Gómez Pereira
Encyclopedia
Gómez Pereira was a Spanish
philosopher, doctor
, and natural humanist
from Medina del Campo
. Pereira worked hard to dispel medieval concepts of medicine and proposed the application of empirical methods; as for his philosophy, it is of the standard direction and his reasonings are a clear precedent of René Descartes
. He was famous for his practice of medicine, although he had many diverse occupations, such as owning businesses, engineering
, and philosophy
. He is credited with helping Descartes come up with the famous phrase cogito ergo sum
, meaning I think, therefore I am in Latin
.
Born in 1500 in Medina del Campo
, he was the second of five brothers; his father, Antonia Pereira, owned a small shop of " xerguería," i.e., fabrics and low quality cloths. His mother, Margarita de Medina, died in 1515 and her sons went to the care of her aunt Ana de Avila. It is thought that Pereira descended from a family of converted Jews originally from Portugal, though this is not certain because the source of this was a neighbor that testified against him in a lawsuit.
However, we cannot rule out this conversion because we know that, until his marriage, Pereira lived with his parents on Serrano street, which is located in the old Jewish quarter of town.
Pereira studied natural philosophy at the University of Salamanca
with professor Juan Martínez Silíceo (who later became the archbishop of Toledo between 1545 and 1557). There, apparently, he was actively involved in the disputes between the realists
and the nominalists, preferring the latter and rejecting the authority of the old masters in favor of knowledge provided by experience and reason. Here, he also studied medicine, concluding his studies 1520.
He then returned to Medina where he established himself as a doctor. He married Isabel Rodriguez and lived on Rúa Nueva (now Padilla Street) where he worked as a doctor and managed the business that he inherited from his family. He possessed a considerable amount of capital and invested in a wide range of business including responsibility for making the actual income and managing the collection of several parishes, trading and warehousing wines, and renting rooms to other merchants who went to the "Great Exhibitions of the Kingdom" that took place in Medina.
His fame as a physician exceeded the boundaries of Medina, and he practiced in Burgos, Segovia, Ávila and other important cities of Castille. He even came to the court of Phillip II
where he was summed to attend upon Prince Charles, heir to the unfortunate throne, who had suffered a serious accident. Thanks to Pereira, the Prince lived until 1568. He was also interested in the construction of hydraulic devices and, with his companion Francisco Lobato, designed a watermill dam that could function without water, which was patented in 1563.
In folio 26 of the Manuscripts of Francisco Lobato, the Medinan engineer decided to design a special mill, at the initiative of King Maxmilian II of Austria, who at the time was in Vallodolid (ca. 1550), a refugee from the wars against the Protestants. The future king of Bohemia took a fancy to go up the Douro River, so he commanded a galley be built and ordered the removal of any building that disrupted his navigation, i.e., fisheries and mills. This greatly harmed the locals who came to Lobato and Pereira to design a mill that could grind with the force of water without being directly on the river bank. Lobato goes on to explain that a model they tested on the Zapardiel River "milled and shook with reasonable force…, but it sucked in so much water that, by midday, there wasn't a single drop." Although the model was refined with a dam that returned the water to the river, the king paid no attention, and the project fell into oblivion. Lobato complained bitterly that, despite the promises of funding by the Hapsburgs, "we have already spent 150 ducats…and he never paid me anything—someday I'll have to ask for it."
and Galen
, as well as the medieval tradition of "magister dixit," which is based entirely on an empirical and rational method, as well as the authority of the experience of the physician. The healing methods are simple, and the doctor, because of his method and experience, is the final criterion of truth (as opposed to truths of religion or faith). "In no case of religious things will I give the opinion and sentence of some philosopher if it is not based on reason."
Gómez Pereira felt that the heat generated by a fever is the body's defense mechanism to remove the damage that affects it and, thus, nature restores the natural balance of any body, a surprisingly modern conception of fever as a reaction against disease. As for his studies of diseases such as leprosy or smallpox, Pereira's conclusions were later commended by the physician and historian Antonio Hernandez Morejon.
