Pierre Gassendi

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
17th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
Institutions
University of Aix-en-Provence
Collège Royal
Main interests
Philosophical logic, physics, ethics
Notable ideas
Calor vitalis (vital heat)
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Pierre Gassendi (French:

Catholic priest, astronomer, and mathematician.[1][6][7] While he held a church position in south-east France, he also spent much time in Paris, where he was a leader of a group of free-thinking intellectuals. He was also an active observational scientist, publishing the first data on the transit of Mercury in 1631. The lunar crater Gassendi
is named after him.

He wrote numerous philosophical works, and some of the positions he worked out are considered significant, finding a way between

Descartes on the possibility of certain knowledge. His best known intellectual project attempted to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity
.

Biography

Early life

Gassendi was born at

University of Avignon,[12] and was elected Theologian in the Cathedral Chapter of Digne. On 1 August 1617 he received holy orders from Bishop Jacques Turricella of Marseille.[9] In the same year, at the age of 24, he accepted the chair of philosophy at the University of Aix-en-Provence, and yielded the chair of theology to his old teacher, Fesaye. Gassendi seems gradually to have withdrawn from theology. He maintained his position as Canon Theologian at Digne, however, and in September 1619, when Bishop Raphaël de Bologne took possession of the diocese of Digne, Gassendi participated and made the speech on behalf of the Chapter.[13]

He lectured principally on the Aristotelian philosophy, conforming as far as possible to the traditional methods while he also followed with interest the discoveries of Galileo and Kepler. He came into contact with the astronomer Joseph Gaultier de la Vallette (1564–1647), the Grand Vicar of the Archbishopric of Aix.[14]

Priesthood

In 1623 the

Francesco Patrizzi
left little scope for him.

He spent some time with his patron

Nicolas Peiresc. After 1628 Gassendi travelled in Flanders and in Holland where he encountered Isaac Beeckman and François Luillier.[17][18] He returned to France in 1631. In 1634 the Cathedral Chapter of Digne had become disgusted at the wasteful behavior of Provost Blaise Ausset, and they voted to replace him. They obtained an arrêt of the Parliament of Aix, dated 19 December 1634, which consented to his deposition and to the election of Gassendi as provost of the Cathedral Chapter. Gassendi was formally installed on 24 December 1634. He held the Provostship until his death in 1655.[19]

During this time he wrote some works, at the insistence of Marin Mersenne. They included his examination of the mystical philosophy of Robert Fludd,[20] an essay on parhelia,[21] and some observations on the transit of Mercury.

1640s

Gassendi then spent some years travelling through Provence with the duke of Angoulême, governor of the region. During this period he wrote only the one literary work, his Life of Peiresc, whose death in 1637 seemed to afflict him deeply;[22] it received frequent reprintings and an English translation. He returned to Paris in 1641, where he met Thomas Hobbes.[23] He gave some informal philosophy classes, gaining pupils or disciples; according to the biographer Grimarest, these included Molière, Cyrano de Bergerac (whose participation in classes is disputed),[24] Jean Hesnault and Claude-Emmanuel Chapelle, son of Lullier.[25][26]

In 1640 Mersenne engaged him in controversy with

mind-body problem, Gassendi, reacting to Descartes' mind-body dualism, was the first to state it.[30] Gassendi's tendency towards the empirical school of speculation appears more pronounced here than in any of his other writings. Jean-Baptiste Morin attacked his De motu impresso a motore translato (1642).[22] In 1643 Mersenne also tried to garner support from the German Socinian and advocate of religious tolerance Marcin Ruar. Ruar replied at length that he had already read Gassendi but was in favour of leaving science to science not to the church.[31]

In 1645 he accepted the chair of mathematics in the

Diogenes Laërtius.[32] In the same year he had published the more important commentary Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri.[33]

In 1648 ill-health compelled him to give up his lectures at the Collège Royal. Around this time he became reconciled to Descartes, after years of coldness, through the good offices of César d'Estrées.[34]

