ABSTRACT
The reception of Gassendi’s works in England was not confined to matter theory but included his astronomical and mechanical investigations as well. Gassendi the empiricist was seen as complementing Bacon’s teachings, since the French philosopher combined the theory of atoms with the investigation of nature based on the direct observation of phenomena. Information on Gassendi’s philosophy and science reached England via English émigrés in France, as well as via Mersenne and the Hartlib Circle. Shortly after its publication, the Animadversiones aroused interest among natural philosophers, and Gassendi’s Christianized Epicureanism provided impetus to the establishment of the corpuscular philosophy. While most natural philosophers shared the Gassendian version of atomism, which was disseminated by Charleton’s Physiologia, theologians like Henry More took issue with Gassendi’s philosophy, notably with the doctrine of the animal soul that inspired Thomas Willis’s theory of the lower soul.
Scientific practitioners—especially Boyle and other Fellows of the Royal Society—adopted substantial aspects of Gassendi’s theory of matter while testing his explanations of natural phenomena, notably his accounts of cold, colors, and generation. Boyle’s hierarchical matter theory was heavily dependent on Gassendi’s notion of moleculae. For Boyle, the simplest particles form aggregates of the first order, quite similar to the molecules of Gassendi. The hierarchy of particles was adopted and thoroughly developed by Newton who, like Gassendi, attached special importance to interstitial voids in his investigations of the microscopic structure of bodies.
