Absolutism and the Scientific Revolution, 1600-1720. A Biographical Dictionary

487 Pages·2004·26.942 MB·English

by  Christopher Baker

Absolutism
and the
Scientific Revolution,
1600-1720
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Absolutism
and the
Scientific Revolution,
1600-1720
A Biographical Dictionary
Edited by
CHRISTOPHER BAKER
The Great Cultural Eras of the Western World
Ronald H. Fritze, Series Adviser
GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut • London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Absolutism and the scientific revolution, 1600-1720: a biographical dictionary / edited by
Christopher Baker.
p. cm.—(The great cultural eras of the Western world, ISSN 1534-9527)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-313-30827-6 (alk. paper)
1. Europe—History—17th century—Biography—Dictionaries. 2. Europe—History—18th
century—Biography—Dictionaries. 3. Europe—Intellectual life—17th century—Biography—
Dictionaries. 4. Europe—Intellectual life—18th century—Biography—Dictionaries.
5. Enlightenment—Europe—18th century—Biography—Dictionaries. 6. Authoritarianism—
Europe—History—17th century. 7. Authoritarianism—Europe—History—18th century.
I. Baker, Christopher. II. Series.
D205.A27 2002
940.2'52—dc21 2002017109
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2002 by Christopher Baker
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002017109
ISBN: 0-313-30827-6
ISSN: 1534-9527
First published in 2002
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
For Barbara and Matt
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Contents
Introduction ix
Chronology xvii
Absolutism and the Scientific Revolution, 1600-1720 1
Appendix A: Entries Arranged by Subject 413
Appendix B: Entries Arranged by Country 421
Bibliography 429
Index 439
About the Editor and Contributors 447
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Introduction
Despite the truism that every age is an age of transition, the hindsight of history
reveals certain eras to have been periods of radically decisive intellectual change.
Such was the seventeenth century in Western Europe. By 1600, the momentum
of the Renaissance, whether defined as the birth of a new spirit of creativity or
as the slow death of medievalism, was peaking, and the current of religious
reformation was in full tide, soon to make itself felt as well in the North Amer
ican colonies. These and other aspects of the sixteenth century have led to a
recent tendency to replace the term "Renaissance" with "Early Modern," a label
that, while raising problematic issues of its own, nevertheless cautions against
artificially rigid divisions in the flux of historical development. The boundaries
of historical periods are necessarily permeable, and those of this volume are no
different; yet it is fair to say that by 1720 the adjective "modern" no longer
requires that we modify it with "early."
One could perhaps point to 1642, the year of Galileo's death and Newton's
birth, as the last chronological juncture between the "old world" and the "new,"
or possibly 1674, the year of poet John Milton's death, the last English literary
voice of the Renaissance, as the point of transition from "early modern" to
"modern." However, paraphrasing Virginia Woolf's only half facetious com
ment upon seeing the 1901 London exhibition of Postimpressionist art, events
in 1648 make it tempting to assert that in that year "human nature changed." It
saw two occurrences that demonstrated a decisive alteration in the assumptions
of Christian humanism and the Protestant reformation, which had marked the
sixteenth century. The Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War;
though it may have been a struggle that, in C.V. Wedgewood's phrase, "need
not have happened and settled nothing worth settling," it was the last European
conflict in which religious differences were believed important enough to go to
battle over. Issues of politics, class, and national interest were key causes as
well, but the conflict drew heavily upon the tensions between Calvinists and