Winged Men and the Cast of Die: Anti-Finalism and Radical Materialism in Guillaume Lamy
Filippo Del Lucchese
Brunel University – West London
filippo.dellucchese@brunel.ac.uk
The question of ends was a genuine controversy that began to rage long before the term
“teleology” was invented, coined by Christian Wolff in his Philosophia rationalis sive logica of
1728. It is a controversy that continued through the ages in a highly articulate debate that
extended beyond the classical world, accompanying scholasticism from its beginnings, to be
pursued in the early modern period with particular intensity, as I will attempt to show in this
paper.
Nonetheless, the number of works in the history of philosophy devoted specifically to the
question of teleology are limited.1 After the early, unfinished attempt by Georges-Louis Le Sage
during the eighteenth century, it is not until the end of the nineteenth century that we find a book
entirely dedicated to final causes. Paul Janet published an interesting work halfway between
philosophical inquiry and historical reconstruction entitled Les causes finales.2 The reason I
mention Janet in this context is because one of the principal merits in his defense of teleology
was that it did not "water down" the concept by diluting it in pursuit of an acceptable
compromise with his opponents, the supporters of antifinalism, as many other writers had done
before him.
Taking up the Hegelian concept of vorherbestimmte, Janet sketches out a definition of the
final cause based on how it is given to experience, "as an effect which, if not planned, is at least
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predetermined, and because of this predetermination it determines and controls the series of
phenomena that it apparently results from: it is thus a fact…that may be considered as the cause
of its own cause."3 Echoing Kant's thinking, the series of final causes can be considered to be the
exact inverse of the series of efficient causes, with one in descending order and the other
ascending.
Although thinkers of every period had attacked the legitimacy of this argument with the
tools available to them in their time, not one of them, according to Janet, succeeded in offering a
definitive solution to the problem. The optimism that Koyré evinced when he wrote that, in
passing from a closed world to an infinite universe, modernity banished final causes and
violently expelled them from the new science does, in effect, appear to be excessive when
viewed from this perspective.4 His optimism lacks justification, unless one is willing to relegate
such figures as Gassendi, Leibniz or even Newton himself, to the old ontology, saving only
Descartes (and even he is not completely out of the woods) or Spinoza or, more to the point, the
physician and philosopher Guillaume Lamy, who forms the subject of this article.
Still relatively unknown and unexplored by scholars, Lamy is one of those figures for
whom the gap between posthumus fame and the strategic importance or role they played in life is
most evident: no monographic works have been dedicated to him.5 My intention in this essay is
to show that Guillaume Lamy–some of whose positions recall the most profound and enduring
conclusions of materialism–represents a "radical" current of antifinalism, devoid of weaknesses
and far from compromise with his adversaries. He was one of the key figures among the
followers of atomism, and especially of Lucretius, in the seventeenth century. What will be
shown is that his interest was directed toward the philosophical debate on the classics—
especially on the three pillars of classical finalism, Aristotle, Galen, and Lactantius—just as
2
much as it was toward the medical-anatomical debate with his contemporaries, like Galatheau
and Cressé. I also intend to show that in spite of his critical, original formulations of Lucretian
Epicureanism and despite his complex relationship with Descartes and Gassendi, Lamy
represents a separate current of classical French philosophy in the last quarter of the century.
This stature is based on his radical antifinalism and his conception of chance as an explanatory
principle for the formation and evolution of life. Taken together, these two elements function as
a genuine “materialistic war machine” at the heart of an epoque during which no one was yet
willing to take the leap of abandoning some of the cornerstones of the old finalistic and
providentialist metaphysics.
This radical antifinalism and his conception of chance make of Lamy not a protoFideist—a sincere supporter of the unknowability of God’s ends—so much as a radical Lucretian
materialist whose aim is to openly distance himself equally from the partial Cartesian rejection of
final causes and from the sugar-coated Epicureanism of the Gassendists.
The classical tradition
If we give credit to the opinion of Henri Busson, one of the first modern-day historians to
“rediscover” Lamy, it is difficult to overestimate his importance in the Paris of the last quarter of
the century. Along with Malebranche’s Recherche de la verité (1674), Jacques Rouhault’s Traité
de Physique (1671) and the Nouveau cours de medecine (1669), Lamy’s De principiis rerum
(1669) contributed to the “massive” penetration of Cartesianism into France.6 Lamy’s is perhaps
the most interesting of these texts because while offering a critique of Cartesianism, at the same
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time it constitutes both a rejection of finalism and an open admission of belonging to the
Lucretian tradition.
In 1669, at the time the first of his three most important works were published, Lamy,
originally from Normandy, was thirty-five years old and a Maitre aux Arts in Paris, where he had
studied and taught philosophy. He also began his medical studies in the capital, becoming a
“Doctor” and a member of the Faculty in 1672. His two later works—the Discours anatomiques
(1675, with later editions in 1679 and 1685) and Explication mécanique et physique des
fonctions de l’âme sensitive (1677)—deal with medical subjects from a Lucretian perspective.
Lamy’s intention is to make it quite clear that he is not simply adding to the generalized
renewed interest in atomism in the watered-down form provided by Gassendi, for example.
Hence, if the influence of the Latin poet and the reading of his works can only be vaguely
posited for many of the Cartesians, the continual paraphrases and citations from Lucretius that
Lamy provides, in spite of some significant revisions he makes to the Lucretian theory of the
atom,7 make him perhaps the most faithful follower of the period.
One of the most explicitly Lucretian arguments at the core of Lamy’s reasoning is his
notion of “chance.” It is on this front that Lamy undertakes a well-mounted theoretical attack
against chance understood as cause, directed not only toward his contemporary adversaries, but
also toward some of the greatest philosophers (and physicians) of antiquity who were engaged in
the anti-Epicurean campaign. Chance is, naturally, both the main object of controversy for the
supporters of finalism and the battleground in the conflict with Epicurean atheists and
materialists. This was the case starting from the time the concept was first formulated, beginning
at least with the assertion by Leucippus—as reported by Aetius—that “nothing happens in vain,
everything happens for a reason and out of necessity.”8 Ex logou, in the fragment by Leucippus,
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does not signify a rational force or an ordering principle, but a mechanical condition or cause.
