Pierre Gassendi Quotes
Pierre Gassendi was a French Catholic priest, astronomer, and philosopher and one of the leading anti-Aristotelian voices of seventeenth-century thought. He observed the transit of Mercury in 1631, discovered the aurora borealis as a regular natural phenomenon, and corresponded across Europe on the new astronomy. The quotes below are attributed to Pierre Gassendi, organized by topic.
Pierre Gassendi on God
-
Attributed to Pierre Gassendi:
“The atom is the work of God, not the product of chance.”
-
Attributed to Pierre Gassendi:
“Epicurus, rightly read, may be reconciled with the Christian faith.”
Pierre Gassendi on Knowledge
-
Attributed to Pierre Gassendi:
“Sense is the fountain of knowledge.”
-
Attributed to Pierre Gassendi:
“Reason without experience builds empty schemes.”
-
“Man lives very well upon flesh, you say, but, if he thinks this food to be natural to him, why does he not use it as it is, as furnished to him by Nature? But, in fact, he shrinks in horror from seizing and rending living or even raw flesh with his teeth, and lights a fire to change its natural and proper condition. … What is clearer than that man is not furnished for hunting, much less for eating”
Letter to Van Helmont , quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), pp. 103-104.
Pierre Gassendi on Nature
-
Attributed to Pierre Gassendi:
“Atoms and the void are the elements of the natural world.”