History of the location of the soul
The Hippocratic Corpus chronicles the evolution of thought that the soul is located within the body and is manifested in diseased conditions.
Da Vinci had a similar approach to Galen, locating the soul, or senso comune, as well as the imprensiva (intellect) and memoria (memory) in different ventricles of the brain.
[1] Today neuroscientists and other fields of science that deal with the body and the mind, such as psychology, bridge the gap between what is physical and what is incorporeal.
Ancient Egyptian civilizations held the belief that the soul was composed of several parts: the Ba, Ka, Ren, Sheut, and the Ib.
It is believed that the Ancient Egyptian view of the heart formed the foundation for later theories on the location for the human soul.
[2] The Hippocratic Corpus and its many treatises demonstrate the evolving knowledge of the body and how to treat ailments in reference to the soul.
In the treatise On the Sacred Disease air is described as not being located in just the lungs but in the entire body and circulating it giving life.
The brain, then, was the seat of all rational thought, the logos, and the true location of the immortal and divine soul.
[6] In book II, Aristotle states that, the soul is the part of the human that allows its entire being, that one can't exist without the other and they complement each other.
In book III he provides an example of his theory of the soul and makes the correlation between the physical sensations of light the phaos in the body and the incorporeal imaginations phantasia.
Aristotle states the heart is the location of the 5 sensations of the body and is directly responsible for respiration and the sustenance of life.
Because the heart is the location of the human soul and life force, it is the organ of utmost importance in Aristotelian physiology.
[4] Epicurus, with a view reflecting that of the Greek philosopher Democritus, suggested that the human soul was corporeal and composed of small particles spread out within the entire body.
Most of the medical terminology and works are recorded in the books by Galen and therefore the reliability that Herophilus actually thought to the soul to be in the body is in question.
Herophilos describes the distinction of the soul and natures as being intertwined within the body and while are separate things, cannot exist without the other.
Galen recognized the importance of both the heart and the brain in the proper functioning of a human but saw these as two distinct systems governed separately.
He agreed with ancient doctrine of the four elements which includes the earth, water, wind and the fire to embody the cold, hot dry and wet irreducible qualities.
Galen made a proposal of natural faculties’ theory in which every part of the body had the ability to retain, attract its nutritive humors as well as expelling the excrements.
However, Galen was too bold, He contradicted other scientists in the matters which concerned the detailed Anatomy such the Aristotle’s which stated that the heart was a point origin of the nerves.
Like Plato, Plotinus believed that the soul resulted from an immortal being that would return to its divine source upon death.
[15] This stage involves gaining control of your own body through Plato's civic virtues and detachment from material goods.
As Plotinus himself put it:[15]Therefore ‘it cannot be said’ or ‘written’, he says [Plato, Letter 7, 341c], but we speak and write, sending on to it and wakening from words [or explanations] towards contemplation, as if showing the way to him who wishes to see something.
For teaching extends to the road and the passage, but the vision is the work of him who has decided to see.Thomas Aquinas sought a Christian view of the soul using the ideas of Aristotle.
In Aquinas’s view, the soul was incorporeal and immortal, and came about as a direct result of divine intervention from God, which typically came about during the second trimester of pregnancy.
Leonardo da Vinci used his experience in the field of anatomy to hypothesize that the soul was located in the optic chiasm, near the 3rd ventricle of the brain.
[2] Da Vinci's search for the soul fell into three phases: Early Concepts, Personal Quest, and Synthesis.
Here therefore, it appears, lies the foundation of movement and life.In this second phase, Da Vinci began examining the nervous system and how they connected with the skull.
Da Vinci used wax to fill the ventricles of an ox brain in order to have a physical model of the location of the "senso comune" as well as two other landmarks, the imprensiva and memoria.