Maten especially, generally translated as “by chance,” has the meaning of “in vain”
(corresponding to the Latin adverb frustra) in this context. The confusion develops further with
the oft-quoted words by Democritus that everything existing in the universe “is the fruit of
chance and necessity.”9
Various sources show that Democritus, and the later atomistic tradition, spoke about
things that arose automatos, namely, spontaneously and according to natural necessity. The
Democritean automaton, therefore, has nothing to do with a lack of causes and is nothing but
another name for necessity, completely foreign to any sort of end or purpose. Now, when
Aristotle developed his critique, especially in the Physics II, 4-6, he included the Democritean
notion within his own system, in which the cause par excellence was precisely the final cause.
Aristotle’s intention is to establish how automaton and tyche can be seen as causes. He
“appropriates” the term and filters it through the system of final causes, thereby emptying it
entirely of the meaning it had been given by Democritus. The automaton is no longer the
spontaneous, but rather that which occurs whose end is different from its aim.10 The way is thus
open for Aristotle to enclose automaton within his system of final causes and bend it toward the
idea of the failed accomplishment of an end.11 With an elliptical reference to the etymology of
the term, Aristotle thus unites chance (automaton) to that which is in vain (maten).12 His
intention in doing this is to subordinate both the accidental and chance to the final cause.
For the purposes of simplification, one might say that, other than Aristotle, the two
thinkers who represent the fundamental nodes in the theory of finalism, and whom Lamy
explicitly engages with in his works, are the physician Galen and the theologian Lactantius.
Galen makes use of the notion of “sympathy,” which he connects to the pre-established harmony
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in the universe. The key notion from this point of view is precisely that it is pre-established. For
Galen, the organs of the body function together according to a deterministic mechanism, just as
do the movements of the stars, which, however, are the work of a wise Ruler.13 At the origin of
this “mechanism,” then, we find an intelligent being who has endowed bodies with a structure
and movements that are suited to their function. This is where Galen lavishes his praise on the
“Creator of Man.”
The theme of the universe as a “machine” created by God the Craftsman or Architect also
returns in the De opificio Dei by Lactantius.14 If an able architect considers the future of a
building in its entirety before constructing it and performs calculations on its static properties,
the distribution of the spaces and its facilities, when God is occupied in fashioning creatures (in
machinandis animalibus) why would He not plan in advance the conditions necessary for their
lives? In opposition to Epicurus and Lucretius, then, Lactantius denounces chance (fortuito) as
the cause of things and places all things under the aegis of divine providence.
Mechanism and finalism: the ambiguities of the Cartesians
By putting forward the mechanistic world picture, modern Cartesian and post-Cartesian
thinkers revitalized the debate by introducing elements of tremendous novelty. The clash
between the exponents of this tradition and their opponents was extremely bitter because the
admission or denial of ends put the entire conception of nature and philosophy itself into
question.15
Before looking more closely into Lamy’s radical version of antifinalism, then, it
behooves us to understand some aspects of the complexity, ambiguity and, in the final analysis,
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excessive caution of the extensive school of thinkers represented by Descartes and his followers
such as complex, influential figures like Malebranche, on the one hand, and finally by the
supporters of the Atomistic revival in the seventeenth century, like Gassendi.
Descartes and Gassendi embodied the reaction against Scholastic concepts that were still
widely prevalent in the first half of the century.16 Their relationship perfectly represents the
situation vis-à-vis finalism. Descartes, for example, does not exclude the existence of ends in
nature, but he does exclude the possibility of human reason coming to know them purely through
its own efforts. With a move that is typical of his way of thinking, Descartes accedes on this
physical and metaphysical point: since man cannot know the metaphysics of final causes, their
study is entirely useless for physics; unless the Christian concept of Providence is eliminated,
and the God of the theologians with it, something that only Spinoza will manage to do in the
seventeenth century. Consequently, final causes must be preserved, at least in the relationship
between God and His creation.
In spite of the bitter division that opposed the two thinkers, Gassendi’s conclusion on this
point is not all that different from that of Descartes. Firstly, as Olivier Bloch has observed, we
note a rigid unity in the metaphysical perspective that traverses Gassendi’s major works and
which coalesces around a few themes, such as the defense of finalism.17 The most interesting and
original chapter of Gassendist philosophy, we might say, is the one reuniting the guiding ideas of
atomistic mechanism on the one hand and finalism on the other.
This reciprocity also provides a certain hierarchy for Gassendi, because if it is true that
man is destined to grasp only the surface of the great ‘Theater of Nature’, thus remaining
ignorant of the real mechanisms of efficient causes, it is precisely from considering the ends that
we are able to draw the most knowledge. The seeking of efficient causes is not, therefore, a vain
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pursuit, but pursuing the final causes is even more commendable and productive.18 As Bloch
insists, it is Gassendi’s theory of the semina rerum that provides us with the most mature
meaning of this watered-down version of atomism and its reconciliation with providentialist
finalism. It is the semina rerum, the principles of organized things, which demonstrate the
wisdom of a creator God and not the vain idea of a spontaneous, natural necessity born of
chance. In this section, the idea is put forward a separation (typical of cautious mechanism)
between the initial act, governed by divine wisdom and providence, and the subsequent natural
course of the world, as if the final causes were ontologically and chronologically prior to the
efficient causes.
