Sennert, Daniel

Abstract

Daniel Sennert has aptly been referred to as an “archetypical transitional figure” (Michael, Early Science and Medicine 2: 272–299, 1997). Sennert’s experimental atomism had a major influence on later philosophers such as Robert Boyle and Joachim Jungius (Newman, Atoms and alchemy: chymistry and the experimental origins of the scientific revolution. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2006), but the Wittenberg professor remained committed to an Aristotelian view of natural philosophy that in large part followed Julius Caesar Scaliger (Lüthy, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 26: 99–121, 2005). Sennert’s medicine was built upon a Galenist humoral pathology, but he also drew heavily from Paracelsian and otherwise chemical medicine. Likewise, Sennert’s corpuscular explanation of the origin of life and generation led to his rejection of spontaneous generation (Hirai, Medical humanism and natural philosophy: renaissance debates on matter, life and the soul. Brill, Leiden, 2011), but he also made a case for the existence of substantial forms and the action of semina or seeds – notions that came to influence Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Arthur, Animal generation and substance in Sennert and Leibniz. In: Smith J (ed) The problem of generation in early modern philosophy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 147–174, 2006).