Jean-Baptiste du Hamel

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Jean-Baptiste du Hamel, Duhamel or Du Hamel (11 June 1624–6 August 1706), was a notable French natural philosopher of the later seventeenth century, and secretary of the Academie Royale des Sciences.

He was born at Vire, Normandy (now in the department of Calvados), the son of Vire lawyer Nicolas Du Hamel. He began his studies at Caen and completed them in Paris. In 1642, being only eighteen years of age, Duhamel published an explanation of the work of Theodosius of Bithynia called Spherics, to which he added a treatise on trigonometry. The following year he entered the Congregation of the Oratory, which he left ten years later to take charge of the parish of Neuilly-sur-Marne. Resigning this position in 1663, he became chancellor of the church of Bayeux. When Jean-Baptiste Colbert founded the Académie of Sciences (1666), he appointed Duhamel its first secretary. Duhamel held this office until 1697, when he resigned and, upon his own recommendation, was succeeded by Fontenelle. He was also professor of Greek and Latin philosophy at the Collège de France. With Colbert's brother, Charles Colbert, marquis de Croissy, he went, in 1668, first to attend the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), and later to England, where he came in touch with the foremost scientists, especially with the physicist Robert Boyle. He returned to France and died in Paris.

[edit] Published works

Among du Hamel's prolific publications were the following:

  • Philosophia moralis christiana (Angers, 1652);
  • Astronomia physica (Paris, 1659);
  • De Meteoris et fossilibus (Paris, 1660)
  • De consensu veteris et novæ philosphiæ (Paris, 1663), a treatise on natural philosophy in which the Greek and scholastic theories are compared with those of Descartes;
  • De Corporis affectionibus (Paris, 1670)
  • De mente humana (On the human mind, 1672), an account of the workings of the human mind developing the principles of Aristotelian logic and Baconian natural philosophy.
  • De corpore animato (Paris, 1673);
  • Philosophia vetus et nova ad usum scholæ accommodata (Paris, 1678). This work, composed by order of Colbert as a textbook for colleges, ran through many editions.
  • Theologia speculatrix et practica (7 vols., Paris, 1690), abridged in five volumes for use as a textbook in seminaries (Paris, 1694);
  • Regiæ scientiarum Academiæ historia (Paris, 1698; enlarged edition, 1701);
  • Institutiones biblicæ (Paris, 1698), in which are examined the questions of the authority, integrity, and inspiration of the Bible, the value of the Hebrew text and of its translations, the style and method of interpretation, Biblical geography, and chronology;
  • Biblia sacra Vulgatæ editionis (Paris, 1705), with introductions, notes, chronological, historical, and geographical tables.

[edit] References