- The source of my text, Man a Machine,
by Julien Offray de La Mettrie. French-English. Including Frederick the
Great's ``Eulogy'' on La Mettrie and extracts from La Mettrie's ``The Natural
History of the Soul''; Philosophical and Historical Notes by Gertrude Carman
Bussey. (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1912 --- My copy is from the
fourth, 1987, printing.)
- The most recent translation I am familiar with is Man a Machine;
and, Man a Plant, translated by Richard A. Watson and Maya Rybalka;
introduction and notes by Justin
Leiber. (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1994.) The technical quality of
the translation, so far as I can judge, is fully equal to Bussey's, and
moreover it is complete, publishers being less prudish in 1994 than in 1912. I
also think the notes and introduction much superior (though not so good as
those in Vartanian's book infra). [Disclaimer: Prof. Leiber was kind
enough to send me a copy of the book gratis.]
- The most recent full-length study of La Mettrie is Kathleen Anne
Wellmann, La Mettrie: Medicine, Philosophy, and Enlightenment
(Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1992). Three hundred
dry-as-dust pages, with far too much of the contemporary jargon (including the
``medicalization'' of half the abstract nouns in the OED) --- but she dissects
apparently everything the man wrote, and exhibits his ``context.''
- Aram Vartanian's critical edition, L'Homme Machine: A Study in
the Origins of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 1960) is a very
different beast. Unlike Wellmann, he writes pleasantly, and takes a much
broader historical view of La Mettrie, from his roots among the atomists and Epicureans of antiquity to his
descendants among the physiologists and cyberneticians. I intend to steal his
footnotes shamelessly.
- When Joseph Needham was still
a young biochemist, and not yet as a god to the history of science, he wrote
Man a Machine: In Answer to a Romantical and Unscientific Treatise
Written by Sig. Eugenio Rignano & Entitled ``Man Not a Machine''
(London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1927; New York: W. W. Norton, 1928) which
includes a discussion and summary of L'Homme Machine, and a
defense of materialism on the basis of then-current biology and philosophy of
science.
I have not yet had the chance to read Julien Offray de La Mettrie:
Machine Man and Other Writings, trans. and ed. Ann Thomson (Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
(Fri May 16 13:18:43 1997)