Abstract
Daniel Sennert has aptly been referred to as an “archetypical transitional figure.” Sennert’s experimental atomism had a major influence on later philosophers such as Robert Boyle and Joachim Jungius, but the Wittenberg professor remained committed to an Aristotelian view of natural philosophy that in large part followed Julius Caesar Scaliger. Sennert’s medicine was built upon a Galenist humoral pathology, but he also drew heavily from Paracelsian and otherwise chemical medicine. Likewise, Sennert’s corpuscular explanation of the origin of life and generation led to his rejection of spontaneous generation, but he also made a case for the existence of substantial forms and the action of semina or seeds – notions that came to influence Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
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References
Primary Literature
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Klein, J.A. (2022). Sennert, Daniel. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_1105
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