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 G A L E N—The Personification of Nature and the Design Argument

by Karl Loren

Ultrasound & Heart Disease

A Reader's Guide to

Of Pandas and People

by Richard P. Aulie

Third: G A L E N—The Personification of Nature and the Design Argument

Mortimer Adler often quoted Alfred North Whitehead's observation that the history of western philosophy is mostly a series of footnotes to Plato, adding his own view that Aristotle wrote most of the footnotes (Adler 1993, p. 45; Whitehead 1959, p. 63). I'd like now to amend Adler's compliment by adding the name Galen to my list to complete my triumvirate of ancients whose views turn up in creationist literature.

A few comments about Galen, the renowned anatomist and physician of the ancient world, are appropriate because he was the great exponent of Aristotle's design argument, and also because an explanation reminiscent of Galen popped out from the pages of Pandas.

Ask a medical school graduate or an intern making rounds in a hospital these days "who was Galen," and rare is the freshly minted physician who recognizes the name. Yet there is scarcely a name more celebrated in all the history of medicine, with the possible exception of Hippocrates. Galen's system of medical thought predominated for over a thousand years, until it was superseded by the revolution in medicine that occurred during the Renaissance.

GALEN and PANDAS—A CASE STUDY
I see an analogy between the Renaissance revolution that overthrew the Galenic system to usher in modern medicine, and the Darwinian revolution that brought in modern biology. Resistance to both revolutions was significant. For this reason, Galen might be regarded as a case study to help us understand the appeal of Pandas and why a book of this genre has a devoted following.

A BRILLIANT CAREER
Galen lived during the time of the emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, and the Christian theologian Tertullian. He was Greek, born in about AD 130 in Pergamum, a city in Asia Minor renowned for its culture, and for one of the seven churches identified twice by John in the book of Revelation. John wrote that even though Pergamum was "where Satan has his throne" (CEV, 2.13), meaning it might have been a center of Emperor worship, its Christians remained faithful to Christ. We don't know whether Galen knew of that early Christian community, although he was the first pagan to write agreeably about Christians.

Talented, energetic, and innovative, Galen would have stood out in any age. He began writing as a teenager, traveled widely across the Mediterranean world, practiced medicine in Rome, and based his medical ideas on dissections of animals, mostly the Barbary ape (Macaca inuus), but not, as far as we know, of humans. He also experimented on live animals, always observing, writing, arguing, lecturing, and becoming famous and influential in the doing. When Galen became a surgeon to the gladiators in Pergamum he learned human anatomy a practical way, by treating wounds. He learned about bones, muscles, viscera and blood flow from the bodies of Christians wounded or killed in those contests, although the martyred Antipas, mentioned by John in Revelation 2.13, was before his time. He was the personal physician to Marcus Aurelius. A follower of Stoicism, he was a man of letters, philosophy, and science, and ended his days at age 70, probably in Pergamum, in the reign of the infamous Commodus. Today, some 120 treatises with his name have survived, bearing witness to his genius.

A GALEN INDUSTRY
Galen's Greek manuscripts were translated first into Arabic by the remarkable Nestorian Christian, Hunain ibn Ishaq, who was employed by the enlightened Arabs of 9th century Baghdad; then the Arabic went into Latin, mostly by Gerard of Cremona in 12th centuryToledo (Sarton 1961, p. 17-23; May 1962, I, p. 5-8). Following the invention of the printing press, in about AD 1456, a thriving Galen industry took hold in Europe with the publication of marvelous Latin editions and commentaries, which are a glory of the Renaissance. Galen was revered. For a time, Renaissance physicians believed that a golden age of medicine was at hand. Even today, the Galen industry continues to attract customers. Present day translations are based on editions brought out in Leipzig, by Georg Helmreich in 1907-1909 or by Karl Gottlob KŸhn in 1822.

Two easily accessible English translations reveal the essential Galen and the unique ideas that commanded medicinal practice for a thousand years. These are Galen's Natural Faculties (Brock 1952) and his Uses of the Parts (May 1967), both of which I used in preparing these paragraphs. At first glance, these works might appear to be texts of physiology and anatomy, respectively. They are neither, although they contain a good deal of both. Yes, a biology student today can recognize ordinary topics of human physiology and anatomy-digestion, nutrition, blood, bones, muscles, and all the rest. But Galen's explanation of these topics is entirely mystifying to twentieth century eyes.

WHY GALEN WAS REJECTED
For instance, take Galen's description of the hand. In the first book of his Usefulness of the Parts he first of all discusses why we have hands (May 1968, I, p. 69, 108):

Man is the most intelligent of the animals and so, also, hands are the instruments most suitable for an intelligent animal. For it is not because he has hands that he is the most intelligent, as Anaxagoras says, but because he is the most intelligent that he has hands, as Aristotle says.... 

Notice the Aristotelian finalism, which is one of the two main themes in his work. Now, no anatomy text today, that I know of, has a passage like that. This is because the scientific revolution of the Renaissance provided a completely different manner of explaining the same topic. As a result, Aristotelian finalism has disappeared from explanations in medical texts—or we hope it has. The images and thought patterns by which we organize sensory impressions have changed. We do not think the same thoughts; the method of explanation itself has changed.

