Background
Gassendi was born on on January 22, 1592 at Champtercier, near Digne, in France to Antoine Gassend and Françoise Fabry.
Astronomer mathematician philosopher priest
Gassendi was born on on January 22, 1592 at Champtercier, near Digne, in France to Antoine Gassend and Françoise Fabry.
Pierre entered the University of Aix-en-Provence, where he studied philosophy under Philibert Fesaye, O. Carm. at the Collège Royale de Bourbon (the Faculty of Arts of the University of Aix).
Gassendi is an Italianized form of Gassend used in Provence.
He took minor orders in 1612, became a canon of Digne Cathedral in 1616 and professor of philosophy at Aix in the same year. In 1624, he published, at Grenoble, a series of essays entitled Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos, in which he declared that, although obliged by the nature of his post to teach the philosophy of Aristotle, he had always taken care to point out the weaknesses of Aristotle's system.
Instead of continuing his polemic against the Schoolmen - a sort of skirmishing likely to make enemies for him in the Church - he turned to Epicurus and began, in 1626, to plan a work on his life, morals, and teaching.
He was convinced that Epicurus' teaching could be made to conform with the current theology, concerning which he avoided committing himself.
In 1632 he published observations on the transit of Venus and in 1641 demonstrated experimentally the truth of Galileo's theory of falling bodies.
His inaugural lecture (Institutio astronomica; 1647), while not openly declaring for Galileo, shows sympathy for him.
In 1648, suffering from tuberculosis, Gassendi left for Provence.
A complete edition of his works appeared in 1658.
The logic is a method of enquiry, mainly inductive, but it attempts a balance between experience and reason.
The physics describes a world composed of atoms and void, created by God, whose existence is shown by the harmony and order of the world.
God is the first cause; all the second causes are motion, and motion is a property of the atoms.
The most mobile of the atoms compose the souls of animals capable of sensation and "sensitive reason. "
He was the main rival of Descartes as an exponent of the "new philosophy. "
He influenced Robert Boyle and John Locke and was greatly esteemed by Sir Isaac Newton.