Stefan
Jen
Mr. Percival
Astronomy
10/10/14
Pierre
Gassandi Biography
Pierre Gassandi
was born on June 22, 1592 in Champtercier, France. In his early life he was a
bright kid, and would help change the views of the astronomy world. He studied
at University of Digne Aix-en-Provence. At
the age of 21 he was later appointed professor, and later that year received a doctorate in theology at
Avignon. Being a professor, he delivered many speeches on the flawed teachings
of Aristotle. The University disliked this, and after 5 years of teaching, a
Jesuit, a member of Society of Jesus which was a highly esteemed religious
order who were highly feared of, forced him to leave.
This was because the Jesuit’s disliked Gassandi’s teaching of atoms, and was
against the church. After that incident Gassandi traveled to Europe and stayed
there for many years, trying to put down Aristotle. Gassandi started to read
the works of Epicurus, and his philosophies on the motion of atoms in the
world. However Epicurus, the man Pierre Gassandi looked up to, was on the top
of the church’s hit list. Mainly for teaching and bringing up ideas that wasn’t
the norm, such has the motion of atoms and how they exist even though they
cannot be seen with the naked eye. Gassandi had managed to separate the god and
the cosmos apart as they are completely different beliefs, unlike Epicurus who
struggled to do so and resulted in him being punished greatly. He did this by
modifying atomism so that it did not interfere with the church, by stating that
god created these atoms. This was extremely smart, so that he could go on
teaching atomism and not be harmed for it. Later in his life he went on to
study with his Patron, Nicolaus-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Sadly he died in 1637.
With his assistance he had actually managed to discover the perihelion of
Mercury. In 1645 Gassandi was appointed to be a professor of mathematics at the
college Royal’ in Paris. During his time
there he managed to a work on the new astronomy. In his final
Epicurean work, Syntagma philosophicum he argued
between skepticism and dogmatism (which is laying down principles without any
hard evidence to back it up.) The man did this by using induction Gassandi
induced a lot to explain phenomenons. Epicurus’s theories were actually a very
effective way of proving against Aristotle who thought the Earth was made of
the four simple elements which were earth, fire, water, and air. Which during
their time period sounds the most realistic, as proving that atoms existed was
extremely hard to do so. Gassandi responded to Aristotle’s theory, stating that
even though no one can see an atom, one can infer their existence with the
human senses and observations. Such as noticing the invisible motion that makes
branches sway back and forth, or as one can smell a certain material before
actually seeing the object that is emitting the scent. Another
example he theorized is that sweat suggests that there are pores in the skin
for sweat to be able to exit your skin. For these actions to occur it only
leads to that there is an atomic world too small to be seen. His crafting of
these theories, which was expanded upon by Epicurus, lead up to be called
atomism. This was in theory that atoms were moving at different speeds and
colliding to create events that occur in our everyday world. Gassandi died on
October 24, 1655. Later after his death an edition of all of complete works
were published. Even though no one had believed him at his time, just bringing
up the idea of atomism lead to other scholars to create laws that would
eventually be accepted by society. This one scholar that most attributed from
Gassandi’s works was the ever so famous Sir Isaac Newton.
Works Cited:
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