The Man in the Machine: By Damodar Prasad das
%u201CA person is not considered a great sage unless he disagrees with another sage%u201D.
This adage suitably describes the career of La Mettrie, whose contentious writings during the eighteenth century were almost universally reviled by his contemporaries during the age of the Enlightenment. Even Frederick the Great, who afforded him protection and patronage following his banishment from France and Holland, declared that one could attain peace of mind by not reading La Mettrie%u2019s works. Notwithstanding the general distaste with which they were met, the ideas he espoused have proved long standing and influential in the modern science of medicine, psychiatry, neurology and psychology.
Perhaps his most provocative work was entitled %u201CMan a Machine%u201D in which he makes a number of extraordinary claims, many of which we will pass over. The main thrust of the work was that only physicians (amongst whom he could count himself) had the right to speak on the soul, because, he felt, the soul itself was a product of the interaction of the organs of the body.