Questions harmoniques

An extraordinarily ingenious and thought-provoking man, Mersenne (1588–1648) was beneficial to the intellectual world of the 17th century in many ways. His name will forever be linked to the names of Fermat, Pascal, Roberval, Gassendi, Hobbes, Descartes, Cavalieri and Torricelli. Mersenne played an important role in the development of Cartesian methodology, Cartesian rationalism and mechanism. His main theoretical work ‹La vérité des Sciences‹ (The Truth of Science) stands out due to a refutation of skepticism which, although congenial with Descartes, was also empirical and positivistic, and also due to the systematic application of mathematics to all the natural sciences and the continuation of the physics of Galileo. It represents a milestone in the philosophy and natural sciences of its time.