Death and memorial

He travelled in the south of France, in the company of his

Copernicus and of Tycho Brahe
. The disease from which he suffered, a lung complaint, had, however, established a firm hold on him. His strength gradually failed, and he died at Paris in 1655. A bronze statue of him (by Joseph Ramus) was erected by subscription at Digne in 1852. A large crater on the Moon is named after him.[35]

Scientific achievements

As part of his promotion of empirical methods and his anti-Aristotelian and anti-Cartesian views, he was responsible for a number of scientific 'firsts':

  • He explained
    parhelia
    in 1629 as due to ice crystals.
  • In 1631, Gassendi became the first person to observe the transit of a planet across the Sun, viewing the
    Kepler had predicted. In December of the same year, he watched for the transit of Venus
    , but this event occurred when it was night time in Paris.
  • Use of camera obscura to gauge the apparent diameter of the Moon.
  • Dropping a stone from the mast of a ship (in De motu) conserves horizontal momentum, removing an objection to the
    rotation of the Earth
    .
  • Measurement of speed of sound (to about 25% accuracy), showing that it is invariant of pitch.
  • Satisfactory interpretation of Pascal's Puy-de-Dôme experiment with a barometer in the late 1640s; this suggested a created vacuum is possible.
  • He asserted and defended (in "Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri", 1649, see Philosophical Writings below) the notion that matter is made of atoms, following Epicurus.

In addition to this he did work on determining longitude via eclipses of the Moon and on improving the Rudolphine Tables. He addressed the issue of free fall in De motu (1642) and De proportione qua gravia decidentia accelerantur (1646).[36]

Writings

Romanum calendarium

Edward Gibbon styled him "Le meilleur philosophe des littérateurs, et le meilleur littérateur des philosophes" (The greatest philosopher among literary men, and the greatest literary man among philosophers).

Diogenes Laërtius, the biographies of Epicurus, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, Georg von Peuerbach, and Regiomontanus, with some tracts on the value of ancient money, on the Roman calendar, and on the theory of music, with an appended large and prolix piece entitled Notitia ecclesiae Diniensis; the sixth volume contains his correspondence
. The Lives, especially those of Copernicus, Tycho and Peiresc, received much praise.

Exercitationes

The Exercitationes excited much attention, though they contain little or nothing beyond what others had already advanced against Aristotle. The first book expounds clearly, and with much vigour, the evil effects of the blind acceptance of the Aristotelian dicta on physical and philosophical study; but, as occurs with so many of the anti-Aristotelian works of this period, the objections show the usual ignorance of Aristotle's own writings[citation needed]. The second book, which contains the review of Aristotle's dialectic or logic, throughout reflects Ramism in tone and method. One of the objections to Descartes became famous through Descartes's statement of it in the appendix of objections in the Meditations.

Animadversiones

His book Animadversiones, published in 1649, contains a translation of

Diogenes Laërtius, Book X on Epicurus, and appeared with a commentary, in the form of the Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri.[36]
His labors on Epicurus have historical importance, but he has been criticized for holding doctrines arguably irreconcilable with his strong expressions of empiricism.

In the book, he maintains his maxim "that there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses" (nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu), but he contends that the imaginative faculty (phantasia) is the counterpart of sense, because it involves material images, and therefore is intrinsically material, and that it is essentially the same both in men and brutes. However, he also admits that the classic qualifier of humanity, intellect, which he affirms as immaterial and immortal, comes to an understanding of notions and truths that no effort of sensation or imagination could have attained (Op. ii. 383). He illustrates the capacity to form "general notions"; the conception of universality (ib. 384), which he says brutes never are able to partake in, though they utilize phantasia as truly as men; the notion of God, whom he says we may imagine as corporeal, but understand as incorporeal; and lastly, the reflex by which the mind makes the phenomena and operations within it the objects of its attention.

The English Epicurean Walter Charleton produced an English free adaptation of this book, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletonia, in 1654.[36]

Syntagma philosophicum

The Syntagma philosophicum sub-divides, according to the usual fashion of the

Epicureans, into logic (which, with Gassendi as with Epicurus
, is truly canonic), physics and ethics.

