MARIN

MERSENNE  0588-1648), French philosopher and mathematician, was born of peasant parents near Oize (Sarthe) on the 8th of September 1588, and died in Paris on the 1st of September 1648 . He was educated at the Jesuit College of La Fleche, where he was a fellow-pupil and friend of Descartes . In 1611 he joined the Minim Friars, and devoted himself to philosophic teaching in various convent schools . He settled eventually in Paris in 162o at the convent of L'Annonciad'e . For the next four years he devoted himself entirely to philosophic and theological writing, and published Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (1623); L'Impiete des aisles (1624); La Verite des sciences (1624) . These works are characterized by wide scholar-ship and the narrowest theological orthodoxy . His greatest service to philosophy was his enthusiastic defence of Descartes, whose agent he was in Paris and whom he visited in exile in Holland . He submitted to various eminent Parisian thinkers a manuscript copy of the Meditations, and defended its orthodoxy against numerous clerical critics . In later life, he gave up speculative thought and turned to scientific research, especially in mathematics, physics and astronomy . Of his works in this connexion the best known is L'Harmonie universelle (1636), dealing with the theory of music and musical instruments . Among his other works are: Euclidis elementorum libri, &c . (Paris, 1626); Universae geometriae synopsis (1644); Les Mechaniques de Galilee (Paris, 1634) ; Questions inouies ou recreations des savants (1634); Questions theologiques, physiques, &c .

(1634); Nouvelles decouvertes de Galilee (1639); Co itala physico-mathematica (1644) . See

Baillet, Vie de Descartes 1691); Pote, Eloge de Mersenne (1816) .