Matter and Form: A Conversation about Animal Generation at the Académie Bourdelot

This essay aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the relationship between matter and\r\nform in XVII Century, by examining a Conversation about substantial forms (Des formes substantielles)\r\nthat took place in 1660s at the Bourdelot Academy. On the one hand, this conversation\r\nrepresents a little-known episode in the reception of Descartes’ L’Homme and confirms the\r\nsuccess of Cartesian mechanism in scientific circles. On the other hand, however, it shows that\r\nthe ‘new philosophers’, who think that animal generation can be explained through matter and\r\nmotion alone, and the ‘old philosophers’, who think that the mixed bodies, like living beings,\r\nrequire an internal principle of motion, can find a common ground in making ‘form’ coincide\r\nwith ‘subtle matter’.