Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656-1725): van mechanisme naar vitalisme

Abstract

Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656-1723): from mechanism to vitalism Nicolaas Hartsoeker was a Dutch physician and physicist who wrote a number of books, in French, on physics, optics and biology, and took part in the lively scientific and philosophical debate at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Although initially he was deeply influenced by the mechanistic approach to biology cultivated by the Cartesians, he subsequently criticized and abandoned it, and developed a vitalistic philosophy, according to which the life and inovement of organisins are the outcome of vegetative souls. He even postulated a world-soul, in order to account for the movement which takes place in nature as a whole. He strongly defended these views in his correspondence with Leibniz, who was critical not only of his atomism and voluntarism, but also of his vitalism. Hartsoeker was not influential, and his views seem soon to have been forgotten. They are, however, a clear indication of the profound dissatisfaction with Cartesian mechanistic conceptions which was felt by many scientists towards the close of the seventeenth century.