Book Description
Offered here is the first comprehensive treatment in English of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth and early seventeenth century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science. ... Read more

Book Description
Nicolas Peiresc (1580-1637) was a parliamentarian, a lawyer, an abbot, an historian, a biologist, an astronomer, a collector, and a generous patron. He played an important role in the advancement of science and in the preservation of antiquities. He may be considered as one of the missing links between the brillant Italian academies and the scientific societies of Northern Europe

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) was born in Provence like Peiresc. He was a professor of philosophy, a priest, an astronomer, a friend of Mersenne, a rival of Descartes, an assistant of Peiresc from 1632 to 1637, a supporter of Galileo, and was appointed in 1645 as one of the two professors of mathematics at the Royal College of France. He is the author of the remarkable biographies of Peiresc, Epicurus, Tycho Brahe, and Copernicus. ... Read more

Product Description
This look at Gassendi’s philosophy and science illuminates his contributions to early modern thought and to the broader history of philosophy of science.

Two keys to his thought are his novel picture of acquiring and judging empirical belief, and his liberal account of criteria for counting empirical beliefs as parts of warranted physical theories. By viewing his philosophical and scientific pursuits as part of one and the same project, Gassendi’s arguments on behalf of atomism can be fruitfully explained as licensed by his empiricism. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2006. The length of the article is 785 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Le concept de semence dans les theories de la matiere a la Renaissance: De Marsile Ficin a Pierre Gassendi.(Book review)
Author: Craig Martin
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 59Issue: 1Page: 226(2)

Article Type: Book review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2007. The length of the article is 1048 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Journal of the History of Philosophy: Vol. 45, No. April 2007.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Pierre Gassendi's moral philosophy)(medieval philosophy and evil)(moral liberty)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 60Issue: 3Page: 719(3)

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2007. The length of the article is 630 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Lolordo, Antonia. Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy.(Book review)
Author: Jude P. Dougherty
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 61Issue: 1Page: 141(2)

Article Type: Book review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Thomson Gale on December 22, 2006. The length of the article is 772 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Pierre Gassendi's Philosophy and Science: Atomism for Empiricists.(Book review)
Author: Margaret J. Osler
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 59Issue: 4Page: 1283(2)

Article Type: Book review

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Book Description
The difference between Pierre Gassendi's (1592-1655) and René Descartes' (1596-1650) versions of the mechanical philosophy directly reflected the differences in their theological presuppositions.Gassendi described a world utterly contingent on divine will and expressed his conviction that empirical methods are the only way to acquire knowledge about the natural world. Descartes, on the contrary, described a world in which God had embedded necessary relations, some of which enable us to have a priori knowledge of substantial parts of the natural world. In this book, Professor Osler explores theological conceptions of contingency and necessity in the world and how these ideas influenced the development of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century.She examines the transformation of medieval ideas about God's relationship to the Creation into seventeenth-century ideas about matter and method as embodied in early articulations of the mechanical philosophy. Refracted through the prism of the mechanical philosophy, these theological conceptualizations of contingency and necessity in the world were mirrored in different styles of science that emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century. ... Read more

Book Description
The Epicurean philosophers placing the happiness of man in the satisfaction of the mind, and health of the body, assure us that those two are no otherwise to be procured than by a constant practice of virtue. And because they have had the bard Fate to be misrepresented by most of the other sects, as well ancient as modern, and their principles traduced as favoring the most brutal sensuality; the learned Gassendi, who had either examined their doctrine with more diligence, or interpreted their sentiments with more candor and justice, thought he could not employ his time better than to vindicate the morals of Epicurus. Due to the age and scarcity of the original we reproduced, some pages may be spotty, faded or difficult to read. Written in Old English. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not for the General Reader
This book is not enjoyable for a generalist to read. The author is obviously a non-native English speaker and apparently did not have a fluent English-speaking editor review it prior to publication. The poor English is at first quaint and childlike, even charming for a paragraph or two, but in a 300+ page book laden with unadorned facts and dates, this quality soon becomes distracting to the point of annoyance. There is also evidence that the book was not copy-edited. Typos and misspellings abound. Despite its initial professional appearance, once opened it gives the impression of having been published out of an individual's basement.

The text of Gassendi's orginal is only a very small portion of this unwieldy book. It's enclosed in graphics boxes (sometimes only 3 or 4 lines long, never as much as a full page), printed in reduced-size type, and surrounded by the commentary of the modern author who does his best to elaborate in an alien English medium. The pages are further broken by footnotes on nearly every page. The result is not successful.

It's possible, even probable, that the information in this book is valuable. There are many, many sentences that are nothing but lists of dates and occurrences significant to Copernicus and/or his background. If you're a professional English-speaking historian looking for data more so than an interesting read, you might find value in this, especially because virtually every source is a non-English one (which makes perfect sense from a historical perspective). Also, you will be accustomed to reading documents for their informational value rather than their literary or entertainment merit. But as a general reader, I could not slog past the amateurish language and design. I have read 2 or 3 PhD dissertations, and this reminds me of a turgid one of those.

Overall, I'd warn the general reader against this book. Any value it has would seem to be for the specialist.

A detail historical study
This is a serious biography of Copernicus, the first man who established that the earth is moving. Aristarchus has said it earlier, but his book has been lost, and his theory was completely ignored. Therefore Copernius is considered to be the Founder of Modern Astronomy. Later, Galileo, because he admired him, had to face the inquisition.
This book includes the first translation in English of the excellent biography written in 1654 by Pierre Gassendi who was a French humanist and an astronomer himself. This old text renders very well the atmosphere of the Renaissance. This historical document is completed with up-to-date pieces of information found in the archives. Therefore, this book is the most detailed and acurate book about Copernicus, his life, his colleagues, and the reception of his system, with appendixes about the condemnation of heliocentrism, and the experiments proving the motion of the earth.
This is easy to read, although this is not a novel, every thing said is true. There is no idle talks, but mainly facts. It is not only about astronomy, but also about the life of people living in the 16th century. ... Read more