Gassendi, Pierre (1592–1655)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret J. Osler
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Void Space ◽  
Beatific Vision ◽  
Empiricist Theory ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Vision Of God ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
European Thought

Pierre Gassendi, a French Catholic priest, introduced the philosophy of the ancient atomist Epicurus into the mainstream of European thought. Like many of his contemporaries in the first half of the seventeenth century, he sought to articulate a new philosophy of nature to replace the Aristotelianism that had traditionally provided foundations for natural philosophy. Before European intellectuals could accept the philosophy of Epicurus, it had to be purged of various heterodox notions. Accordingly, Gassendi modified the philosophy of his ancient model to make it conform to the demands of Christian theology. Like Epicurus, Gassendi claimed that the physical world consists of indivisible atoms moving in void space. Unlike the ancient atomist, Gassendi argued that there exists only a finite, though very large number of atoms, that these atoms were created by God, and that the resulting world is ruled by divine providence rather than blind chance. In contrast to Epicurus’ materialism, Gassendi enriched his atomism by arguing for the existence of an immaterial, immortal soul. He also believed in the existence of angels and demons. His theology was voluntarist, emphasizing God’s freedom to impose his will on the Creation. Gassendi’s empiricist theory of knowledge was an outgrowth of his response to scepticism. Accepting the sceptical critique of sensory knowledge, he denied that we can have certain knowledge of the real essences of things. Rather than falling into sceptical despair, however, he argued that we can acquire knowledge of the way things appear to us. This ‘science of appearances’ is based on sensory experience and can only attain probability. It can, none the less, provide knowledge useful for living in the world. Gassendi denied the existence of essences in either the Platonic or Aristotelian sense and numbered himself among the nominalists. Adopting the hedonistic ethics of Epicurus, which sought to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, Gassendi reinterpreted the concept of pleasure in a distinctly Christian way. He believed that God endowed humans with free will and an innate desire for pleasure. Thus, by utilizing the calculus of pleasure and pain and by exercising their ability to make free choices, they participate in God’s providential plans for the Creation. The greatest pleasure humans can attain is the beatific vision of God after death. Based on his hedonistic ethics, Gassendi’s political philosophy was a theory of social contract, a view which influenced the writings of Hobbes and Locke. Gassendi was an active participant in the philosophical and natural philosophical communities of his day. He corresponded with Hobbes and Descartes, and conducted experiments on various topics, wrote about astronomy, corresponded with important natural philosophers, and wrote a treatise defending Galileo’s new science of motion. His philosophy was very influential, particularly on the development of British empiricism and liberalism.

Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society

1980 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. B. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Central to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society was the description and justification of the method adopted and advocated by the Fellows of the Society, for it was thought that it was their method which distinguished them from ancients, dogmatists, sceptics, and contemporary natural philosophers such as Descartes. The Fellows saw themselves as furthering primarily a novel method, rather than a system, of philosophy, and the History gave expression to this corporate self-perception. However, the History's description of their method was not necessarily accurate. Rather, as will be argued below, by a combination of subtle misrepresentation and selective exposition, Sprat portrayed a method which would further the aims of social and ecclesiastical stability and material prosperity, essential for the Royal Society since its continued existence depended upon the creation of a social basis for the institutionalized pursuit of natural philosophy. Some link had to be forged between the activities of the Society and the intellectual and social aspirations of the Restoration. To understand the intent and meaning of Sprat's History and the method there portrayed, we must therefore look to the institutional needs which it fulfilled.

