Gassendi

The French cleric and mathematician Marin Mersenne and the theologian Pierre Gassendi subjected Fludd s sacramental theology of the alchemical blood to stringent criticism. They reserved their most severe censure, however, for Fludd s demonology, as well as... 

The corpuscularism of the Honorable Robert Boyle (1627-1691 CE) was based upon the theories of Descartes and Gassendi. He considered that matter was composed of corpuscles of different shapes, sizes, motion or rest, and solidity... 

In 1627, November twenty-seventh, Gassendi saw and the iron they contain found alloyed with nickel, it ... 

Epicurus (342-270 B.C.), revived the atomic theory of Democritus, though the efforts of his school to expound or develop it, appear not to have been very successful. Their theory is expounded very fully by the Latin poet Lucretius in his Be Rerum Natura. Indeed it is said that it was this work that inspired Gassendi in the seventeenth century to revive the Democritan atomic theory as part of his campaign against the authority of the Aristotelian philosophy of nature. 

The atomic theory as originally conceived by Democritus and Epicurus, developed by Lucretius, and resurrected by Gassendi from about 1647 on, was doubtless the source from which Boyle derived his ideas on this subject, as he cites both Epicurus and Gassendi. Boyle, however, in the above proposition carefully avoids any dogmatic assertion of these hypotheses. It is plain, however, that these atoms or corpuscles as he calls them are a constant element of his thought. In part six (an appendix) to the Sceptical Chymist, he states more distinctly his definition of a chemical element. Carneades says 80... 

Both Boyle and Mayow were disciples of the mechanical or corpuscular theory of matter. Boyle seems to have been particularly influenced by Gassendi, though familiar also with Descartes theory, while Mayow was a disciple of Descartes. While Gassendi, 1592-1658, was a follower of... 

Then came the Renaissance, a period of the recovery of ancient learning and of an unstoppable flow of new observations and new ideas, often emerging from or inspired by the old. Lucretius was rediscovered, and so was Epicurus. Greek atomism became fashionable at the French court. But just as Aristotle in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had had to be interpreted and modified so as to be reconciled with Christianity, so too did atomism in the seventeenth century. Gassendi undertook the Christianization of atomism. Atoms, he explained, were not eternal but created by God. Their movement in the void was not random but the result of their God-given initial motions, which made them agents of divine purpose. 

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. 

J. S. Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (Greenwood, 1969). 

Both Senguerd and De Voider were well disposed towards Cartesian natural philosophy, which attempts to reduce natural phenomena to quantitative descriptions of arithmic and geometry. However, Senguerd and De Voider were also critical of the French philosopher. Senguerd leaned more towards Gassendi s version of Epicurean atomism. De Voider, as we shall see later, also adopted some other philosophical ideas. Senguerd started teaching in... 

Osier, M. (1983). Providence and Divine Will in Gassendi s Views on Scientific Knowledge. journal of the History of Ideas, 44, 549-560 Osier, M.J. (1991). Fortune, fate and divination Gassendi s voluntarist theology and the baptism of Epicureanism. In M.J. Osier (Ed.), Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquility. Epicurean and Stoic Themes in European Thought. Cambridge. 

Osier, M.J. (1983). Providence and Divine Will in Gassendi s Views on Scientific Knowledge. Journal of the History of Ideas, 44, 549-560. 

Osier, M.J. (1994). Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World. Cambridge. 

Although Descartes was not an atomist, one of his contemporaries, Pierre Gassendi, was a strong atomist who revived the atomic theory of Epicurus. Gassendi wrote a biography of Epicurus in 1647, and in 1649 he published... 

Even if Descartes and Gassendi differed on the nature of matter, they shared a view of the universe in which God created a mechanical system that did not require God s constant intervention to operate. Despite being a Roman Catholic priest, Gassendi took a materialistic view of the universe that set him at odds with many other scholars, as did his maxim There is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses. ... 

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. 

Like Descartes and Gassendi, Boyle held a view of the universe that was based on a mechanical philosophy that pictures all of creation as a kind of machine operated by physical laws. Boyle succeeded in bringing this philosophy to the laboratory in a way that had not been previously attempted. Rather than simply looking at the big picture and arguing that the universe was controlled by... 

One of the greatest members of the Royal Society was Isaac Newton. Newton was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1702 and became its president in 1703, a post he held until his death, in 1727. Newton had already established his power as a scientist with his work on physics and mathematics, demonstrated principally in his famous book Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, or, more commonly, the Principia. Like Boyle, Newton claimed to be following Baconian method and looked at the universe from a mechanical point of view. Unlike Boyle, Newton was much closer to Gassendi on the nature of matter. His analysis of physics was based in large part on the properties of matter, particularly the property of gravity, which he argued was inherent in anything that contained mass. For many years, Newton s ideas about physics were widely known, but Newton was also very interested in alchemy and believed in transmutation. In part because alchemy was discredited later, this part of Newton s scientific work was not often mentioned by historians, but it is now clear that his alchemical work influenced both his approach to science and his belief in certain properties of matter that were used in his physics. 

By the time of Newton s death, in 1727, the corpuscular theory of matter (despite the variations) had come to dominate the study of nature. What was less clear was whether elements played any role in understanding the natural world or whether it was better, following the various mechanical philosophies of Descartes, Gassendi, Boyle, and Newton, to consider the world in terms of motion and mass. In a sense, the rise of physics reduced the number of elements from four or three to one. The problem for the natural philosophers was that they could not quite agree what characteristics that one element could have that would result in the huge range of matter in the real world. In terms of science, the triumph of experiment and the new science opened the door to a far more open and systematic examination of matter. 

P. Gassendi, Thenomenum rarum Romae observatum 20 martij, et ejus causarum ex-plicatio, Amstelodami. Henr. Guerard, 1629. 

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