Charleton, Walter

Charleton, Walter. The immortality of the human soul, demonstrated by the light of Nature. London , 1657. 

A work justifying atomism in ways very much like Gassendi s was also sought in England. A very unreadable but successful one appeared, written by Walter Charleton. By the time the Royal Society of London was founded, mechanism of one kind or another was the new orthodoxy, and both atoms and corpuscles were fitted into the world. 

In Walter Charleton Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana or, Afabrick of science natural, upon the hypothesis of atoms founded by Epicurus, repaired by Petrus Gassendus, augmented by Walter Charleton... 

In 1654, the Oxford-trained writer Walter Charleton published Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletoniana, which tidied up some of the problems in Gassendi s work and brought his concept of atomism to England. Both Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton read Charleton s work on Gassendi before they did their own work on matter. 

J.B. Van Helmont, A Ternary of Paradoxes (translated by Walter Charleton), London, 1650, Prologue. 

W. Charleton, Natural History of Nutrition (n. 60), p. 65. For an intellectual biography of Walter Charleton - which however does not investigate Charleton s iatrochemical ideas - see S. Fleitmann, Walter Charleton (1620-1707), Virtuoso. Leben und Werk (Frankfort, 1986). 

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