Marin Mersenne's “Questions Theologiques, Physiques, Morales, et Mathematiques”: Agenda and Structure, with an Annotated Translation (2006)
Mueller, Paul R. (Author)
University of Chicago
Swerdlow, Noel M.
Edition Details: Advisor: Swerdlow, Noel M.
Physical Details: 364 pp.
Language: English
Questions Théologiques, Physiques, Morales, et Mathematiques is one of five books published in 1634 by Marin Mersenne (1588-1648). Mersenne, a priest in the Order of Minims, spent nearly his entire adult life in Paris, at the Minim convent off the Place Royale. Mersenne has been called "the secretary of learned Europe" and "a one-man scientific journal." He is known for his vast correspondence; for his relationship to and correspondence with Descartes; for his role in the rise of the mechanical philosophy; for his translation and promotion of the works of Galileo in France; and for his original work in mechanics, acoustics, and music theory and practice. Questions Théologiques has been taken to be a collection of detached chapters dealing with disparate topics, without narrative structure or movement from beginning to end. In Chapter 1 of this dissertation, I argue that Questions Théologiques possesses a narrative structure, which is provided by Mersenne's pedagogical-moral agenda. Mersenne moves his learned readers step by step, through the disparate questions and topics of Questions Théologiques , to a more positive moral valuation of the passion of curiosity and its role in scientific practice. In Chapter 2, I propose and explore a novel hypothesis: in the early modern Catholic world, the practice of natural philosophy was influenced by the discipline of textual criticism. More specifically, the practices and patterns of inference which Catholic natural philosophers employed to adjudicate disagreements among observation reports concerning natural effects or objects were influenced and informed by those which textual critics used to resolve differences among extant manuscript copies of ancient texts. An appropriate testing ground for this hypothesis is the work of Mersenne, who was active both as a natural philosopher and as a biblical commentator. On this hypothesis, it becomes possible to provide a unified explanation for important aspects of Mersenne's scientific practice which have been explained diversely or which have not been explained at all. It also becomes possible to reinterpret as epistemological virtues aspects of Mersenne's scientific practice which have been seen as epistemological vices. In Chapter 3, I provide an annotated translation of Questions Théologiques .
...MoreDescription “I argue that Questions Théologiques possesses a narrative structure [which argues for] a more positive moral valuation of the passion of curiosity and its role in scientific practice.” (from the abstract) Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 67/09 (2007). UMI pub. no. 3231434.
Similar Citations
Article
Gregorio Baldin;
(2018)
Points, Atoms and Rays of Light: History of a Controversy from Mersenne to Hobbes
(/isis/citation/CBB119606416/)
Book
Schuster, John;
(2013)
Descartes-Agonistes: Physico-Mathematics, Method and Corpuscular-Mechanism 1618--33
(/isis/citation/CBB001500367/)
Book
Shea, William R.;
(2003)
Designing Experiments and Games of Chance: The Unconventional Scienceof Blaise Pascal
(/isis/citation/CBB000740239/)
Book
Gregorio Baldin;
(2020)
Hobbes and Galileo: Method, Matter and the Science of Motion
(/isis/citation/CBB618726337/)
Article
Raphael, Renée;
(2008)
Galileo's Discorsi and Mersenne's Nouvelles Pensées: Mersenne as a Reader of Galilean “Experience”
(/isis/citation/CBB000933722/)
Book
Violet Moller;
(2020)
The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found
(/isis/citation/CBB401001470/)
Article
Cozzoli, Daniele;
(2010)
The Development of Mersenne's Optics
(/isis/citation/CBB000954427/)
Article
Itokazu, Anastasia Guidi;
(2009)
On the Equivalence of Hypotheses in Part 1 of Johannes Kepler's New Astronomy
(/isis/citation/CBB000932196/)
Book
Godefroid de Callatay;
(2018)
On Composition and the Arts: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 6-8
(/isis/citation/CBB990518312/)
Book
Domninus, Larissaeus;
Riedlberger, Peter;
(2013)
Encheiridion and Spurious Works
(/isis/citation/CBB001551908/)
Article
Aggarwal, Abhilasha;
(2007)
Mathematical Books for and in India in the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000831563/)
Book
Radelet-de Grave, Patricia;
Stoffel, Jean-François;
(2000)
Les “enfants naturels” de Descartes: actes du colloque commémoratif du quatrième centenaire de la naissance de René Descartes
(/isis/citation/CBB000100363/)
Book
Lewis, John;
(2006)
Galileo in France: French Reactions to the Theories and Trial of Galileo
(/isis/citation/CBB000930983/)
Article
Palmerino, Carla Rita;
(2010)
Experiments, Mathematics, Physical Causes: How Mersenne Came to Doubt the Validity of Galileo's Law of Free Fall
(/isis/citation/CBB000954429/)
Article
Malet, Antoni;
Cozzoli, Daniele;
(2010)
Mersenne and Mixed Mathematics
(/isis/citation/CBB000954426/)
Article
Mancosu, Paolo;
Arana, Andrew;
(2010)
Descartes and the Cylindrical Helix
(/isis/citation/CBB001022145/)
Article
Burn, R. P.;
(2001)
Alphonse Antonio de Sarasa and Logarithms
(/isis/citation/CBB000100596/)
Article
Goldstein, Catherine;
(2013)
Routine Controversies: Mathematical Challenges in Mersenne's Correspondence
(/isis/citation/CBB001213939/)
Article
Holger Funk;
(2016)
A Dutch phantom translation of Dioscorides's De materia medica from 1520 and a German translation by a non-Germanic author from 1546
(/isis/citation/CBB077266485/)
Article
Coumet, Ernest;
(1975)
Mersenne: “Dictions” nouvelles à l'infini
(/isis/citation/CBB000015212/)
Be the first to comment!