Thomas Reid on the animate creation
Subtitle: papers relating to the life sciences
By: edited by Paul Wood.
Contributors: Wood, Paul, 1952-
Series: The Edinburgh edition of Thomas Reid
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press; Penn State University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: University Park, Pa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
Subjects: Natural history.; Physiology -- Early works to 1800.; Materialism -- Early works to 1800.
Description: Best known as a moralist and one of the founders of the Scottish Common Sense school of philosophy, Thomas Reid was also an influential scientific thinker. Here, his work on the life sciences is studied in detail, bringing together unpublished transcripts of his most important papers on natural history, physiology and materialist metaphysics.

The volume falls into two main parts, the first of which contains a detailed introduction. This provided the first published account of Reid's reflections on the highly contraversial theories surrounding muscular motion and the reproduction of plants and animals, and relates them to the broader Enlightenment debates on these issues.

It also contains the first systematic reconstruction of Reid's opposition to materialism, and views his polemics against the noted Dissenter Joseph Priestley in terms of their differing interpretations of the Newtonian legacy, their conflicting philosophical assumptions, and the cultural politics of Common Sense philosophy in the 1770s.

The second part reproduces a selection of Reid's most significant papers on the life sciences, including his Glasgow Literary Society discourses on muscular motion and on Priestley's materialism, as well as other manuscripts which document the development of his scientific ideas.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [245]-270) and index.