A difficult text to read because there are no chapters or paragraphs, the document uses the language of the "christianos nuevos" (New Christians) to explore new ideas from empiricism
and materialism
, possibly an effort to hide potentially controversial and blasphemous methods of reasoning (16th Century Castile, the Council of Trent
had already begun). Thus, the Pereira did not venture to develop the logical conclusions to their fullest extent.
It is a philosophical treatise that addresses three key issues: the "automatism of beasts"; the theory of human knowledge; the immortality of the soul.
, denying that animals are equal to humans, while acknowledging some resemblance. Both have a body with five senses, but in the case of animals, the senses do not lead to knowledge, but cause automatic reactions. Indeed, many animals are capable of acting on internal impulses (soma), upon external stimuli (specie and phantasma), and have some non-conscious ability to learn (memoria). Nevertheless, Pereira denies animals the capacity for real knowledge: "bruta sensu carent."
The idea had many supporters, because, as indicated by the author himself, if animals feel just like humans, there would be nothing to differentiate, and if humans and animals are equal, animals can also learn about the Universal, which would be "absurd and impious." But he also had detractors, some of them very close. The physician Francisco de Sosa, who published in 1556 his work "Endecálago against Antoniana Margarita, in which is treated many and very sensitive reasons and authorities of the proofs of the feeling and movement of brutes. "
. He argues that knowledge enters through the sensory organs, as in animals, but only the human soul, its spirit, is capable of converting the information provided by the senses into real thought. This is one of the qualities of the soul, the ability to extract from physical sensations the substance of things ( Universals) through this process of abstraction. But Gómez Pereira believes that sensation and intellect go together in such a way that in human beings there is something that identifies the faculty of feeling with the quality of thought, in the same way, e.g., that thought and language are linked: "if you feel, you understand."
Although Pereira recognizes that animals have souls, it dies with them. The human soul, however, is self-sufficient and thus immortal. He provides three proofs that he claims had not been discovered. First, because of its consciousness, the human soul is capable of knowing independent of the body, and thus is capable of existing despite the body's death. Secondly, the human soul does not change even though the body ages or becomes diseased, that is, its essence is not affected by extrinsic factors. Thirdly, it is the desire of all humans to attain happiness, which, alongside the wish to know the future and the consequences of our actions, are the reasons that prompt us to do good, because evil deeds lead to punishment and misfortune.
published his Discourse on Method
in 1637, the originality of the thoughts was questioned and even said to be an overt plagiarism of Gómez Pereira, as the Spanish philosopher had been studied by many prestigious intellectuals during the 16th and 117th Centuries.
The first to suggest the similarities between the two was Pierre Daniel Huet
, originally a follower then an opponent of Cartesian philosophy. Descartes himself was forced to defend himself against these accusations, as is evidenced by a latter he wrote in 1641 to his friend Father Marin Mersenne:
Many scholars of the 17th and 18th Centuries sided with Descartes and despised the work of Pereira, among them Pierre Bayle
(although he did recognize the similarity between the two) and the Enclyopedists Diderot and d'Alembert who said:
However, many others have defended the contrary thesis. Even accepting that Descartes may not have read the work of Pereira, they argue that he was influenced indirectly, especially through the work of another Spanish physician and philosopher, Francisco Valles, who read it in French. Among those who accuse Descartes of being a counterfeit are Isaac Cardoso
and Voltaire
.
The basis for this criticism is the striking similarities between the two thinkers on some key points:
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
philosopher, doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, and natural humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
from Medina del Campo
Medina del Campo
Medina del Campo is a town located in the middle of the Spanish Meseta Central, in the province of Valladolid, Castile-Leon autonomous region, 45 km from Valladolid. It is the capital of a farming area, far away from the great economic centres.-History:...
