Explorateur des Sciences (review)

466 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3~:3 JULY 199 3 Anthony Turner, with the collaboration of Nadine Gomez. Explorateur des Sciences. Digne-les-Bains: Imprimerie Vial, 1992. Pp. 2o4. FF 25o. A most impressive exhibit for the 4ooth anniverary of Pierre Gassendi's birth took place at the Mus(~ede Digne during t992. The excellent illustrated catalogue prepared by Turner and Gomez is a superb introduction to the thought and accomplishments of Gassendi, who is too often remembered only as an opponent of Descartes. As an introduction a 1964 essay on Gassendi by Tullio Gregory is reprinted in French translation. This essay gives a fine overview of Gassendi's philosophy, his intellectual development and his achievements. Starting as a sceptical critic of Aristotelianism , Gassendi developed a modified hypothetical Epicurean atomism as a counterview for explaining the natural world. He offered his sceptical Epicureanism as a way of rejecting Renaissance naturalism, Kabbalism, and Cartesianism. The text of the catalogue first presents an intellectual biography of Gassendi from his early philosophical and theological training, his early'teaching at Aix, to his scientific collaboration with the Provengal nobleman, Peiresc, who had an insatiable desire to know and understand nature. They worked together for twenty years, 162o-4o, the most fruitful period for Gassendi in empirically observing various features of the world. Gassendi also became involved in the intellectual world of Paris, becoming a life-long friend of Father Marin Mersenne, and of the libertins ~rudits Guy Patin, Gabriel Naudd, and Frangois de La Mothe Le Vayer, the leading humanistic sceptics of the time. During this period Gassendi launched his sceptical attack against Aristotelianism , made his only trip outside of France to the Netherlands, then wrote against the Kabbalism and astrology of Robert Fludd and Jean-Baptiste Morin, while beginning his enormous researches into the philosophy of Epicurus. When in Provence he functioned as a priest and religious administrator. In 1641 Gassendi wrote his allimportant biography of Peiresc, detailing the scientific work they did together. Then, at the insistence of Mersenne, he became one of the first and most acute critics of the new philosophy being proposed by Descartes. As his fame grew in the intellectual world, he was appointed Royal Professor of Mathematics in 1645 at the Coll~ge de France--though he was no mathematician. IUness kept him away from his teaching most of the time. The fruits of his researches into Epicureanism began appearing from 1647 onward. His fullest picture of Gassendi's Christianized sceptical Epicureanism only appeared posthumously in 1658 when his complete works were published. This elegant catalogue describes, illustrates, and carefully assesses the stages of Gassendi's career. The latter part of the volume goes into fascinating detail about Gassendi's work as a scientist, and gives an exciting account of his crucial observation of the transit of Mercury, the first empirical support of the Copernican system. This presentation, even without the displays that were on exhibit at Digne, brings the many contributions of Gassendi to life, and shows him as one of the really major figures of the time. Then why has he so much disappeared from accounts of the making of the modern mind, even though the evidence of his importance and influence in Europe from 165o-175o is overwhelming? It is usually said that his books are only in Latin, his BOOK REVIEWS 467 writings were too pedantic and tedious, and that his empirical and materialistic science was overtaken by eighteenth-century Newtonianism. His disciple, Frangois Bernier, sought to overcome some of these difficulties with his seven-volume Abr~g~ de la Philosophic de Gassendi (Lyon, 1674-75, and Lyon, 1684). (This work has just been republished, edited by Silvia Murr, by Fayard in Paris in 1992. ) Even if these explanations for the neglect of Gassendi are correct, still in many ways his combination of scepticism, empiricism, hypothetical Epicureanism (somewhat truncated to eliminate the features that were incompatible with Christianity), and a nonsuperstitious religious view, provide one of the more interesting and intriguing new philosophies of the seventeenth century. This catalogue is a wonderful way of entering into the many facets of the Gassendian world. RICHARD H. POPKIN Washington University Universityof California, Los...