Abstract
Despite the prestige that the study of classical letters and history had soon acquired at the new academy, the disciplines of philosophy proper — logic, ethics and physics — initially suffered from consistent neglect.1 The chairs designated for these subjects were frequently to be found vacant, and those who did occupy them were often drawn from other fields than philosophy. Only in the early seventeenth century does a greater concern for philosophic instruction become evident in the person of the Scot, Gilbertus Jacchaeus. Having come to Leiden as a student in theology in 1603, he joined the faculty of philosophy as professor of logic in 1605 and was two years later entrusted with the chair in ethics as well.2 In 1614, however, he published his Institutiones physicae, the first work of any note on physics to issue from Leiden’s faculty, and in 1617 he was given the responsibility for physics alone.
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Reference
See Paul Dibon, La Philosophie néerlandaise au siècle d’or, Vol. I: L’Enseignement philosophique dans les universités à l’époque pré-cartésienne, 1575–1650 (Paris, etc.: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1954); also Ferdinand Sassen, “Het oudste wijsgeerig Onderwijs te Leiden (1575–1619),” Mededeelingen, Kon. Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam, Afdeeling Letterkunde, new series, Vol. IV (1941).
For a short biography of Jacchaeus, see the Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, ed. P. C. Molhuysen and P. J. Blok (Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1911–37), Vol. I, 1197–8.
On Snellius, see Ibid., Vol. VII, 1155–63, and J. A. Vollgraff, “Pierre de la Ramée (1515–1572) et Willebrord Snell van Royen (1580–1626),” Janus, XVIII (1913), pp. 595–625.
For biographical data on Burgersdijck, see the Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, Vol. VII, 229–31.
Nicholas Hans, New Trends in Education in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1951), p. 51. Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, p. 164. Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), p. 5.
Dibon, La Philosophie néerlandaise, Vol. I, p. 94.
The second edition (Lugd. Batavorum: Ex officina Bonavent. et Abrahami Elzevir, 1627) has been used in this study.
Again, the second edition (Lugd. Batavorum: Ex officinâ Elziviriorum, 1642) will be referred to below.
See Neal W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), passim.
Reif, “Natural Philosophy,” pp. 269–70 and 279–81. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts, passim.
Idea philosophiae naturalis, “Philosophiae studiosis.”
See Reif on the manualists’ discussion of method, “Natural Philosophy,” pp. 267–81.
Dibon, La Philosophie néerlandaise, Vol. I, pp. 44 and 96.
Maurice de Wulf, Scholasticism Old and New: An Introduction to Scholastic Philosophy, Medieval and Modern (trans. P. Coffey; Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd.; London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910), p. 123.
William T. Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early 17th Century Cambridge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 94. In the years around 1600, the soul was, in fact, the most popular subject for disputations in physics at Leiden (Dibon, La Philosophie néerlandaise, Vol. I, pp. 57–8).
Collegium physicum, p. 343.
Ibid., p. 2.
Ibid., p. 136.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid., p. 137.
Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., p. 25 ff.
Ibid., p. 345.
Ibid., p. 28. Nonetheless, the Aristotelian form established the identity of a thing essentially with respect to its “species.”
Ibid., pp. 29–30.
Nos igitur cum Aristotele statuamus, formas ante generationem non esse nihil, sed id esse potentia, quod actu sunt post generationem. (Ibid.)
Ibid., pp. 31–2.
Ibid., p. 14 ff.
Ibid., p. 26.
Reif, “Natural Philosophy,” pp. 105–6.
Collegium physicum, pp. 20–1. “Act,” actus, had a formal meaning in peripatetic philosophy; it was the perfected realization of what was previously potential.
Reif, “Natural Philosophy,” pp. 110–1.
Collegium physicum, pp. 20–3.
Ibid., p. 139.
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 26. Reif, “Natural Philosophy,” pp. 44–5 and 128–30.
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), p. 128. @Reif, op. cit., p. 128.
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), p. 119–20 @Collegium physicum, pp. 26 and 21. Reif, op. cit., see pp. 119–20.
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), 126 ff @and 126 ff.
Collegium physicum, see pp. 25–6.
Ibid., p. 136.
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), pp. 82–5 @Reif, “Natural Philosophy,” see pp. 82–5.
Ibid., p. 103.
Collegium physicum, pp. 76 and 4.
Ibid., p. 16.
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), pp. 213 @Reif, “Natural Philosophy,” pp. 213
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), pp. 215@and 215.
Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, trans. Andrew Motte (1729), rev. by Florian Cajori (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1946), pp. XVII and XVIII.
Collegium physicum, p. 76.
Ibid., p. 78.
Ibid., pp. 63 and 73.
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), pp. 145–6 @Reif, “Natural Philosophy,” pp. 145–6.
Collegium physicum, p. 35.
Ibid., p. 34.
Ibid., pp. 37–8 and 4–6.
Ibid., p. 4.
Ibid., pp. 9–10. In addition to the theoretical sciences were the practical sciences, including, according to Burgersdijck, ethics, politics and economics (philosophia oeconomica). Logic, said Burgersdijck, should not be considered a part of philosophy but, rather, an instrument of philosophy. (Ibid., pp. 1–2.)
Ibid., pp. 42–3.
Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid., p. 82.
Ibid., pp. 84–5.
Ibid., p. 66. See Friedrich Solmsen, Aristotle’s System of the Physical World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960), pp. 94 ff.
Ibid., p. 66. See Friedrich Solmsen, Aristotle’s System of the Physical World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960), pp. 232–3 ff@and 232–3.
Collegium physicum, pp. 66 and 73.
Ibid., pp. 39–40 and 35.
Ibid., pp. 72–3.
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), p. 200.@Reif, “Natural Philosophy,” p. 200.
Sister Mary Richard Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth Century Scholastic Textbooks” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1962), p. 212@Ibid., p. 212.
Collegium physicum, pp. 80–1.
Ibid., pp. 73,40 and 82–5.
Ibid., p. 96.
Ibid., p. 102.
Ibid., pp. 106 and 102–3.
Ibid., p. 116 ff.
Ibid., p. 120.
Ibid., pp. 111–3.
Ibid., pp. 109–10 and 97 ff.
Ibid., pp. 106–7.
Ibid., p. 109 ff.
Ibid., p. 110.
Ibid., p. 113.
Ibid., p. 351.
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Ruestow, E.G. (1973). Franco Burgersdijck: Late Scholasticism at Leiden. In: Physics at Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Leiden: Philosophy and the New Science in the University. Archives Internationales D’histoire des Idees / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2463-1_2
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