Gassendi specifically aims to overcome the apparent contradiction between not
understanding God’s work (for example, the fact that the creatures could have been created more
perfectly than they are) and understanding their end. What Descartes maintained, that the ends
are all hidden and unfathomable, is not true. Some, especially those concerning the workings of
living bodies, are known and evident. This is where Gassendi takes up one of his most interesting
arguments: a simple glance at the world is not sufficient to understand the creation and wisdom
of God.The world– just as it is–could appear to a careless observer as an effect of chance,
thereby plunging both the efficient and final causes into an unknowably abyss.19 To know the
final cause, however, enables us to know the efficient one as well. This argument is highly
significant, because it reverses the “burden of proof” that the materialists (both Lamy and
Spinoza will be included in this label) imputed to the ‘superstitious’ followers of final causes. A
distracted gaze on the world does not lead essentially, as it shall for Spinoza, to the supersition of
finalism, but rather, to materialistic atheism. This is why the forceful establishment of the
priority of final causes as an ontological premise is so absolutely necessary to Gassendi, because
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its function is to enable a watered-down reabsorption of a certain version of mechanism and
atomism.20
Another illustrious example of the way mechanism was accommodated to finalism in the
new philosophy is provided by Malebranche, for whom the descriptive set of laws of mechanism
agrees perfectly with the prescriptive normativity of creationism. All the laws of creation are
already included in the first act of divine creation. Physics clearly responds to the new
mechanical principles in the form of simple and necessary laws. But we should give thanks to
God for this, for the magnificence of the creation and the beauty of these laws, which are the
means for God’s ends. These laws are necessary and sufficient for the movement of all things
and for the general order of the universe, but they are insufficient for the creation of the universe,
which depends, rather, on the act of the Creator.21
One of the strategies typical of this odd and almost paradoxical “accommodation” that
mechanist philosophers manage to make between mechanism and finalism is to reserve final
causes to the moral sphere and to the freedom characteristic of man, while limiting efficient
causes to the physical and material realms. This sort of separation between the physical on the
one side and the moral on the other, is what I would define as “spatial”. But the example of
Malebranche –and of Gassendi as well to some extent– seems to point to a different kind of
accommodation and a separation which we might define as “temporal” or “chronological”
between the discrete time of the fiat and of creation, during which God conceives of the design in
view of its ends, and the time when this mechanism is brought to life and is functioning, which is
to be interpreted in accordance with simple and necessary laws and can be explained without
direct recourse to finalism.
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After this excursus, needed to fully appreciate the complexity of both the AristotelianGalenic-Christian tradition and that of Cartesian and post-Cartesian mechanism, it is now time to
turn our attention to Lamy’s contribution to this debate.
The cast of the die: chance and necessity
It is interesting to note that one of the first meanings Lamy gives to chance (hazard) is
precisely the one he intends to refute: chance understood as lacking a cause, as a name for “the
unknown” in which man seeks to discern the known. Stressing the semantic complexity of the
term, Lamy implicitly hints at the ambiguity inherent to the word “chance.” In the first Discours,
speaking about the skin of the hand, he suddenly interrupts his scientific analysis to criticize
people who search for signs of the future in the lines of the palms. This criticism of divination
provides the first meaning of the term. The use of the skin, he writes, is to transmit the sensations
of the bodies that surround us, out of which arise the sensations of pain and pleasure. Some
believe, however, that this creates a “register” in which the destiny of man is written and what
they desire is to “divine their good or bad fortune” by reading the lines of the hand.
Lamy is not the first writer to criticize divinatory practices: skepticism has an illustrious
tradition starting at least as far back as Lucian and Cicero. But Lamy mainly uses this argument
to emphasize the role of chance, understood as a lack of causes and relations between the two
events, the lines of the hand and the future of its owner.22
The term “chance” thus shows itself to be equivocal and a legitimate vehicle in the
language of the time for the concept that Lamy is attempting to criticize, namely, the lack of a
causal relationship. Nevertheless, one of the final chapters of the De principiis ends with the
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conclusion that omnia casu fiunt.23 Which is in no way absurd, Lamy points out, as long as
“necessity is not opposed to chance.”24
Starting from this first work, Lamy “travels back” down the current of interpretations and
(more or less intentional) misunderstandings regarding the concept of chance in atomism. In a
certain sense, without venturing into the problem of the translation from Greek, Lamy
“reconstructs” the original meaning of the concept: if today “chance” can also signify that which
is in no way a cause but purely a “mode” of defining how often or how something occurs then
chance is also a cause. Not in the sense that Aristotle would have it, as an accidental cause
subordinate and posterior to the final cause, but as a natural cause that is necessary and
exhaustive in explaining natural phenomena.
Chance intended as unpredictable or as something necessary whose cause, however,
remains unknown, thus takes on a primary importance in Lamy’s system and in his critique of
final causes. The example of the cast of the die, especially, put forward in the De principiis, will
become the most important metaphor in his subsequent works and the “outpost” from which the
attack on final causes will be launched.
Now, it is true, as Landucci points out, that Lamy asserts that God and not chance are at
the origin of things.25 Although Lamy’s God does not act like a craftsman, it is nevertheless from
his intellect and will that the design of the universe originates; He knows with certainty all the
effects that will arise from His creation; and, in the final analysis, ends exist in God but they are
not knowable by man, hence, physics should not be concerned with them. Yet, if we carefully
consider the arguments that Lamy cautiously uses to stay within the limits of permissible
discourse, it seems reductive to me to force him into a position that is often found in the
mechanists who sought to stay within the boundaries of faith. Employing a widely used model–
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what I earlier referred to as a ‘spatial’ distinction alongside a different ‘temporal’ distinction–
they posited an initial fiat, in which the supreme end of creation plays a role and only
subsequently a “machine” universe that operates solely according to the laws of motion and rest,
in which it is neither necessary nor, in the final analysis, possible to know the ends which lie
behind its creation.
For Lamy, the issue that really matters is not so much the ignorance of final causes as the
ignorance of the laws of necessity, making him a rather unusual thinker on the seventeenthcentury scene, one who is much more unusual than most of his modern commentators are willing
to acknowledge.26 The problem for him does not lie in having knowledge of the final causes but
in obtaining the kind of knowledge of things occurring in nature that he characterizes as natural
and necessary—or in other words, “by chance,” in the sense of automaton, the spontaneous. This
is why the cast of the die that Lamy uses as an example to explain his own idea of “chance as a
cause” goes beyond a simple metaphor. The example appears once again, even more
significantly, in the Discours.
Galen’s books, insists Lamy, are full of “ridiculous questions” that are unfailingly
resolved by appealing to final causes. But the number of people who are blinded by this
expedient for explaining things is so great that it is almost impossible to contradict them.