The logic contains a sketch of the history of the science De origine et varietate logicae, and is divided into theory of right apprehension (bene imaginari), theory of right judgment (bene proponere), theory of right inference (bene colligere), theory of right method (bene ordinare). The first part contains the specially empirical positions which Gassendi afterwards neglects or leaves out of account. The senses, the sole source of knowledge, supposedly yield us immediate cognition of individual things; phantasy (which Gassendi takes as material in nature) reproduces these ideas; understanding compares these ideas, each particular, and frames general ideas. Nevertheless, he admits that the senses yield knowledge—not of things—but of qualities only, and that we arrive at the idea of thing or substance by

Ramist
notions.

In the second part of the Syntagma, the physics, appears the most glaring contradiction between Gassendi's fundamental principles. While approving of the Epicurean physics, he rejects the Epicurean negation of God and

soul, endowed with immortality and capable of free determination. Friedrich Albert Lange[37]
claimed that all this portion of Gassendi's system contains nothing of his own opinions, but is introduced solely from motives of self-defence.

The positive exposition of

anima mundi
(world-soul) which he introduces as a physical explanation of physical phenomena, does not seem to throw much light on the special problems which he invokes it to solve. Nor is his theory of the weight essential to atoms as being due to an inner force impelling them to motion in any way reconcilable with his general doctrine of mechanical causes.

In the third part, the ethics, over and above the discussion on freedom, which on the whole is indefinite, there is little beyond a milder statement of the Epicurean moral code. The final end of life is happiness, and happiness is harmony of soul and body (tranquillitas animi et indolentia corporis). Probably, Gassendi thinks, perfect happiness is not attainable in this life, but it may be in the life to come.

Views

According to

Pyrrhonian in matters of science; but that was no bad thing.[38] He wrote against the magical animism of Robert Fludd, and judicial astrology.[39][40] He became dissatisfied with the Peripatetic system, the orthodox approach to natural philosophy based on the writings of Aristotle. Gassendi shared an empirical
tendency of the age. He contributed to the objections against Aristotelian philosophy, but waited to publish his own thoughts.

There remains some controversy as to the extent to which Gassendi subscribed to the so-called libertinage érudit, the learned

fideist wing of the sceptics, arguing that the absence of certain knowledge implied the room for faith.[41]

In his dispute with Descartes he did apparently hold that the evidence of the senses remains the only convincing evidence; yet he maintains, as is natural from his mathematical training, that the evidence of reason is absolutely satisfactory.

Vegetarianism

Gassendi acknowledged that while the complete realisation of the continual pursuit of ultimate pleasure through communion with God might not occur in one's lifetime, he argued against the consumption of meat, considering it a significant obstacle to achieving a divine vision. Drawing support from scripture and the natural world, he envisioned a restored paradise where humans and animals coexisted in peaceful dominion, contrary to the tyranny displayed in the butchering of animals for pleasure.[2]

Gassendi supported his case for vegetarianism with arguments from medicine, history, and scripture. Inspired by Neoplatonic vegetarians and early Christian thinkers, he aligned vegetarianism with Christian doctrines, emphasizing the immortality of the soul. Gassendi, a Catholic priest, advocated for a plant-based diet without dogmatism, asserting that decisions in this lifetime were crucial for preparing the body and mind for the next. He admired the historical virtue of vegetarian practitioners and urged scholars to extract and follow the best ideas from throughout history, asserting that, especially among humanists, a vegetarian lifestyle should be embraced.[2]

Gassendi himself was not a vegetarian, but admitted that "if I were wise, I would abandon this food bit by bit, and nourish myself solely on the gifts on the earth ... I do not doubt that I would be happier for longer and more constantly in better health."[42]

Early commentary

Samuel Sorbière, a disciple,[43] recounts Gassendi's life in the first collected edition of the works, by Joseph Bougerel, Vie de Gassendi (1737; 2nd ed., 1770); as does Jean Philibert Damiron, Mémoire sur Gassendi (1839). An abridgment of his philosophy was given by his friend, the celebrated traveller, François Bernier
(Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi, 8 vols., 1678; 2nd ed., 7 vols., 1684).

