Germination

Decades ago, Walter Ong intuited a powerful link between the advent of printing with moveable type, the subsequent spatialization of discourse most strikingly evident in Ramism, and the corpuscular, mechanistic physics of Descartes (section 3.i). More recently, Klaas van Berkel has identified the precise location of this link in Snellius’ student, Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637), who, working at the interface of artisanal knowledge and Ramist pedagogy, developed the basic principles of a physico-mathematical philosophy of nature which he passed on to Descartes in 1618–19 and to Gassendi and Mersenne a decade later (section 3.ii). Another figure of the same generation, Henricus Reneri (1593–1639), was inspired by a very similar set of interests and aspirations to become Descartes’ first devoted follower and perhaps closest friend (section 3.iii).