ABSTRACT
Introduction By the late seventeenth century, several reactions to the mechanical philosophies of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, and Boyle had appeared in Western Europe. Among these were philosophies that reasserted the fundamental organic unity of nature, such as Cambridge Platonism and vitalism. The Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth retained the dualistic structure of mind and matter assumed by Descartes and attempted to bridge the gap by the reassert ion of plastic natures and the spirit of nature as organic links. The vitalists, on the other hand, affirmed the life of all things through a reduction of Cartesian dualism to the monistic unity of matter and spirit. Among its proponents were Francis Glisson, Francis Mercury van Helmont, Lady Anne Conway, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
