From Polymathy to Modern Philosophy: Mersenne, Information Exchange, and the Philosophy of Descartes

This dissertation follows the life and correspondence of Marin Mersenne from his initial correspondence in 1617 to the publication of Descartes’ Meditations in 1641. Across this period, Mersenne developed the second largest and most significant letter-writing network of intellectuals in seventeenth-century Europe. During this time, he also contributed to acquisition and organization of knowledge about the natural world. This dissertation explores Mersenne’s roles in these developments and makes several historiographical interventions. First, it argues that Mersenne is an example of the lingering generalist approach to knowledge in early modernity. Contrary to the view of Peter Miller, scholars in the seventeenth century continued in the polymathy of their forebearers without adopting the specialization of later intellectuals. At the same time, Mersenne remained a devout and devoted intellectual champion of Catholicism. He took seriously the Fifth Lateran Counsel’s call to defend the faith with a new system of natural philosophy that made sense of the proliferation of scientific observations. Although some, like Michael Buckley, have considered Mersenne’s defense of Catholic orthodoxy and rebuttals of atheism to have inadvertently opened a door for the very ideologies that he opposed, this was not the case. The dissertation also engages with the transition away from Aristotelian philosophy towards modern philosophy by engaging with the correspondence between Mersenne and Descartes. This culminates in an exploration of Mersenne’s role in the creation of the Meditations, which serves also as an example of how Mersenne’s letter writing in its mature form could and did influence the origins of modern science and philosophy.