Abstract: This essay pairs William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis and John Donne’s Anniversaries to show how two shared frameworks—anatomy as part-whole analysis and circularity as the most perfect motion—produce sharply different outcomes. Harvey, indebted to Galen and Aristotle, uses demonstrative observation to reconstruct the heart as sovereign center whose rhythmic action sustains life through continuous circulation. Donne, drawing on the same anatomical vocabulary, anatomizes fragmentation: the microcosm and macrocosm fall “out of joint,” circular order frays, and only Elizabeth Drury briefly embodies lost symmetry and center. The study moves from the Knife (dissection as cognitive method in Padua and London) to the Sphere (centers, circles, and the heart-sun-king analogy), concluding that Harvey turns disintegration into method, while Donne makes disintegration the object of theological diagnosis.
Rocco Coronato (Thu,) studied this question.