Such nothing is terrestriall: philosophy of mind on Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island.

Phineas Fletcher's poeticized human anatomy is less understood today than in the seventeenth century partly because Fletcher's contemporaries made less rigorous distinctions than we do between science and art as conveyors of truth. The present study shows how the empiricist and materialist terms of the anatomical sections of The Purple Island operate as a foundation for Fletcher's system of human self-knowledge. By embracing the claims of physical science and carrying them to their limits, Fletcher exposes their insufficiency even as he lauds their validity within certain boundaries. His measurement of these boundaries constitutes a document usually overlooked in historical perspectives on the mind/body problem.