By Lynn Sumida Joy
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Scholars within the early 17th century who studied historical Greek medical theories frequently drew upon philology and background to reconstruct a extra common photo of the Greek previous. Gassendi's education as a humanist historiographer enabled him to formulate a belief of the historical past of philosophy within which the rationality of medical and philosophical inquiry trusted the old justifications which he built for his ideals. Professor pleasure examines this belief and analyzes the character of Gassendi's ancient education, particularly its courting to his occupation as a physicist and astronomer. She indicates how he rehabilitated Epicurean atomism by means of bringing jointly the arguments of the Greek atomists and people of his contemporaries. In doing so, he produced an account of the flora and fauna which made it an item of empirical research and mechanical rationalization.
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Extra resources for Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science (Ideas in Context)
Example text
In the early 1620s, when he had been engaged in criticizing his university's Aristotelian curriculum, he had read a wide range of recent Latin authors, several of whom had employed a notably historical method in expounding their philosophical views. 2 Although Lipsius and Patrizi had advanced widely divergent philosophical principles, they had employed similar historical methods of exposition when presenting their respective views. 3 In Parts 1 and 3 of his Discussiones, Patrizi had then placed Aristotle's principles within the context of Greek philosophy as a whole by pinpointing the areas of agreement and disagreement among Aristotle and many other ancient philosophers including Plato.
At his disposal, even in the provincial city of Aix, were texts, manuscripts, and artifacts representing the classical cultures of Greece and Rome. 2 The standard philosophy curriculum at Aix had assimilated, in the Greek texts of Aristotle, only a fraction of the ancient philosophical works which Italian, Dutch, and French humanists had spent the better part of two centuries making available to their contemporaries. 3 However, Gassendi himself could not yet have been counted as a humanist in any meaningful sense, since he had not perfected any of the technical skills practiced by scholars like Peiresc.
When answering this question, it should be recalled that Gassendi's use of Sextus Empiricus' tropes had been initially a part of the general exercise of his humanist skills in discrediting the Aristotelians. But, unlike his questioning of the authenticity and accuracy of their texts, his use of skeptical arguments involved Gassendi in something beyond the mere exercise of a humanist tool. The assumptions underlying Sextus' tropes committed anyone who employed them to certain fundamental positions, and foremost among these were the assumptions that human knowledge depends on sense perception and that sense perception cannot yield universally true statements concerning the objects of perception.