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T Gassendi on the Science of Observation and the tluman Soul

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) was a seventeenth-century French Catholic priest and philosopher. A contemporary of l, D escarte s, G as sen di was part of a group of intellectuals in France who sought a new philosophy of nature that could replace the traditional tea chings of Aristotle that Copernicus and his t'ollowers had so severely criticized. Gassendt had no*, doubt that his laith as a Chrrstian was compatible with his enthusiasm for the new sctences of observation, but in order to demonstrate this to his contemporaries, he had to show that the mechanical explanations of the universe and the natural world did not necessarily lead to a heretrcal materialism or atheism. ln the following passage, taken from his posthumously; publtshed work Syntagma Philosophicum (1658), Gassendi attempted to demonstrate that one might infer the existence of the human soul, even if it was not accessible to the senses.

here are many such things for which with the passage of time helpful appliances are belng found that will

make them visible to the senses. For example, take the little animal the mite, which is born under the skin; the senses

perceived it as a certain unitary little point without parts; but since, however, the senses saw that it moved by itself, reason had deduced from this motion as from a perceptible sign that this little body was an animal and because its for-

ward motion was somewhat Iike a turtle's,

reason added that it must get about by the use of certain tiny legs and feet. And

although this truth would have been hid-

den to the senses/ which never perceived

these limbs, the microscope was recently

invented by which sight could perceive that matters were actually as predicted.

Likewise, the question had been raised what the galaxy in the sky with the name

of the lr4ilky Way was. Democritus, concerning whom it was said that even when he did not know somethrng he was

knowing, had deduced from the percep-

tible sign of its filmy whiteness that it was nothing more than an innumerable

multitude of closely packed little stars which could not be seen separately, but produced that effect of spilt milk when

many of them were joined together. This

truth had become known to him, andyet

had remained undisclosed to the senses until our day and age, until the moment that the telescope, recently discovered, made it clear that things were in fact what he had said. But there are many such things which, though they were hid-

den from the ancients, have now been made manifest for our eyes. And who knows but a great many of those which

are concealed in our time, which we per-

ceive only through the intelligence, will one day also be clearly perceived by the

senses through the agency of some help-

ful appliance thought up by our descen- dants?...

Secondly, if someone wonders whether a certain body is endowed with

a soul or not, the senses are not at all capable of determining that by taking a look as it were at the soul itself; yet there

are operations which when they come to

the senses' notice, lead the intellect to deduce as from a sign that there is some

soul beneath them. You will say that this

sign belongs to the empirical type, but it is not at all of that type, for it is not even one of the indicative signs since it does not inform us of something that the senses have ever perceived in conjunc- tion with the sign, as they have seen fire

with smoke, but informs us instead of something that has always been impen- etrable to the senses themselves, like our skin's pores or the mite's feet before

the microscope.

You will persist with the objecti that we should not ask so much whether

there is a soul in a body as what its nature

is, if it is the cause of such operations, just as there is no question that there is a force attracting iron in a magnet or that

there is a tide in the sea, but there are questions over what their nature is or what they are caused by. But let me omit

these matters which are to be" fully treated elsewhere, and let it be enough

we say that not every truth can be k by the mind, but at least some can con-

cerning something otherwise hidden, or

not obvious to the senses themselves, And we bring up the example of the soul:

both because vital action is proposed by Sextus Empiricus as an example of an indicative sign and because even though

it pertains not so much to the nature of the soul as to its existence, still a truth of existence of such magnitude as this, which it is most valuable for us to know,' is made indisputable. For when among

other questions we hear it asked if God is or exists in the universe, that is a truthl

of existence which it would be a great service to establish firmly even if it is not

proven at the same time what he is or what his nature is. Although God is such :

that he can no more come under the perusal of the senses than the soul can,

still we infer that the soul exists in the body from the actions that occur before

the senses and are so peculiarly

542 I cHnerrn ro TheNew Science of theseventeenthCentury

appropriate to a soul that if one were not present, they would not be either. ln the same way we deduce that God exists in the universe from his effects per- ceived by the senses, which could not be produced by anything but God and which therefore would not be observed unless God were present in the world, such as the great order of the universe, its great beauty, its grandeur, its har- mony, which are so great that they can

only result from a sovereignly wise, good, powerful, and inexhaustible cause. But these things will be treated else- where at greater length.

Source: Craig B, Brush, ed., The Selected Worhs ot' Pierre Gassendi (New York: 1972), pp.334-36,

Questions for Analysis 1. What is the relationship between new

knowledge and new scientific tools (the microscope and the telescope) in

Gassendi's examples of the mite and the l\4ilky Way? ls he a Baconian or a Cartesian?

2. What are the limitations of the senses when it comes to questions of the human soul, according to Gassendi?

3. Given these limitations, does Gas- sendi conclude that science will never be able to say anything about his reli- gious faith?

speculative natural philosophy and using lr ro cririque rhose who would exclude her from scientific debate. The ,,tyran-

nicai government" of men over women, she wrote, ,,hath so dejected our spirits, that we are become so stupid, rhat beasts being but a degree below us, men use us but a degree above beasts. Whereas in nature we have as clear an understanding as men, if we are bred in schools to mature our brains.,,

The construction of observatories in private residences enabled some women living in such homes to work their way into the growing field of astronomy. Between 1650 and i710, 14 percent of German astronomers were women, the most famous o[whom was Maria Winkelmann (1670_1720). Winkelmann had collaborated with her husba4d, Gouflried Kirch, in his observatory, and when he died she had already done significant work, discovering a comer and preparing calendars for the Berlin Academy of Sciences. When Kirch died, she petirioned the academy to allow her to mke her husband's place in that presrigious body bur was rejected. Gottfried Leibniz, rhe academy's presidenr, explained, 'hlready during her husband's lifetime the society was bur- dened with ridicule because its calendar was prepared by a woman. If she were now to be kept on in such capacity, mouths would gape even wider." In spite of this rejection, Winkelmann continued to work as an astronomer, training both her son and two daughters in rhe discipiine.

Like Winkelmann, the entymologisr Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-17\7) also made a career based on observa_ tion. And like Winkelmann, Merian was able ro carve our a space for her scientifrc work by exploiting the precedent o[ guild women who learned their trades in family work- shops. Merian was a daughter of an engraver and illus_ trator in Frankfurt and served as his informal apprentice

FROM MEIAMORPHOS's OF THE 'NSECIS

OFSUR'NAM, BY MARIA SYBTLLA MERTAN (1705). Merian, the daughter ofa Frankfurt engraver, learned in her father,s workshop the skills necessary to become an important early entymologist and scientific illustrator and conducted her research on two continents.

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