Walter Charleton

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Walter Charleton
Walter Charleton

Walter Charleton (February 1619-c April 1707) was an English writer, educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, who, according to Jon Parkin, was "the main conduit for the transmission of Epicurean ideas to England" (Science, Religion and Politics in Restoration England, p.149). He was also physician to Charles I and Charles II, and a significant early member of the Royal Society, influential on the side of physiology.

He was a copious writer also on theology, natural history, and antiquities, and published Chorea Gigantum (1663) to prove that Stonehenge was built by the Danes.

He was one of the "character" writers, and in this kind of literature wrote A Brief Discourse concerning the Different Wits of Men (1675).

[edit] Works

  • Deliramenta catarrhi (1650)
  • The darkness of atheism dispelled by the light of nature (1654)
  • Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletonia: or a fabrick of science natural, upon the hypothesis of atoms (1654) largely based on the 1649 Animadversiones of Pierre Gassendi
  • Epicurus's Morals (1656)
  • Natural History of the Passions (1674) based on Jean-François Senault De l'usage des passions (1641)
  • The harmony of natural and divine laws (1682)

[edit] References

  • Emily Booth (2005) A Subtle and Mysterious Machine: The Medical World of Walter Charleton (1619-1707)

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.