Cloistered science: the monastic learning of Marin Mersenne (1588-1648)

Abstract

Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) has long been recognized by historians of science for his contributions to the new philosophy in the first half of the seventeenth century, including his elevation of the status of mathematics in questions of physics, his relentless investigation of nature through experimentation, and his central role in the pan-European Republic of Letters. However, this historiographical tradition has often sidestepped his identity as a friar of the Order of Minims, one of the most ascetic mendicant orders in Western Christendom. This order, of which he was a member for the entirety of his scholarly career, served as his social, spiritual, and epistemological toolbox in his quest for scientific advancement. This thesis aims to reveal the monastic worldview within Mersenne’s science, demonstrating how his vocation as a friar shaped his erudition according to a lesser understood set of institutional priorities and intellectual traditions. It argues that Mersenne enjoyed an exceptional range of resources (e.g. books, equipment, social networks) from the wider Minim Order as well as from his convent in Paris’ Place Royale. Furthermore, it shows how he developed the mechanisms for carrying out his famous scientific collaborations from the Minims and modeled the social conduct for such collaboration on his homosocial monastic environment. The thesis also examines Mersenne’s relationship with the Minims’ “anti-intellectual” intellectual culture, which afforded an important role to the faculty of the intellect but which also viewed the purpose of learning as the cultivation of the monastic soul rather than the pursuit of vain erudition. Mersenne drew from this discourse in his conceptualization of the aims of science, characterizing mathematics and natural philosophy as pathways to edification by stressing the profound moral and spiritual truths reflected in the laws of nature. Through the lens of his monastic commitments, his urban setting, and his interpersonal relationships, Mersenne’s life acts as the spine to a larger cultural story about an overlooked kind of pious erudition in one of the most well-known yet misunderstood eras of scientific enterprise.RESTRICTED ACCESS