Similarly, because of the Darwinian revolution—which might be regarded as a postponed revolution in biology—we look at the same topics concerning species in an entirely different way. One might notice in passing that had Galen embraced the view ofAnaxagoras, to him an ancient personage, instead of the Aristotelian view, the history of medical explanation might have taken a different turn.

I think I have already hinted that we should take care to view the present day evolution controversy with a steady eye, and deny ourselves the propensity to favor one side or the other with either undue sympathy or censure. With evolution today, as with Galen, it is not altogether easy to explain why intelligent people look at the same facts and embrace one explanation and not another.

In the case of Galen, were the facts of anatomy the primary cause of the rejection of the Galenic system? I think not. Ignoramuses did not predominate either in the thousand year reign of Galen or in the Renaissance. Andreas Vesalius, who in the sixteenth century led the way in uncovering the anatomical mismatch between his own dissections of cadavers and Galen's simian anatomy, insisted on calling Galen the "prince of physicians." And there were physicians of the time who thought that any human structure found to differ from the Galenic description was proof of human decadence and degeneration since Galen's day (Saunders & O'Malley, p. 13). A perusual of Uses of the Parts shows that Gale was extremely accurate in his anatomical descriptions, albeit of nonhuman specimens.

If advances in anatomy were not sufficient to bring down the Galenic system, perhaps the advent of the experimental method, instead of reliance on Galen's authority, was sufficient to bring down his medical system. Experiments were certainly a new departure in the Renaissance. But Galen's experiments on the function of the ureters, on the recurrent laryngeal nerve, and on transections of the spinal cord were first class. (Brock p. 57-61; May I, p. 352 passim; Singer, p. 116)

The Renaissance revolution in dissections and experiments were significant, but not sufficient, for the emergence of modern studies of the human body.

Is Pandas' advocacy of "intelligent design" wrong if its facts are found to be wrong? What does "wrong" mean?

GALEN'S TWO THEMES
Herbert Butterfield (1965), in his epochal Origins of Modern Science, made clear how difficult it was for modern science to take hold during the Renaissance. Is it possible for a belief to be metaphysically correct, that is, coherent and consistent, yet empirically false? Renaissance anatomists certainly had reason to wonder when they had to contend with the two prevailing themes that characterized the Galenic system. First, Galen maintainedthat the human body was governed by "Nature." He personified Nature, for which he idiosyncratically employed the terms who, whom, he, or her, and even Creator, and whose "faculties" he insisted it was the business of physiology to explore.

The second theme is especially pertinent to our understanding of Pandas. It appears in the quotation I chose above and appears throughout the Uses of the Parts. According to Galen, every part of the human body, every organ, every bone, and the entire human body acting as a unit, is perfectly constructed for the work it does, so that the least change harms the whole. This interpretation arises, of course, from Aristotle's teleological pronouncement that "Nature does nothing in vain." Nature has designed every animal in the best possible way for the work it does. Galen wrote: "Aristotle is right when he maintains that all animals have been fitly equipped with the best possible bodies" (May 1968, I, p. 108).

In other words, Galen's influential Uses of the Parts is a long design argument, employing Aristotle's finalism. We should notice straight-away that Galen developed a perfectly good design argument without being a theist. True, he did use the term "Creator," but he used it idiosyncratically, without implying that he had picked up any beliefs from the Christians in Pergamum.

GALEN and PANDAS
Many years ago, Charles Singer, the influential historian of medicine, thought that Galen might be called "a modern" because he emphasized anatomy in the practice of medicine (1962). Taken alone, this accolade, while doing honor to the great physician ofantiquity, misses the Aristotelian finalism that gave the Galenic system not only its metaphysical coherence for all those centuries but that also constituted a giant impediment to change.

We must give Galen his due. He is entitled to our admiration for his prowess in dissecting a wide variety of animals, for his experiments, and for his explanations of physiology. True, he did not dissect cadavers, as far as we know, and he was vastly mistaken in attributing simian anatomy to the human body. His mistakes notwithstanding, we can only stand in awe at the brilliant edifice of medical thought he erected on Aristotelian teleology. Because this edifice lasted for a thousand years, does it follow that physicians during that time were all benighted?

THE RETE MIRABILE in PANDAS
One can imagine my delight therefore when I came upon the passages in Pandas on the rete mirabile in the giraffe; on how this structure helps to regulate blood pressure in its long neck, and how the presence of the rete mirabile can be explained by intelligent design (p. 12-13, 69-71). The passages sent me flying to my copy of Galen's Uses of the Parts to see what he had to say about this "marvelous net."

The rete mirabile is a tangled knot of blood vessels, much like an intricate mesh or net; it is found in ungulates, such as pigs and giraffes, but not in humans. It is located at the baseof the brain, where in humans the same location is occupied by the "circle of Willis."

