some connection to the medical context. It is in this context where we see the terms “empirico” (empiric) and “racional” (rational) in use. The terms appear opposed to each other, where the empiric doctors are those that focus on experience and observation and the rational doctors those who follow the teachings of Galen and Aristotle. This being the case, we could perhaps claim that the ESD has no clear advantage over the RED framework. In fact, we could even think that the RED is better, since the figures involved in the debate were using “empirico” and “racional.”
It is important here to remember that the frameworks have two dimensions: a historical and a historiographic one. In the Spanish case, the presumed advantage of the RED would hold at the historical level, but it is yet to be seen if this carries over to the historiographical level.
However, even at the historical level the RED framework’s advantage is doubtful. As we have explained, there is a very important difference between the two frameworks: while the ESD highlights a methodological distinction, the RED highlights an epistemic one. As we examined in my last post, while Boix uses “empirico” and “racional”, he uses those terms to refer to a methodological distinction, not an epistemic one. So the use of the terms by Boix does not line up with the way they appear within the RED framework.
In fact, the fact that the way Boix uses the terms differs from the RED way actually points to the advantages of the ESD at the historiographical level. Even if the figures within the debate were not using “experimental” and “speculative”, the fact that the ESD focuses on a methodological distinction makes it a more appropriate framework for our interpretation of the period.
There is another consideration that can shed light on our present discussion. As I mentioned earlier, the empiric/rational distinction is rooted in the medical context. In other contexts, as in astrology and natural philosophy, the debate is not phrased in those terms. The Novatores, guided by the work of Benito Feijoo, phrase the methodological distinction in terms of the systemic/experimental divide, where “the former explain nature according to some system; the latter discover it through the way of experience.”
So it seems that, in spite of the empiric/rationalist distinction that appears within the medical context in early modern Spain, the ESD is still a more appropriate framework for our interpretation of the intellectual development in the Iberian Peninsula. This being said, there is still a lot of work to do in order to give a fuller account of the use of “empiric” and “rational” by early modern Spanish figures and their relation to the experimental/speculative divide.
