Quantification and Certainty

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter, I examine the context in which Sanctorius presented his measuring instruments in his publications. In difference to previous studies, which often have focused solely on the Commentary on Avicenna, this being the only work in which Sanctorius included illustrations of his instruments, I analyze the measuring instruments in the light of all that Sanctorius published. Furthermore, I scrutinize the relation of the various instruments to each other and discuss Sanctorius’s possible complementary use of them. Of particular interest in this context is the role of the De statica medicina, which has become a keyword for Sanctorius’s quantitative approach to physiology. These considerations will serve as an introduction to an in-depth study of Sanctorius’s measuring instruments in Chap. 7, and reveal the agenda behind his quantification efforts—to enhance certainty in medicine. Given that the degree of conjecture in medicine was a contested issue in traditional introductory discussions in contemporary works on medicine, I examine Sanctorius’s claim to enhance certainty through quantification, measurements, and instruments against the backdrop of the prevailing discourse(s) therein. While it is immediately obvious that Sanctorius departed from traditional views by introducing new quantitative procedures into medicine, the investigation of the roles that he assigned to logical reasoning, on the one hand, and to experience, empirical knowledge, and his new methods of quantification, on the other, draws a more complex picture regarding the combination of theory and practice in his works.