Jan Fokkes Holwarda. A Gassendist in Franeker, Between Intellectual Debt and Plagiarism

Abstract

This article explores Gassendi’s influence on the Franeker professor Jan Fokkes Holwarda (1618–1651), author of a posthumously published Philosophia naturalis, seu physica vetus-nova (1651). In the section of the book devoted to celestial physics, Holwarda pays homage to the ‘Gallic Lynx, Pierre Gassendi’ and discusses at length his astronomical observations. Gassendi’s name, by contrast, does not figure in the section on general physics, where Holwarda endorses atomism and the new science of motion. Some scholars suggested a possible influence of Gassendi on Holwarda’s matter theory, while others denied it. As the present article shows, most chapters of the Physica generalis are in fact extensively plagiarized from, or inspired by, Gassendi’s letters De apparente magnitudine solis humilis et sublimis (1642), De motu impresso a motore translato (1642), and the Animadversiones (1649). This dishonest practice conceals, however, a very good grasp of Gassendi’s philosophy. Holwarda manages to integrate the many bits and pieces he steals from Gassendi’s works into a coherent and concise account of the properties and behavior of atoms and compound bodies.