Galen, intrigued by the rete mirabile, performed many dissections of it; numerous passages in his Uses of the Parts shows its prominence in his system of physiology. He did not mention the giraffe in his Uses, although in his day this animal was certainly known throughout the Mediterranean world. Instead, he probably based his ideas on his dissections of the pig. Nor did he distinguish between arterial and venous blood flow; therefore his explanation had nothing to do with blood pressure. This plexus was "most wonderful," he said.

Then comes the Aristotelian teleology. "What is this wonderful thing," he asked, "and for what purpose has it been made by Nature who does nothing in vain?" Notice the personification of Nature in the pronoun "who." Of course, Galen said nothing about the regulation of blood flow, not knowing that the blood circulates; he claimed that the net was necessary for the "concoction" of something called the "pneuma," which in Greek biology was a kind of nonmaterial substance necessary for life (May I, 430-432, passim).

In describing how this "marvelous net" helps to maintain blood pressure in the long neck of the giraffe, Pandas observes that blood is forced upward in its neck, and when the animalreaches down to drink water blood is prevented from rushing down to the head. This is accomplished by a coordinated system of interrelated structures. According to the Pandas' interpretation, the rete mirabile, acting with pressure sensors in the neck, shunts blood away from the head when the giraffe stoops and allows blood to flow to the head when standing upright or when reaching upward to eat foliage. In this way, the regulation of blood pressure is controlled by these interrelated structures—the pressure sensors and the rete mirabile—that form an "adaptational package." (See Warren 1974)

In a number of passages, the makers of Pandas employ the term "adaptational package" to denote a group of interdependent structures that act together, such that damage to one structure must damage the whole; moreover the importance of this "package" is such that it must have been present and functioning from the beginning (p. 13, 23, 71-72, 103). For optimal functioning, one adaptation requires another adaptation. Pandas is quite correctin noticing that: "Scientific literature often reports such interdependence of structures" (p. 13). This theme, that certain anatomical structures must act together in the life of an animal, is prominent, indeed, in Aristotle's History of Animals, but without any suggestion of an origin; and Aristotle was aware that damage to one part would diminish the integrity of the whole.

Galen, the great physician of the second century, made numerous references to the rete mirabile (or "retiform") in a context of his own reliance on Aristotle. We can discern a similar reliance on Aristotelian teleology, presumably unintended, in the handling of this structure by Pandas. I find two such passages.

In drawing attention to the long legs and long neck of the giraffe, Pandas declares, on page 13:

“The giraffe requires a very special circulatory system.”

Then, after pointing out that the “rete mirable” is a necessary part of this system, Pandas declares, on page 71:

“Proponents of intelligent design maintain that only a consummate engineer could anticipate so effectively the total engineering requirements of an organism like the giraffe.”

Aside from the curious analogy, whereby God is made out to be an engineer, the words "requires" and "requirements" deserve scrutiny. Besides Aristotle, there is a whiff of Plato in this invocation of ideas that are separate from the animal itself, and even from God!Do they not imply that a future condition is the cause of a present action? In other words, the engineer knows what the giraffe will require, and presumably provides the structures at the proper time.

I am aware that biology teachers in both high schools and colleges use this sort of finalistic language every day in the week, even by those who hold "creationism" in disdain; and they can do so with no loss to science education. Perhaps we can press too far for linguistic precision. Perhaps Aristotle had something when he said that the "final cause" was the most important, for it was the reason for the existence of a thing—"for the products ofNature as well as for those of Art" (Parts, 639b).

Notwithstanding Aristotle's insight, when we stop to think about the meaning of those words, "requires" and "requirements," we are at once up against a mystery, are we not? How can a thing not yet in existence direct and cause a present action? How can a disembodied idea, existing apart from nature, have anything to do with the development of an animal?

My only point here is that in explaining the rete mirabile, the makers of Pandas were obliged willy-nilly to rely on teleological ideas whose source was in Greek biology.

GALEN, and PANDAS in PANDAS
Before leaving Galen and Pandas, I should comment on the title of this book I have been examining. First of all, its makers critique the application of the concept of homologies to the classification of the giant panda and the lesser or red panda, and whether they should be classified with bears (p. 31, 32). Both animals, they then point out, are known for their so called "panda's thumb," a structure in the fore paw that is not present in bears. Panda's "thumb" is not really a thumb but is an enlargement of the radial sesamoid bone in the wrist. This "thumb" is only partially opposable, not like a true thumb, but it enablesthe panda to grasp bamboo shoots while eating. Stephen Gould has worked out the present day evolutionary explanation (1982).

The human "hand" caught the fancy of the ancients, who asked themselves this question: why is the hand so well constructed for the work it does? Aristotle gave an answer for which there was no suitable alternative for more than twenty centuries. Said he: it occurs in humans because they are humans, and need it. Galen, the devoted follower of Aristotle, thought the hand so important that he devoted the entire first chapter of his Uses of the Parts to a teleological explanation of its structure and function.

And to judge from the title and contents of a book published in 1837 by a certain Charles Bell—The Hand, Its Mechanical and Vital Component—Aristotle's explanation lasted until the time of Darwin.

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