Fortunately, the Atomists, and Hippocrates among them, followed a different route, believing
that “the shape, the placement and the number of the parts depend entirely on matter and its
motions which, necessarily and with no decision involved, do whatever they are capable of
doing.”27 If we knew the size, shape and motion of the atoms that make up animal seed, we
would be able to see clearly the “why” and the “how” the parts are formed (but certainly not
“that for the sake of which”). Lamy adds,
12
just as three die cast onto a table necessarily result in a number included between three
and eighteen, without being able to produce a larger or smaller number, similarly, the
particles in the seed necessarily result in a certain man, without being able to produce a
body of another species. Now these parts are formed by a blind necessity in the motions
of the matter and, therefore, are not destined toward any end.
One is obliged to talk about the necessary and the contingent outside of any possible
finalistic framework. The cast of the die must necessarily result in a number between three and
eighteen. It is impossible for the number to be higher or lower and, at the same time, it is
necessarily determined by chance, understood as the lack of an end in Aristotle’s sense, but
certainly not as a lack of any cause whatsoever, in the sense his successors interpreted the
Aristotelian “in vain” (maten).28
We recognize here the limited variety of beings produced by Lucretius’s combination of
atoms which, as in the example of the die, lies necessarily between a maximum and a
minimum.29 The meaning this “chance” takes on is precisely the automaton of the atomists, who
believed the world to be formed through the “blind necessity of the motions of matter.” Lamy is
extraordinarly effective at showing how the reduction of chance to the “in vain” and “devoid of
cause” typical of the finalists is a false question, just as is their objection to a “world by chance.”
The conclusion Lamy draws from the example of the die is the one traditionally offered by
atomism, in which the organs determine the function and not the other way around: we don’t see
because we have eyes but rather, because we have eyes, we see. The finalists, instead, maintain
that the end is known prior to the thing it is intended for. Hence, just as we build beds knowing
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beforehand, however, what rest is, and just as we build weapons but knowing beforehand what
combat is, similarly, we have eyes that are made for seeing and ears that are made for hearing.
Yet it is impossible, Lamy retorts, paraphrasing the Lucretian criticism of final causes (a
rather extraordinary stance for the time) for sight to be known before having eyes or hearing to
be known before having ears.30 The organs are not made for the function they perform; rather,
they have “necessarily come upon” this function from their current use. Lanctantius, adds Lamy
of his own initiative, does not seem to have understood what the Atomists meant when he
objected to them that if the parts had come upon their use as they say, without an end, why
would matter not still form men who hear with their noses, smell with their eyes and see with
their ears? Once again, Lamy casts his die onto the table: “The question is contrary to reason, as
if you were asking them why when casting the die you do not end up with nineteen or twenty,
seeing as it is chance that makes one number come out rather than another.”31
The cast of the dices thus explains in what way chance is a cause and certainly not a
n’importe quoi as the finalists would have it. Above all, it offers the advantage of bringing
chance back to its original meaning of a spontaneous, autonomous, independent, immanent cause
devoid of finality. In response to the criticisms of M. Galatheau, who was quick to publish his
attack, Lamy is forced to further clarify his opinion in the Reflexions.32 Subsequently, he decides
once again to take up the example of the die, and develop it further in his Réponse to Galatheau
published at the end of the Explications mecaniques.
Galatheau had objected that the example of the die and the comparison with human seed
was used inappropriately inasmuch as seed necessarily comes from a man whereas a given
number does not necessarily come from a cast of the die, but rather any number between three
and eighteen. But this, insists Lamy, is precisely the meaning that should be given to the word
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“chance” and its relation to the immanent and spontaneous “necessity” of remaining between
certain limits, and the “freedom” to produce a particular result, which is also immanent and
spontaneous. The difference here, explains Lamy, lies between the single individual and “man”,
understood as the set of possible (and necessary) individuals:
If [Galatheau] could conceive that when we talk about making a man, without specifying
an individual, we allow the event of production arising from the seed an incomparably
greater diversity compared with that which may come forth in numbers resulting from the
cast of the die, he would probably find the comparison I offer to be apt. This is because a
precise number is not determined to result from the die, which depend rather on the
motion that is impressed on them and on the bodies they encounter, which cause them to
be placed on one side or another. Similarly the particles of the seed are not determined to
produce this man in particular. Just as a number must result from the cast of the die,
similarly a man must be born from the placement of the particles of the seed. And since
there are only a few numbers included between three and eighteen which may result from
the cast of the die, similarly there are only a few men who may be born from the motion
of the particles of human seed. The example I gave perfectly clarifies the opinion of
Epicurus, who I speak about in my book [my italics].33
The reference to Epicurus is made explicit through the idea of the “encounter” between
each dice and with external bodies.
Lamy’s example is even more interesting if we contextualize it in the framework of his
contemporary culture. The cast of the die can certainly be seen as a topos that is unrelated to any
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specific scientific reference. Still, it does not seem farfetched to me to look to the early
circulation and enormous success enjoyed by De ludo aleae (1657) by Christian Huygens, the
early modern founder of probability theory. The text perfectly represents the ideal bridge
between the two cities of Amsterdam—where Cartesian philosophy and geometry in particular
were widespread by that time, not only among scientists but also among influential figures such
as the burgomaster Johannes Hudde and the Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt—and Paris, where
Huygens became aware for the first time of the correspondence between Pascal and Fermat that
led to the concept of “statistical expectation” 34 which gave form to his own work.
It cannot be excluded that Lamy chose his example thinking about the new science of
probability. In any case, the “blind necessity” of his die left very little space to providence or,
most importantly, to final causes. This opened the field up instead to a more complex question, at
least for medicine and biology: what type of order can emerge from a world in which chance, as
the spontaneous, is the sole immanent “creator” principle existing prior to the encounter between
simple bodies? More specifically, given this framework, what are we to make of the sort of
“exception” that had already been discussed by the ancients but which from the end of the
sixteenth century and throughout the modern period variously tormented the theologian and the
scientist and the Aristotelian and the Cartesianian alike? The exception I am referring to, of
course, is the “monster”.
