Eighteenth-century questions about the properties essential to life often explored the boundary between the physical world of the body and the immaterial world of the mind and soul. Locating materialism within the larger history of ideas, Vital Matters examines how and why eighteenth-century scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists questioned nature and its animating principles.

In this volume, interdisciplinary essays by premier scholars in literary studies, art history, and the history of science and medicine analyse a wide range of subjects, including ghosts and...