Gassendi, Pierre(1592–1655)
Pierre Gassendi, the leading French seventeenth-century skeptical and Epicurean philosopher and scientist, was born at Champtercier, a Provençal village in France. He studied at Digne and Aix-en-Provence and was appointed professor of rhetoric at Digne at the age of twenty-one. In 1614 he received his doctorate in theology at Avignon. He was ordained a priest in 1616 and was appointed professor of philosophy at Aix. From 1617 to 1623 he lectured on Aristotle's philosophy, developing a forceful critique of it. His first published work, Exercitationes Paradoxica Adversus Aristoteleos (1624), was intended to be followed by six more parts, of which only the second part, published posthumously, was written. It contains both an attack on Aristotle's thought and portions of Gassendi's mitigated skepticism.
After a year in Digne, during which he performed various ecclesiastical duties, Gassendi visited Paris for a brief period in 1625 and became friendly with such avant-garde thinkers as Francois de La Mothe le Vayer and Marin Mersenne. He continued the astronomical researches that he had begun in Provence, and, with the mathematician Claude Mydorge (1585–1647), observed a lunar eclipse. Gassendi's careful astronomical records from 1618 to 1655 were published after his death. He also engaged in many scientific studies with his patron, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Pieresc (1580–1637).
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