Philosophy and teratology
To begin with, it is interesting to note once again that to a large extent Gassendi
reproduces the traditional schema of Aristotle and Galen in his “weak” version of atomism.
Gassendi contests, naturally, the idea of an Aristotelian form that actualizes through and in
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matter, yet without embracing the Epicurean idea that the question of a being’s “generation” is a
false problem.35 The Atomists maintained that the whole does not exist prior its parts, an absurd
idea for Gassendi, who also diminished the Lucretian argument of organs without function, such
as the sterile genitals of the mule. Nor does the use antifinalists make of the monster have any
importance for him. The weakness of our intellect does not allow us to judge the monster and, in
spite of its existence, the order of creation does not come out of this any lesser, any more than a
botched statue reflected badly on Polycletus’s ability for Galen or the exception did not reflect
badly on the divine ratio for Lactantius. Both these examples are taken up again by Gassendi and
used against Epicurus and Lucretius in the Syntagma. The divine and intelligent design is
perfectly recognizable in the universe, and even if it is true, as the Epicureans would have it, that
some organs exist prior to the function they perform, they do not, in any case, exist prior to their
idea in the mind of the creator.
It is precisely against this watered-down version of atomism that Lamy develops his
argument on monsters, as an additional element in his refutation of final causes.36 Without being
aware of it, Lamy’s materialism echoes that of Spinoza, for whom no transcendent paradigm or
model can be posited in nature and for whom every realitas is perfectione. Lamy contests
Galen’s ideal vision of nature, as he does the idea that the monster is some sort of transgression.
Bodies do not respond to a pre-established normativity; rather, they come into being in
accordance with the laws of nature and the possible combinations that matter can assume,
exactly as in the throw of the die, by chance, understood as spontaneous, in the Lucretian
tradition.
For Lamy, just as for Lucretius, the generation of beings, whether monstrous or not,
necessarily follow the principles inherent to the formation of the world. The necessity of the
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movements of matter generated a “large number of animals of various species, some without
eyes, others without mouths, and others without the parts needed for reproduction.” So that
many of them did not have the necessary parts, or they had too many, or they did not
have them properly arranged; and thus they perished because they were not able to feed
themselves or reproduce through coupling. The rest, who were well disposed, were able
to preserve themselves and became the species we see today.37
Lamy, who is evidently thinking of Empedocle’s man-faced oxen,38 places himself
decisively in the Lucretian current of thought, starting from the primordial elements that combine
together without a design, “multa modis multis mutata,” after countless changes in countless
ways.39 Once the organisms were formed, the individuals made use of the organs they had;
hence, those that had feet walked, those that had wings flew, those that had fins swam, and the
strongest lorded it over the weakest. There is no reason to seek an end because this story has no
end. If anyone is to insist on the order and beauty of the creation formed by the Creator, must
they not at the same time admit to nature’s error and blindness in creating monsters?40
Lamy takes up Lucretius again in his negation of providence by referring to the countless
“evils” that afflict the world: tanta stat prædita culpa!41 Man is wretched in his natural condition,
the earth is hostile to him, the animals his enemies. And even with the progress of civilization, he
will never be able to enjoy the advantages that the animals have been endowed with by nature. If
God creates and governs through providence and according to an end, why was man not created
with wings, for example?42
18
If men of this sort existed, even Galen, if he were brought back to life, would compose a
huge tome in praise of the creator to celebrate His perfection. But, of course, there is no such
thing as men with wings. Going back to this example in his Réflexions, Lamy insists on his
version of realitas as perfectione. The complexity of his conclusions do not achieve the wealth
and originality of what Spinoza would ultimately accomplish: in the final analysis, Lamy is
clearly not interested, or does not succeed, in redefining the concept of God as Spinoza will do
while continuing to call Him by the same name. Lamy does, however, go so far as to completely
negate final causes. God did not make men with wings: we shall certainly not infer from this that
He is imperfect but, rather, that it was not His will to do so. This is the true concept of
Providence, not the one his opponents put forward.43
Since Galatheau had chosen this example as his main point of attack, Lamy returns to this
argument at length in his Réponse. The idea of a man with wings does not imply any
contradiction in itself. Therefore, if we deny the existence of winged men but at the same time
avow finalistic providence, the Creator’s omnipotence is implicitly put into question since He
could surely create them if He so willed. The reasons that Galatheau offers in support of his
thesis, continues Lamy, are “ridiculous” and unworthy of a doctor.
Galatheau, who strikes the modern reader as a shockingly untalented and imprudent
polemicist, objected that crimes would be committed with impunity and there would be no
justice because criminals would be able to fly away and escape from the police. Obviously,
Galatheau failed to realize that the forces of law would also have wings. But the second reason,
notes Lamy, is even more ridiculous: if women had wings, wrote Galatheau, there would be no
way to keep them tied to the “conjugal society.” The Spaniards and the Italians, who are “jealous
by nature,” would never feel secure. This point is really beyond the pale for Lamy and we can
19
almost see the mocking grin on his face as he prepares to play with his naïve adversary like a cat
with a mouse. In this passage, Lamy’s open-mindedness when speaking about women comes to
the fore, as it does on other occasions:
Now this really makes things difficult. Nevertheless, since jealous people have the right
temperment for tormenting themselves and tormenting others, they would be able to keep
their women under wraps, I suppose, by plucking the feathers from their wings, or by
shutting them up in cages and extending the sole liberty to the curious of whistling at
them behind bars. As Monsieur Galatheau knows well, young women can escape from
the hands of their fathers, and wives can get away from their husbands even without
wings. To prove him right, I imagine we would also have to cut off their legs. But
personally, not being a jealous type, I would rather they had feet and wings too, so that
the only thing keeping them put would be love.44
Lamy’s comments on women are a favorite point of attack for his finalist opponents. As
the good anatomist that he is, Lamy is not shy about getting into details and putting forward
arguments of extaordinary lucidity and sensitivity. The dissection that provided the basis for his
Discours was of a female corpse. When he reached the genitals, Lamy noted that “the Clitoris
resembles the male member in almost all respects.”45 It is similar in consistency, similar in form,
and similar in the sensations it transmits, since “it is primarily there that women feel sensual
pleasure.” At this point Lamy enters into an argument meant to attack the idea of a providential
nature, but at the same time to make a suggestion regarding female sexuality: something rather
unusual for the sensibility of the time.
