There is no perfect knowledge which can be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been obtained from experience, or derived in some way from our senses.
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"It seems to me that the motion of the blood is like that of water in a mill-stream."
"As art is a habit with reference to things to be done, so is science a habit in respect to things to be known."
"The blood in the animal body is impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless motion."
"There is no science which does not spring from pre-existing knowledge, and no certain and definite idea which has not derived its origin from the senses."
"All animals, even man himself, are produced from an egg."
English physician whose On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628) demonstrated blood circulation, overturning 1,400 years of Galenic medicine. Closely associated with Francis Bacon (his contemporary in the new English empiricism). For an intellectual contrast, see Galenic medicine, the 2nd-century Greek medical tradition (humors, blood-as-consumed-fuel) — Harvey calculated that the heart pumps more blood per hour than the body could possibly produce as fuel — a single quantitative observation that demolished the entire Galenic-Aristotelian medical worldview. The cleanest example in medical history of arithmetic disproving 14 centuries of authority.
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True knowledge cannot come from pure reasoning or intuition alone — it must be earned through direct observation and sensory experience. What we think we know from tradition or logic is not genuine knowledge until tested against reality. Understanding is built from evidence gathered in the world, not inherited assumptions or abstract speculation handed down without verification.
Harvey proved blood circulates continuously through the body by conducting systematic dissections and experiments on living animals — directly overturning Galen's 1,400-year-old theory accepted purely on authority. His discovery of cardiac circulation in De Motu Cordis (1628) was the triumph of empirical observation over inherited doctrine, embodying exactly this belief that real knowledge demands hands-on sensory investigation rather than received wisdom.
The early 17th century saw the Scientific Revolution challenging medieval scholasticism, which treated Aristotle and Galen as unquestionable authorities. Harvey worked as scholars debated whether ancient texts or direct experiment should ground medicine. Francis Bacon simultaneously championed empiricism. Harvey's era was a turning point where dissection, vivisection, and quantitative measurement began displacing centuries of unexamined classical authority as the foundation of natural philosophy.
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