. Pereira worked hard to dispel medieval concepts of medicine and proposed the application of empirical methods; as for his philosophy, it is of the standard direction and his reasonings are a clear precedent of René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
. He was famous for his practice of medicine, although he had many diverse occupations, such as owning businesses, engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. He is credited with helping Descartes come up with the famous phrase cogito ergo sum
Cogito ergo sum
is a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...
, meaning I think, therefore I am in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
.
Biography
Not much is known of his life, because there was no one who took care of his manuscripts. What is known is the result of the investigation of unrelated documents to which researchers have given shape, many of them having to do with business or lawsuits.Born in 1500 in Medina del Campo
Medina del Campo
Medina del Campo is a town located in the middle of the Spanish Meseta Central, in the province of Valladolid, Castile-Leon autonomous region, 45 km from Valladolid. It is the capital of a farming area, far away from the great economic centres.-History:...
, he was the second of five brothers; his father, Antonia Pereira, owned a small shop of " xerguería," i.e., fabrics and low quality cloths. His mother, Margarita de Medina, died in 1515 and her sons went to the care of her aunt Ana de Avila. It is thought that Pereira descended from a family of converted Jews originally from Portugal, though this is not certain because the source of this was a neighbor that testified against him in a lawsuit.
However, we cannot rule out this conversion because we know that, until his marriage, Pereira lived with his parents on Serrano street, which is located in the old Jewish quarter of town.
Pereira studied natural philosophy at the University of Salamanca
University of Salamanca
The University of Salamanca is a Spanish higher education institution, located in the town of Salamanca, west of Madrid. It was founded in 1134 and given the Royal charter of foundation by King Alfonso IX in 1218. It is the oldest founded university in Spain and the third oldest European...
with professor Juan Martínez Silíceo (who later became the archbishop of Toledo between 1545 and 1557). There, apparently, he was actively involved in the disputes between the realists
Philosophical realism
Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc....
and the nominalists, preferring the latter and rejecting the authority of the old masters in favor of knowledge provided by experience and reason. Here, he also studied medicine, concluding his studies 1520.
He then returned to Medina where he established himself as a doctor. He married Isabel Rodriguez and lived on Rúa Nueva (now Padilla Street) where he worked as a doctor and managed the business that he inherited from his family. He possessed a considerable amount of capital and invested in a wide range of business including responsibility for making the actual income and managing the collection of several parishes, trading and warehousing wines, and renting rooms to other merchants who went to the "Great Exhibitions of the Kingdom" that took place in Medina.
His fame as a physician exceeded the boundaries of Medina, and he practiced in Burgos, Segovia, Ávila and other important cities of Castille. He even came to the court of Phillip II
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
where he was summed to attend upon Prince Charles, heir to the unfortunate throne, who had suffered a serious accident. Thanks to Pereira, the Prince lived until 1568. He was also interested in the construction of hydraulic devices and, with his companion Francisco Lobato, designed a watermill dam that could function without water, which was patented in 1563.
In folio 26 of the Manuscripts of Francisco Lobato, the Medinan engineer decided to design a special mill, at the initiative of King Maxmilian II of Austria, who at the time was in Vallodolid (ca. 1550), a refugee from the wars against the Protestants. The future king of Bohemia took a fancy to go up the Douro River, so he commanded a galley be built and ordered the removal of any building that disrupted his navigation, i.e., fisheries and mills. This greatly harmed the locals who came to Lobato and Pereira to design a mill that could grind with the force of water without being directly on the river bank. Lobato goes on to explain that a model they tested on the Zapardiel River "milled and shook with reasonable force…, but it sucked in so much water that, by midday, there wasn't a single drop." Although the model was refined with a dam that returned the water to the river, the king paid no attention, and the project fell into oblivion. Lobato complained bitterly that, despite the promises of funding by the Hapsburgs, "we have already spent 150 ducats…and he never paid me anything—someday I'll have to ask for it."