20
The clitoris, he says, becomes so long at times that women “abuse” it, as a number of
authors have written. Now, if this were true,
I would like ask my Esteemed Opponents, whilst we are at it, if they intend to conclude
that nature gave women a clitoris in order to make use of it in this way. They must
surely admit this to be so, or else give up on their principles, or else continue with their
obduracy. Because if they continue to construe the use as an end, they will have to
admit that nature had criminal intentions when it created parts that can be used in such
an abominable fashion.46
Something of this sort which is common and real, suggests Lamy, would have to be
considered morally monstrous according to their logic.47 Yet, according to the same logic, it
would also have to be considered providential, inasmuch as all things partake of God’s ends.
While demolishing the logic of finalism, Lamy at the same time removes the phenomenon of
female masturbation from the paradox his bigoted adversaries had placed it in. Everything real is
perfect and there is nothing abominable in this phenomenon, just as there is nothing finalistic in
its origins.48
If this were not enough, Lamy then redoubles his counterattack by denouncing the
practice of clitoridectomies. Several authors have reported that female “circumcision” is
practiced in the Orient. Indeed, the clitoris becomes so long and noisome in Oriental peoples that
to prevent the distress that it might cause, cautery is applied. But it is truly strange, Lamy
continues with bitter irony, that Nature, who according to the finalists put every care into
21
preventing hair from growing on the forehead so as not to block the sight, thereby relieving men
from such an easy and painless operation as shaving,
should instead have imposed such a painful operation on the women of the Levant. If we
are to follow [their] principle, we much admit either that in these countries nature is less
kind, or less wise, or that these poor women committed some unforgivable crime against
her before they were even born.49
Lamy is thus satisfied that his position has been securely protected and that he is able to
stay within the limits of permissable discourse on God and providence through these arguments.
If God is omnipotent, nothing hinders him from creating men with wings. He did not do so,
because it is not His will and because these ends do not exist. The criticism directed at Epicurus
that was put forward in De principiis is somehow used against the superstitious, in the sense that
Spinoza also used the term, namely, the finalists. It is true that Epicurus made God indifferent to
the world of men, thereby erring in a sort of anthropocentrism. Lamy remains consistent on this
point throughout his works, both in his defence and in his critique of Epicurus. Yet, this too is an
ideal opportunity to invert the argument against the Galenists. By lavishing praise on the creator,
celebrating the wonders of creation, the order of providence, and the perfection of the design, the
true wisdom and will of God are demolished as soon as the culpæ of the world are taken into
account.
The Discours thus concludes with a theodicy which is integrated into and founded on the
rejection of final causes. Descartes had also taken his stance against finalism in a theodicy in the
Fourth Meditation. It seems likely, then, that an enlightened cleric like Malebranche, in giving
22
primacy to divine Wisdom over all other attributes when defining his own positions, was
responding both to Descartes and to the “libertine” Lamy.50 The “strong Epicurean spirit” in the
pages of the Conversations Chretiennes of 1677 is at the same time a Cartesian, as if Descartes
and Epicurus converged in Malebranche’s eyes in their negation of final causes. This figure must
therefore be sacrificed to divine Wisdom and to that particular form of theocentric teleology that
Malebranche gradually refines over the course of his works. The disorders of creation are
necessary, from this perspective, not because they are part of the unfathomable divine will, as
Lamy put it, but because they are part of the wider theocentric teleology. “My goal,” he will go
on to write in his Traité de la nature et de la grâce, appearing not long after the Discours, “is to
justify the wisdom and goodness of God in spite of monsters, sinners and all the disorders that
exist in the world.”51
Lamy’s Discours, which caused an uproar in the Paris of its day, does appear to be one of
the most important targets, if not the primary one, of Malebranche’s polemics. In his
Conversations, Malebranche raised the issue of wings as an example of the vanity of the
antifinalists.52 Although the argument is not original,53 it seems highly likely to me that
Malebranche was thinking precisely of the impious physician who was raising the hackles of half
the medical faculty in Paris. Nonetheless, the gross simplification that Malebranche makes in
forcing the “strong Epicurean spirit” into a Cartesian mold seems interesting to me, especially as
it regards Lamy. By doing so, the “caution” exercised by both the Cartesians and Descartes
himself in rejecting final causes is entirely disregarded. In fact, as we have seen, the rejection of
substantial forms did not correspond at all to the rejection of final causes. In addition, a
perspective on the complexity of the “atomistic” movement as it unfolds in the seventeenth
century, at least starting from the De vita moribus Epicurii, is lost, including the work of
23
Gassendi. Indeed, Gassendi had toiled his whole life to keep the critique of final causes and the
revaluation of atomism—a particular version of atomism—separate from each other.
The identification of the errors of Epicureanism with those of Cartesianism, therefore, is
representative of the mentality and vision of the problem that Malebranche had, rather than of the
radicalism of Lamy’s thought. The radical materialism and antifinalism of Lamy points more in
the direction of Part I of Spinoza’s Ethics than to Descartes’s Fourth Meditation, and, naturally,
in an original way, as I hope to have demonstrated, to Lucretius’s poem on nature.
1
See C. Duflo, La finalité dans la nature, de Descartes à Kant (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996).
P. Janet, Les causes finales (Paris: Baillière et C.ie, 1876).
3
Ibid., 5.
4
Alexandre Koyré, “The significance of the newtonian synthesis,” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences
3 (1950): 291-311. See also Lucien Cuénot, Invention et finalité en biologie (Paris: Flammarion, 1941), and Étienne
Gilson, D’Aristote à Darwin et retour. Essai sur quelques constantes de la biophilosphie (Paris: Vrin 1971), 9.
