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Jacques du Chevreul (1595-1649). Jacques du Chevreul was born in Coutances, France and died in Paris, France. Du Chevreul grew up in an educated household and was the son of a magistrate. In 1616, he received a Master of Arts for studying humanities and philosophy at the University of Paris. Du Chevreul continued education at a higher level and received a Bachelor of Divinity for theology in 1619. He did not start teaching until 1620 where he remained associated with College Harcourt and University of Paris, up until two years before his death when he taught philosophy at the College Royal. Throughout his lifetime Jacques du Chevreul held various teaching and administrative positions including principal and rector. Little is known about his later life. Although he studied subjects such as philosophy, logic, ethics, metaphysics, and physics, he published his two popular books over mathematics. Arithmetica (1622) and Sphaera were both published in Paris, France. Sphaera, du Chevreul's most popular book was about his view of the world and the universe. He used references from the Bible, Aristotle, and Plato to reject the Copernican model and instead created his own eccentric-epicycle geocentric model of the universe. Du Chevreul believed that the earth was the center of the universe, but that the major planets Venus and Mercury orbited around the sun. He theorized that there were wandering and fixed stars in the heavens and there were a total of thirteen planets in his model. The heavens were in the order of the Moon, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter surrounded by four Medicean stars, Saturn with two satellites, and above all these levels resided God. Du Chevreul's cosmic scheme is a highly original attempt to resist Copernicanism and accommodate Galieleo's telescopic discoveries in an Aristotelian cosmos.
References
- ↑ Aristotle, Ethics (1974) p. 357-8
- ↑ Stephen Toulmin, Night Sky at Rhodes (1963) p. 38 and p. 78
- ↑ C. C. Gillespie, The Edge of Objectivity (1960) p. 14
- ↑ Gillespie, p. 13-5
- ↑ J. J. E. Garcia, Individuation in Scholasticism (1994) p. 41
- ↑ W. Hooper, C. S. Lewis (1996) p. 529-31
- ↑ R. Curley, Scientists and Inventors of the Renaissance (2012) p. 6-8
- ↑ Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970) p. 116-7
- ↑ Dante, Purgatory (1971) p. 235
- ↑ Samuel Johnson, Selected Writings (Penguin) p. 266