Work
Pereira's unique thought arose from his synthesis of philosophy and medicine. He rejected the authority of the old masters and medievals in favor of reason, logic and experience. Moreover, he often used paradoxes and syllogisms to expose the errors of those he questioned. Thus, it can be argued that his philosophy was more negative than positive, but this is understandable considering the context of ideological suppression in the face of religious authority, as well the veiled accusations about Pereira's Jewish origins. The famous essayist Menéndez Pelayo wrote of this famous thinker:
In experimental psychology, Gómez Pereira is, without a doubt, more advanced than his time, more than the seventeenth century, more than Bacon, more than Descartes. None noted the phenomenon of his intelligence.
Novae veraeque Medicinae
Novae veraeque Medicinae is a medical treatise that focuses on the study of fevers [its causes and types] as well as other specific diseases like leprosy and smallpox. In this work, which he dedicated to Prince Don Carlos, Pereira follows in the tradition of AristotleAristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
and Galen
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamon , was a prominent Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher...
, as well as the medieval tradition of "magister dixit," which is based entirely on an empirical and rational method, as well as the authority of the experience of the physician. The healing methods are simple, and the doctor, because of his method and experience, is the final criterion of truth (as opposed to truths of religion or faith). "In no case of religious things will I give the opinion and sentence of some philosopher if it is not based on reason."
Gómez Pereira felt that the heat generated by a fever is the body's defense mechanism to remove the damage that affects it and, thus, nature restores the natural balance of any body, a surprisingly modern conception of fever as a reaction against disease. As for his studies of diseases such as leprosy or smallpox, Pereira's conclusions were later commended by the physician and historian Antonio Hernandez Morejon.
Antoniana Margarita
Antoniana Margarita was reprinted many times but only very recently translated into Castilian (2000, form the original Latin). The work is dedicated to his teacher Juan Martinez Silicium and is a tribute to his parents, Antonio and Margarita, even though the subtitle of clearly indicates its scientific and philosophical contents: "a work so useful and necessary for medical, physical, and theologians ("Opus NEMP phisicis, ac medicis teologis, non minus utile quam neccessarium").A difficult text to read because there are no chapters or paragraphs, the document uses the language of the "christianos nuevos" (New Christians) to explore new ideas from empiricism
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
and materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
, possibly an effort to hide potentially controversial and blasphemous methods of reasoning (16th Century Castile, the Council of Trent
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent was the 16th-century Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. It is considered to be one of the Church's most important councils. It convened in Trent between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563 in twenty-five sessions for three periods...
had already begun). Thus, the Pereira did not venture to develop the logical conclusions to their fullest extent.
It is a philosophical treatise that addresses three key issues: the "automatism of beasts"; the theory of human knowledge; the immortality of the soul.
The Insensibility of Animals
Pereira's paradigm is typical of the Christian humanism of the RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, denying that animals are equal to humans, while acknowledging some resemblance. Both have a body with five senses, but in the case of animals, the senses do not lead to knowledge, but cause automatic reactions. Indeed, many animals are capable of acting on internal impulses (soma), upon external stimuli (specie and phantasma), and have some non-conscious ability to learn (memoria). Nevertheless, Pereira denies animals the capacity for real knowledge: "bruta sensu carent."
The idea had many supporters, because, as indicated by the author himself, if animals feel just like humans, there would be nothing to differentiate, and if humans and animals are equal, animals can also learn about the Universal, which would be "absurd and impious." But he also had detractors, some of them very close. The physician Francisco de Sosa, who published in 1556 his work "Endecálago against Antoniana Margarita, in which is treated many and very sensitive reasons and authorities of the proofs of the feeling and movement of brutes. "
Human Knowledge
In this sense, Pereira's ideas are radically opposed to medieval scholasticismScholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
. He argues that knowledge enters through the sensory organs, as in animals, but only the human soul, its spirit, is capable of converting the information provided by the senses into real thought. This is one of the qualities of the soul, the ability to extract from physical sensations the substance of things ( Universals) through this process of abstraction. But Gómez Pereira believes that sensation and intellect go together in such a way that in human beings there is something that identifies the faculty of feeling with the quality of thought, in the same way, e.g., that thought and language are linked: "if you feel, you understand."