5
For a complete bibliography on Guillaume Lamy see J.H. Revéillé-Parise, “Étude biographique: Guillaume
Lamy,” Gazette médicale de Paris 3 ser., 6 (1851): 497-502; H. Busson, La religion des classiques (1660-1685),
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948); A. Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: a Study of Scientific
Naturalism in the Enlightenment, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953); A. Vartanian (ed.), La Mettrie's
L'homme machine. A Study in the Origins of an Idea, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960); J.S. Spink,
French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1960); J. Roger, Les sciences de la
vie dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle, (Paris: Armand Colin, 1971); L. Plantefol, “Guillaume Lamy,” in C.C.
Gillespie (ed.) Dictionary of Scientific Biography, VII, 1973, pp. 611-13; S. Landucci, “Epicureismo e antifinalismo
in Guillaume Lamy”, Rivista critica di storia della filosofia 33 (1978): 153-167; M.T. Marcialis, “Filosofia e
medicina. Nota su Guillame Lamy”, in Studi di filosofia e storia della cultura, (Sassari: Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto di
Filosofia dell’Università di Cagliari, 1978); A. Thomson, “Guillaume Lamy et l’âme materielle”, Le Matérialisme
des Lumières: Dix-huitième siècle, 24 (1992): 63-71; S. Matton, “Raison et foi chez Guillaume Lamy. Réflexions
sur le matérialisme d’un médecin gassendiste du XVIIème siècle”, Corpus 14 (1992): 171-198, reprinted in Trois
médecins philosophes du XVIIe siècle, (Genève: Slatkine, 2004); A. Mothu, “Guillaume Lamy”, in J.-F. Mattei (éd),
Encyclopédie philosophique universelle, III, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992); A. Mothu, “La mort de
Guillaume Lamy,” La lettre clandestine, 2 (1993); A.C. Kors, “Monsters and the problem of naturalism in French
thought,” Eighteenth-Century Life 21 (1997): 23-47; A. Minerbi Belgrado, introduction to G. Lamy, Discours
anatomiques – Explications méchanique et physique des fonctions de l’âme sensitive, (Paris: Universitas, Oxford:
Voltaire Foundation, 1996): 5-32. It is also interesting to note the bewildering absence of Lamy from some of the
fundamental texts on the period. See, for example, J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of
Modernity 1650-1750, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and more recently, C. Wilson, Epicureanism at the
Origins of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
6
Henri Busson, La religion des classiques (1660-1685), (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948), 69.
7
For a detailed list of these revisions see in S. Matton, Trois médecins philosophes: 114-116.
8
Aëtius, De placitis philosophorum, 1.25.4, ed. Diels Doxographi, 321.
9
See Jean Salem, L’atomisme antique. Démocrite, Épicure, Lucrèce (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1997). On
the automaton see Émile Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: étudiée dans ses rapports avec
les autres langues Indo-européennes (Heidelberg: C. Winter, Paris: Klincksieck, 1938) and Walter Prellwitz,
Etymologisches Wörtebuch der griechischen sprache (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1905).
10
Aristotle, Physics, 2.6, 197 b 17-22.
11
Aristotle, Physics, 2.6, 197 b 26-28.
2
24
12
Aristotle, Physics, 2.6, 197 b 28-32. See Chantraine, Dictionnaire étimologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des
mots (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999), 672: «[De mate] l’adverbe maten (accusatif), “en vain, sans raison, faussement”….
Verbe dénom. Mateo “être vain, sans effet, échouer”». Cfr also Diana Quarantotto, Causa finale, sostanza, essenza
in Aristotele (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2005). Curiously enough, as Salem notes, the same word— automaton—is
generally translated as “the spontaneous” in Hippocratic texts and as “chance” in the Aristotelian ones. Cfr. Salem,
L’atomisme antique, 26-7.
13
Galen, De usu partium, 3.10.
14
Lactantius, De opificio dei, 6.
15
Enrico De Angelis, La critica del finalismo nella cultura cartesiana. Contributi per una ricerca (Firenze: Le
Monnier, 1967).
16
See Bernard Tocanne, L’idée de nature en France dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle. Contribution à
l’histoire de la pensée classique (Paris: Klincksieck, 1978); Jorge Secada, Cartesian metaphysics: The Scholastic
Origins of Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
17
See O. Bloch, La philosophie de Gassendi: Nominalisme, Matérialisme et Métaphysique, (La Haye: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1971): 433 sgg. See also Antonia LoLordo, Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
18
See P. Gassendi, Syntagma philosophicum, part II: Physica, in Opera omnia, Lyon 1658, and F. Frommann,
Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt, 1964; Du princip efficient, c’est-à-dire des causes des choses. Syntagma
philosophicum. Physique, section I, Livre 4, traduction, introduction et notes par S. Taussig, (Turnhout: Brepols,
2006); Disquisitio metaphysica seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii metaphysicam et responsa.
Recherches métaphysiques, ou doutes et instances contre la métaphysique de R. Descartes et ses réponses, doute I,
inst. II, éd. B. Rochot, (Paris: Vrin, 1962). On Gassendi's critique of Descartes, see Antonia LoLordo, "'Descartes'
One Rule of Logic': Gassendi’s Critique of the Doctrine of Clear and Distinct Perception,” British Journal for the
History Philosophy 13 (2005): 51-72.
19
Id., Instance 2, in Disquisitio metaphysica, cit.
20
To put Gassendi’s Epicureanism and atomism in a proper perspective, see especially M. Osler, Divine Will and
the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and M. Ransome Johnson, “Was Gassendi an Epicurean?,” History
of Philosophy Quarterly 20 (2003): 339-360.
21
See as an example Malebranche, Entretiens sur la métaphysique, 10.3.
22
Guillaume Lamy, Discours anatomiques (Rouen: Jean Lucas, 1675), 12. I cite from the original edition of Lamy.
For the modern reprint of the Discours and the Explication méchanique see the version edited by Anna Minerbi
Belgrado (Paris: Universitas, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996).
23
Guillaume Lamy, De principiis rerum (Parisiis: Petrum Le Monnier, 1679), 291.
24
Ibid., 287.
25
See Landucci, Epicureismo e antifinalismo in Guillaume Lamy.
