Gassendi

Gassendi, or GASSEND, PIERRE, French philosopher and mathematician, was born 22d January 1592, at Champtercier, a village of Provence. His unusual powers of mind showed themselves at an early age. Having resolved upon an ecclesiastical career, he studied, and afterwards taught, philosophy at Aix. But, catching the infection of empirical methods of study, he revolted from the predominant scholastic philosophy, and began to subject it to a critical scrutiny. At the same time he bent his energies upon physics and astronomy. The results of his examination of the Aristotelian system and methods appeared at Grenoble in 1624, Exercitationes paradoxicæ adversus Aristotelcos, in which he utters an emphatic protest against accepting the Aristotelian dicta as final in all matters of philosophy, and especially of physics. In the same year he was appointed prévôt of the cathedral at Digne, an office which enabled him to pursue without distraction his researches in astronomy and other natural sciences. From 1628 he spent several years travelling through Holland, Flanders, and France, until in 1645 he was appointed professor of Mathematics in the Collège Royal de France, at Paris, where he died, 14th October 1655. During his stay in the Low Countries he controverted (1631) the mystical opinions of Robert Fludd, and wrote a treatise on parhelia, besides other astronomical papers. Eleven years later he proceeded also to criticise adversely the new system of philosophy promulgated by Descartes, in a work entitled Objectiones ad Meditationes Cartesii. Whilst at Paris Gassendi wrote his principal philosophical works, De Vita Epicuri (1647); a commentary on Diogenes Laertius' tenth book, De Vita, Moribus, et Placitis Epicuri (1649); and in the same year the Syntagma Philosophiæ Epicuræ, which contains a complete view of the system of Epicurus. But, whilst thus going back to the ancients in his philosophy, Gassendi marched in the van of the moderns in natural and physical science. Kepler and Galileo were numbered amongst his friends. His Institutio Astronomica (1647) is a clear and connected representation of the state of the science in his own day; in his Tychonis Brahæi, Nicolai Copernici, Georgii Puerbachii, et Joannis Regiomontani Vitæ (Paris, 1654) he gives not only a masterly account of the lives of these men, but likewise a complete history of astronomy down to his own time. His collected works were published by Montmort and Sorbière (6 vols. Lyons, 1658), and by Averani (6 vols. Flor. 1728).