See also

  • Ontological pluralism
  • List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Fisher, Saul (August 28, 2014). "Pierre Gassendi". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  2. ^
    Vere Claiborne Chappell
    (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 56.
  3. ^ Peter Harrison, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Cambridge University Press, p. 220: "There has been considerable discussion in the secondary literature about the impact of Boyle's theological voluntatism on his approach to natural philosophy."
  4. ^ Caruso 1981, p. 443.
  5. ISBN 978-2-8011-0581-8
    .
  6. ISBN 978-94-010-8187-0
    – via link.springer.com.
  7. ^ "Brundell, B., Pierre Gassendi from Aristotelianism to a New Natural Philosophy, D. Reidel Publishing, 1987" (PDF).
  8. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0
    . Retrieved August 22, 2012.
  9. ^ a b Fisquet, p. 249.
  10. ^ Bougerel (1737), p. 6.
  11. ^ Ferdinand Belin (1896). Histoire de l'ancienne université de Provence, ou Histoire de la fameuse université d'Aix: période. 1409-1679 (in French). Paris: A. Picard et fils. pp. 183, 340–341.
  12. ^ "Pierre Gassendi - Biography". Maths History.
  13. ^ Fisquet, p. 250.
  14. ^ Bougerel (1737), pp. 8-9. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Gassendi (Gassend), Pierre, retrieved: 2017-08-02.
  15. ^ J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, Pierre Gassendi, retrieved: 2017-08-02 [self-published source]
  16. ^ Bougerel, p. 15.
  17. ^ a b Galileo Project page. Bougerel, p. 15.
  18. ^ The Archimedes Project, Gassendi, Pierre (actually Pierre Gassend) Archived 2012-02-20 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ Fisquet, pp. 248, 252, 256.
  20. ^ Epistolica Exercitatio, in qua precipua principia philosophiae Roberti Fluddi deteguntur, 1631.
  21. ^ Epistola de parheliis.
  22. ^ a b "Gassendi - Pierre Gassendi - Biography - Information - Links - Dr Robert A. Hatch".
  23. ^ Patricia Springborg (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan (2007), p. 422.
  24. ^ "www.paulvates.com". www.paulvates.com.
  25. ^ "LoveToKnow: Advice you can trust". Archived from the original on 2009-01-25. Retrieved 2009-01-07.
  26. ^ "Encyclopedie de l'Agora".
  27. ^ Nolan, Lawrence (August 28, 2021). "Descartes' Ontological Argument". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  28. ^ Gassendi, Pierre (1644). Disquisito metaphysica, seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii metaphysicam et responsa (in Latin). Vrin.
  29. ISBN 978-1-60384-350-8
    .
  30. ^ Cottinghm, Stoothof, Murdoch, Vol. II, CUP 1984, pp. 234-237
  31. ISBN 978-2-7116-1306-9
    .
  32. ^ De vita, moribus, et placitis Epicuri, seu Animadversiones in X. librum Diog. Laër. Lyons, 1649; last edition, 1675.
  33. ^ Lyons, 1649; Amsterdam, 1684.
  34. ^ Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes: A Biography (2006), p. 377.
  35. ^ "THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO ASTRONOMY - Moon map" (PDF).
  36. ^ a b c Fisher, Saul (2009). "Pierre Gassendi". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  37. ^ Geschichte des Materialismus, 3rd ed., i. 233.
  38. ^ Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (1979), p. 104.
  39. ^ Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1973), p. 418 and p. 770.
  40. ^ "Ueberweg". Archived from the original on 2009-02-03. Retrieved 2009-01-06.
  41. ^ Amesbury, Richard Fideism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 26 September 2012
  42. ISSN 1091-2339
    . Retrieved 2024-01-21.
  43. ^ "Scepticism - Lecture 7b". Archived from the original on 2012-02-14. Retrieved 2023-08-09.

References

Seventeenth to nineteenth-century commentary
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century commentary
Tertiary sources

External links

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