26
In his book Trois médecins philosophes, S. Matton structures his analysis around Lamy’s relationship with faith
and his direct comments on religion. Matton’s erudite analysis follows on his criticism of Henri Busson’s previous
interpretation, which maintained that Lamy’s professions of faith are a superficial homage to orthodoxy and a means
for asserting—in the libertine perspective of double truths—both respect for the church but also individual freedom
of thought at the same time. Matton decides instead to take seriously Lamy’s professions of faith and his explicit
subordination of the truth of reason to the truth of faith. What emerges from this is an ‘Epicurean-Fideist’ Lamy,
whose deep materialistic and mechanistic convictions would be rigidly subordinated to the absolute inaccessibility
to the human mind of God and his ‘ends’.Thus, according to Matton, Lamy’s position is not that far from Descartes’.
Now, although an author’s statements, as opposed to those of his commentators, should always be taken seriously, I
am certain that Lamy’s negation of final causes is truly the theoretical cornerstone of his thought. This is the case
well before his more or less sincere professions of faith which lack substance and are expressed in a banal form,
quite in line with the technique of a certain type of libertinism. Lamy is neither Cartesian nor proto-Fideist in these
instances and it is for this reason that his radical materialism takes on such importance in the context of his
contemporary scene.
27
Lamy, Discours anatomiques, 21.
28
According to Minerbi Belgrado, Lamy’s argument at this point is “quelque peu hâtif ou incomplet,” since the
correspondence between a given series of numbers and a precise species is hardly obvious. Minerbi Belgrado rightly
points out that this argument may derive from Cyrano de Bergerac (L’Autre monde ou les Etats et empires de la lune
et du soleil, (Paris: F. Lachèvre, n. d.) while underlining at the same time that a precise Lucretian cast is missing
25
from this text. In Lucretius, in fact—especially in 5.419-431—more room is given to the question of ‘time’: since
the number is finite, it is the inexorable flow of time that will inevitably lead to the realization of a precise
combination. Although it is true that, on the one hand, Lamy does not obsequiously follow Lucretius’s text, it is also
true that his interest at this point in his Discours is focused on another issue. His aim is to ‘evoke’ the argument of
chance as a concept tied to the idea of necessity (therefore to the finite and precisely calculable number of possible
combinations in the throw of the die), specifically in an anti-Aristotelian function and in opposition to the absorption
of chance into the idea of “in vain (maten)”. The reason the argument on time does not appear in this context, it
seems justified to conclude, is not due to some theoretical weakness, but because of a different aim that Lamy has
set for himself in this part of his work. Chance understood as the lack of a purpose forms the theoretical and
polemical object of Lamy’s thought, not the temporal and proto-evolutionist idea of the exhaustion of all possible
combinations of matter. Lamy explains himself once again using this example of the die in his Discours, in the
septième réflexion.
29
Lucretius, De rerum natura, 2.512-522.
30
See Lucretius, De rerum natura, 4.825-857, who is responding in his turn to the Stoics; for this, compare the
position of Balbo in Cicero’s De natura deorum, 1, II, 150.
31
Lamy, Discours anatomiques, 23.
32
Ibid., Reflexions de Mr Lamy sur les objections qu’on luy a faites, 7, 143-144. See P. de Galatheau, Dissertation
touchant l’empire de l’homme sur tous les autres animaux (Paris: C. Barbin, 1676).
33
Guillaume Lamy, Explication mechanique et physique des fonctions de l’ame sensitive, ou des sens, des passions,
et du mouvement volontaire (Paris: Lambert Roulland, 1681), 357-58. See also Kors, “Monsters and the Problem of
Naturalism in French Tought”, 36.
34
See for example Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), and
Lorraine Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
35
Gassendi, Syntagma philosophicum, 2.3. See J.S. Spink, French free Thought, 95.
36
I believe that the conclusions A. Thomson comes to in Guillaume Lamy, op. cit., p. 70, namely, that “Nous nous
retrouvons donc, avec Lamy, en présence d’un médecin dans la tradition libertine, influencé par Gassendi et par
l’épicurisme” lack in much-needed nuances and complexity.
37
Lamy, Discours anatomiques, 24.
38
Aristotle, Physics, 2.8, 198 b 31.
39
Lucretius, De rerum natura, 1.1024 and 5.187-193.
40
Lamy, Discours anatomiques, Reflexions, 7, 146.
41
Lucretius, De rerum natura, 2.181 and 5.199.
42
Lamy, Discours anatomiques, 28.
43
This is the sense in which Lamy’s expression ‘the will of God’ needs to be taken. It is not a matter of putting into
question his good conscience, but of calling attention to the specific rhetorical strategy he uses to condemn finalism
and providentialism, one that is remarkably similar to Spinoza’s. It is the superstitious and the finalists who,
paradoxically, show themselves to be atheists when they assert what I would call the ‘weak’ version of realitas as
perfectione: humans could have had wings, monsters might not have existed, and the world might have had a
different perfection. If this does not happen, it is because no higher will—whether knowable or not—is at work in
the universe, which renders his position incompatible with any form of proto-Fideism. See once again contra S.
Matton, Trois médecins philosophes, op. cit..
44
Lamy, Explications mécaniques, 369.
45
Lamy, Discours anatomiques, 81.
46
Ibid., 82.
47
See also Kors, “Monsters and the Problem of Naturalism”, 36.
48
These passages from Lamy are even more important because they diverge from the common, traditionalist,
bigoted opinion of many materialist philosophers who are not that distant from his positions. We may remember the
opinions of J. de La Mettrie on masturbation, in Oeuvres philosophiques (Paris: Valade, 1774), II, p. 209 e III, p.
223, which also, in other places, directly reproduce Lamy’s conclusions. See A. Thomson, Guillaume Lamy, op. cit.,
p. 66.
49
Lamy, Discours anatomiques, 83.
50
See Landucci, “Epicureismo e antifinalismo in Guillaume Lamy”.
51
Malebranche, Traité de la nature et de la grâce, 3, Additions.
52
Malebranche, Conversations chrétiennes, 2.
53
See Olivier Bloch, La philosophie de Gassendi, 436.
26