LES AXES DE LA CRÉATION ET LA NAISSANCE DE LʹIMAGINAIRE COMME LANGAGE MYTHIQUE

Trictrac ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liliana Danciu ◽  
Petru Adrian Danciu
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Written Form ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Rich Spectrum

The axes of the creation and birth of the imaginary as a mythical language. Our research follows the relationships of the concepts that are taking into account creation on the double axis of verticality and horizontality. We highlight those symbolic elements which would later constitute the mythical language about the sacred space-temporality. Inside this space-temporality a rich spectrum of mythical images develops; images capable of explaining the relationships of the creation plans. Without a religious perception of the temporality, the conceptualization of the axis would remain a philosophical approach. Through our point of view, the two are born simultaneously. Thanks to them, creation can be imagined. The first “frozen” formula of the mystical human spirit can be thought, brought to a palpable reality, expressed in an oral and then a written form. Studied together, temporality (sacred or not) and space are permanently imagined together. For example, a loss of mundane temporality in the secret ecstasy that offers to the soul an ascending direction does not mean getting out of universal temporality, but of its mundane section. In the sacred space the soul relates to time. Even the gods are submitted by the sacred, Aeon sometimes being synonymous to destiny. The universal creator seems to evade every touch, but not consistently, only when he avoids the descent into its created worlds. In sacredness, time and space seem or become confused, both expressing the same reality, by the immediate swing from thinking to deed. The mythical imagery conceives the displacement in the primary space-temporality by the spoken word. So, for something to appear and live, the spoken word is required. Even the divine dream appears as a pre-word of a creator’s thought. The thought follows the spoken word, the spoken word follows the gestures which finally indicate the meanings of the creative act, controlling the rhythm of the creation days. These three will later be adapted through imitation in rite. We are now situated at the limit of the physical world, a real challenge for the mythical imagery. The general feature of the mythical expression on the creation of the material world is the state of the divinity’s exhaustion, most often conceptualized by sacrifice or divine fatigue. The world geography identifies with the anatomy of a self-gutted god. Practically, material creation is most likely the complete revelation of God’s body autopsy. As each body decomposes, everything in it is an illusion. An axial approach of the phenomenon exists in all religious systems. The created element’s origin is exterior, with or without a pre-existing matter, by a god’s sacrifice or only because it has to be that way. This is the starting point of the discussion on the symbolism of axiality as a reason for the constitution of the language of creation, capable of retelling the imaginary construction of myth in an oral and then written form.

A Rapture of the Nerds? A Comparison between Transhumanist Eschatology and Christian Parousia

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-367
Author(s):  
Roberto Paura
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Point Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Universe

Transhumanism is one of the main “ideologies of the future” that has emerged in recent decades. Its program for the enhancement of the human species during this century pursues the ultimate goal of immortality, through the creation of human brain emulations. Therefore, transhumanism offers its fol- lowers an explicit eschatology, a vision of the ultimate future of our civilization that in some cases coincides with the ultimate future of the universe, as in Frank Tipler’s Omega Point theory. The essay aims to analyze the points of comparison and opposition between transhumanist and Christian eschatologies, in particular considering the “incarnationist” view of Parousia. After an introduction concern- ing the problems posed by new scientific and cosmological theories to traditional Christian eschatology, causing the debate between “incarnationists” and “escha- tologists,” the article analyzes the transhumanist idea of mind-uploading through the possibility of making emulations of the human brain and perfect simulations of the reality we live in. In the last section the problems raised by these theories are analyzed from the point of Christian theology, in particular the proposal of a transhuman species through the emulation of the body and mind of human beings. The possibility of a transhumanist eschatology in line with the incarnationist view of Parousia is refused.

scholarly journals An Early European Critic of Hobbes’s De Corpore

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Clucas
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Philosophical Underpinning ◽  
Scholastic Tradition

The Animadversiones in Elementorum Philosophiae by a little known Flemish scholar G. Moranus, published in Brussels in 1655 was an early European response to Hobbes’s De Corpore. Although it is has been referred to by various Hobbes scholars, such as Noel Malcolm, Doug Jesseph, and Alexander Bird it has been little studied. Previous scholarship has tended to focus on the mathematical criticisms of André Tacquet which Moranus included in the form of a letter in his volume. Moranus’s philosophical objections to Hobbes’s natural philosophy offer a fascinating picture of the critical reception of Hobbes’s work by a religious writer trained in the late Scholastic tradition. Moranus’s opening criticism clearly shows that he is unhappy with Hobbes’s exclusion of the divine and the immaterial from natural philosophy. He asks what authority Hobbes has for breaking with the common understanding of philosophy, as defined by Cicero ‘the knowledge of things human and divine’. He also offers natural philosophical and theological criticisms of Hobbes for overlooking the generation of things involved in the Creation. He also attacks the natural philosophical underpinning of Hobbes’s civil philosophy. In this paper I look at a number of philosophical topics which Moranus criticised in Hobbes’s work, including his mechanical psychology, his theory of imaginary space, his use of the concept of accidents, his blurring of the distinction between the human being and the animal, and his theories of motion. Moranus’s criticisms, which are a mixture of philosophical and theological objections, gives us some clear indications of what made Hobbes’ natural philosophy controversial amongst his contemporaries, and sheds new light on the early continental reception of Hobbes’s work.