The Immortality of the Soul
Thus, knowledge would be an essential faculty of the soul, and, moreover, the human being has a soul conscious of itself, that exists thanks to the thoughts it develops. In this work, there is a phrase that no doubt surprises those that are unaware of Pereira, for obvious reasons: "nosco me aliquid noscere, et quidquid noscit, est, ergo ego sum." "I know that I know something, anyone who knows exists, then I exist."Although Pereira recognizes that animals have souls, it dies with them. The human soul, however, is self-sufficient and thus immortal. He provides three proofs that he claims had not been discovered. First, because of its consciousness, the human soul is capable of knowing independent of the body, and thus is capable of existing despite the body's death. Secondly, the human soul does not change even though the body ages or becomes diseased, that is, its essence is not affected by extrinsic factors. Thirdly, it is the desire of all humans to attain happiness, which, alongside the wish to know the future and the consequences of our actions, are the reasons that prompt us to do good, because evil deeds lead to punishment and misfortune.
Pereira and Descartes
After René DescartesRené Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
published his Discourse on Method
Discourse on Method
The Discourse on the Method is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. Its full name is Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences .The Discourse on Method is best known...
in 1637, the originality of the thoughts was questioned and even said to be an overt plagiarism of Gómez Pereira, as the Spanish philosopher had been studied by many prestigious intellectuals during the 16th and 117th Centuries.
The first to suggest the similarities between the two was Pierre Daniel Huet
Pierre Daniel Huet
Pierre Daniel Huet was a French churchman and scholar, editor of the Delphin Classics, founder of the Academie du Physique in Caen and Bishop of Soissons from 1685 to 1689 and afterwards of Avranches.-Life:...
, originally a follower then an opponent of Cartesian philosophy. Descartes himself was forced to defend himself against these accusations, as is evidenced by a latter he wrote in 1641 to his friend Father Marin Mersenne:
I have not seen Antoniana Margarita, nor do I have a great need to see it any more than the Theses of Louvain or the book of Hansenius, but I would like to know where to find a copy if you think it necessary.
Many scholars of the 17th and 18th Centuries sided with Descartes and despised the work of Pereira, among them Pierre Bayle
Pierre Bayle
Pierre Bayle was a French philosopher and writer best known for his seminal work the Historical and Critical Dictionary, published beginning in 1695....
(although he did recognize the similarity between the two) and the Enclyopedists Diderot and d'Alembert who said:
Descartes is the first philosopher who dared to consider animals as mere machines: therefore, Gómez Pereira, who said this some time before him . . . stumbled upon this hypothesis by chance.
However, many others have defended the contrary thesis. Even accepting that Descartes may not have read the work of Pereira, they argue that he was influenced indirectly, especially through the work of another Spanish physician and philosopher, Francisco Valles, who read it in French. Among those who accuse Descartes of being a counterfeit are Isaac Cardoso
Isaac Cardoso
Isaac Cardoso was a Jewish physician, philosopher, and polemic writer. He was born of Marrano parents at Celorico in the province of Beira, Portugal in 1603 or 1604 and died at Verona in 1683...
and Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
.
The basis for this criticism is the striking similarities between the two thinkers on some key points:
- The empirical method: Descartes' is a priori and deductive, whereas Pereira's is a posteriori and inductive.
- Souls of animals: for both, it is a material soul, lmited and mortal
- The "automatism of beasts": whereas Descartes says that animals have a body, mind and memory, Pereira says the same using different language, viz., animals have internal structure or soma, external stimuli or phantasmae, and the ability to learn or memoria.
- The basic syllogism is strikingly similar in both, the "Cogito ergo sumCogito ergo sumis a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...
" ("je pense, donce je suis") of Descartes versus the "quidquid noscit, est, ergo ego sum" of Pereira (which precedes Descartes by some one hundred years).