scholarly journals On the invisibility and impact of Robert Hooke’s theory of gravitation

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 266-282
Author(s):  
Niccolò Guicciardini
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Interplanetary Space ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Void Space ◽  
Trading Zone ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of Gravitation ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Scientific Framework

AbstractRobert Hooke’s theory of gravitation is a promising case study for probing the fruitfulness of Menachem Fisch’s insistence on the centrality of trading zone mediators for rational change in the history of science and mathematics. In 1679, Hooke proposed an innovative explanation of planetary motions to Newton’s attention. Until the correspondence with Hooke, Newton had embraced planetary models, whereby planets move around the Sun because of the action of an ether filling the interplanetary space. Hooke’s model, instead, consisted in the idea that planets move in the void space under the influence of a gravitational attraction directed toward the sun. There is no doubt that the correspondence with Hooke allowed Newton to conceive a new explanation for planetary motions. This explanation was proposed by Hooke as a hypothesis that needed mathematical development and experimental confirmation. Hooke formulated his new model in a mathematical language which overlapped but not coincided with Newton’s who developed Hooke’s hypothetical model into the theory of universal gravitation as published in the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687). The nature of Hooke’s contributions to mathematized natural philosophy, however, was contested during his own lifetime and gave rise to negative evaluations until the last century. Hooke has been often contrasted to Newton as a practitioner rather than as a “scientist” and unfavorably compared to the eminent Lucasian Professor. Hooke’s correspondence with Newton seems to me an example of the phenomenon, discussed by Fisch in his philosophical works, of the invisibility in official historiography of “trading zone mediators,” namely, of those actors that play a role, crucial but not easily recognized, in promoting rational scientific framework change.

Decoding the Urban Plan of the City of Pilsen (Plzen)

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Ragkos
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Gothic Architecture ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Urban Plan ◽  
Western Bohemia ◽  
Historic Centre ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
The City

The historic centre of the city of Pilsen in western Bohemia, today a region of the Czech Republic, was constructed at the end of the thirteenth century, at a time when Gothic architecture was universal across most of western and central Europe. The Gothic style had emerged and developed during an era when social and economic changes were favouring the development of new urban settlements, and when the translation of ancient Greek natural philosophy, including astronomy, was giving rise to a new intellectual movement. This revival of the natural sciences was inevitably bound up with the Roman Catholic Church, since much of this knowledge had been preserved within monastic institutions and was now being used by theologians/natural philosophers who wanted to apply reason to theology. This paper’s analysis of the urban plan of the historic centre of Pilsen is an attempt to investigate the possible influence that the science of astronomy had on architectural thought and creativity in western Bohemia, and how this was represented in the light of scientific advancement.

Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen. New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. ix, 437. $27.95.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-251
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The Marxists had it right all along, they just got tripped up by their materialism. Early modern capitalism opened vast new worlds, particularly in the arts and sciences, only the traffic went both ways. Creative agents invented new markets and pushed commerce in directions that favored enterprises immensely cosmopolitan and innovative, often solely for the sake of beauty and display. Commerce offered a context but the nobility, and not an imagined bourgeoisie, had the edge when it came to exploiting the market for objets. Paintings could be traded for property, land, and houses. Princes could sponsor natural philosophers, and the fluidity in values meant that good investors, like good practitioners of the arts and sciences, took an interest in all aspects of learning. The interrelatedness of the representational arts and natural philosophy stands as one of the central themes in this tightly integrated collection of essays. We now have a vast historiography telling us that we should no longer teach early modern science without reference to the art of the time, and vice-versa. The point is beautifully illustrated by an exhibition recently held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (spring 2002) on the art of Pieter Saenredam. Working in Utrecht in the 1630s, he used geometry to regularize and make precise the angles and corners found in the exquisite paintings he made of the city's churches. He knew as much about geometry as he did about chiaroscuro. At precisely the same moment, an hour or two away by barge, Descartes in Leiden put the final touches on his Discourse on Method (1637). In effect he explained to the world why precision and clarity of thought made possible the kind of beauty that Saenredam's paintings would come to embody.

scholarly journals The Meteorological Observations in Coimbra and the Portuguese Participation in Weather Forecasting in Europe

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
António Leonardo ◽  
Décio Martins ◽  
Carlos Fiolhais
Keyword(s):  
Weather Forecasting ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Meteorological Station ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Magnetic Observatory ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Meteorological Observatory ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Meteorological Observations ◽  
The University

In the early nineteenth century, regular meteorological observations started at the Faculty of Natural Philosophy of the University of Coimbra (FPUC). From 1854 to 1856 these observations were published in O Instituto, a journal of an academic society of the same name, founded in Coimbra in 1852. This new area of science aroused great interest, offering itself as unexplored territory waiting for scientific investigation. In reaction to the pioneering work at the Polytechnic School of Lisbon of Guilherme Pegado, who founded the first meteorological observatory in Portugal in 1854, the FPUC established a Meteorological and Magnetic Observatory in Coimbra. The main actor was, from 1863, the physicist Jacinto António de Sousa. In the twentieth century, the increasing need for weather forecasting, especially at sea, led to the creation of the Meteorological Services of the Navy in which Carvalho Brandão played a pivotal role. It was the beginning of an international cooperation that brought Jacob Bjerknes to Portugal. He addressed a conference at Coimbra recommending the creation of a meteorological station in the Azores, to relay observational data from vessels travelling in the Atlantic. The Portuguese meteorological services were scattered in various institutions until 1946, when the National Meteorological Services (NMS) were created. Based on articles published in O Instituto and on the activities of the academy with the same name, we provide an overview of the evolution of meteorology in Portugal until the establishment of the NMS, with particular emphasis on the work of the Meteorological and Magnetic Observatory at the University of Coimbra.

Corsets with Copper Wire

Telegraphies ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Kay Yandell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Copper Wire ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The Creation

The male telegraphers whose voices originally predominated in disembodied speech forums sometimes suggested that women should be excluded from virtual speech forums, and often worried that women should interact in the virtual world in traditionally gendered ways. Such nineteenth-century women telegraphers as Ella Thayer and Lida Churchill nevertheless voluminously produced literature that provided a format for their own technologically enabled literary utopias of new gender forms in the telegraphic virtual realm. Telegraphy seems to have appealed to women writers exactly because it provided a freedom that authors otherwise achieved primarily through the creation of literature. The freedom women experienced virtually emboldened the inscription of newly gendered models for both virtual and physical-world selfhood through the creation of women telegraphers’ literature.

Larger Than Life

2019 ◽  
pp. 201-229
Author(s):  
Deborah J. Brown ◽  
Calvin G. Normore
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Political Unions

If two or more substances, distinct in essence not merely in number, can form a union, it is little wonder that collections of such composites can also form unions. The difference between the union of mind and body and social and political unions, however, is that the latter depend not upon God (directly) but upon the wills of individual humans who create them. The force behind the creation of communities is a passion, love, which Descartes defines as a willing to join oneself in union with others. As a passion, love is dependent upon the body, and as an act of will, upon the divine element within the soul. It is argued in this chapter that such unions rely on organizational and mereological principles similar to those which account for the integrity of organic bodies. It is from here that the idea of a “body politic” emerges, demonstrating the continuity of Descartes’ thinking in natural philosophy, politics, and ethics.

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