Francisco Sanches

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Francisco Sanches (1550-1623)

Francisco Sanches (* 1550 in Tui in Galicia , † November 16, 1623 in Toulouse ) was a philosopher and doctor.

Live and act

Born in Tui, Sanches was baptized in the Portuguese city of Braga on July 25, 1551. His father was the doctor António Sanches and his mother Filipa, b. de Sousa. His ancestors came from a Sephardic religious environment.

He lived in Braga until he was twelve and then moved with his parents to the French city of Bordeaux to avoid the Portuguese Inquisition. He studied there at the Collège de Guyenne . This was the same college where his distant maternal cousin Michel de Montaigne previously studied from 1539 to 1546.

In 1569 he left Bordeaux and continued his studies in Rome , Montpellier and Toulouse . In 1573 Sanches returned to France and followed the apprenticeship of the doctor and chancelier de l'Université de Montpellier Jean Hucher (1538-1603) from Montpellier. He received his doctorate in medicine and in 1575 he received his venia legendi at the University of Toulouse. Sanches practiced at the Toulouse Hospital, Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques , where he ultimately served as medical director for thirty years.

Even Giordano Bruno had, in those days, in Toulouse, he came to the city in 1579, where he had a chair occupied. First he held private lectures there. He became a full lecturer in philosophy at the University of Toulouse. Among other things, he held lectures on Aristotle. When the conflicts between Huguenots and Catholics became more violent again in 1581, he left the city for Paris.

Maison d'Augier Ferrier. The house that Sanches lived in in Toulouse was on Rue Saint-Rome in the historic center. D'Augier Ferrier, Caterina de 'Medici's personal physician, also lived in this building
Statue of Francisco Sanches in Braga, Portugal, by Salvador Barata Feyo.

In his work he pleaded for a pragmatic renunciation of excessive claims to truth. In his work Quod nihil scitur , which he wrote in 1576 and published in 1581, he uses the arguments of classical skepticism to show that no scientific knowledge of nature can be obtained with the Aristotelian method.

Sanche's fundamental criticism of the perfect syllogism was that the logical procedures would only lead to completely incomprehensible concepts, exemplified by the concept of being . For a scientific proof the premises would have to be true and first sentences. The world is in constant change and (because all things are related to one another) nothing can be understood without understanding all other things, their causes, the causes of their causes and so on. and this reliable knowledge is exhaustive and belongs only to God.

One of the first surviving philosophical writings by Sanches is a letter to the Jesuit father and mathematician Christophorus Clavius , who had just published Euclid's works and whom Sanches had met in Rome. In the letter to Christopher Clavius, Sanches attacked the form of Platonic epistemology. We could not gain any knowledge through mathematical learning, since the objects examined by mathematics are not the natural, real ones that occur in human life. Rather, they are ideal or even impossible objects such as points and lines. The mathematical relationships that would be demonstrated about such objects do nothing to explain nature or experience unless we know independently that the objects being experienced have mathematical properties, and we also know that the principles of mathematics are actually true . As far as we can tell, math is just a guess or a hypothesis until we can determine the nature of things independently.

Soon after, he wrote a critical study of the astrological interpretations of the 1577 comet , Carmen de Cometa , published in 1578, and some commentaries on parts of Aristotle's writings, as well as many medical works. Sanches criticized various naturalistic views of the Renaissance, such as that of Girolamo Cardano , and possibly met Giordano Bruno in Toulouse.

Works (selection)

  • Carmen de cometa. 1577.
  • Quod nihil scitur. 1581 ( digitized version ).
  • De divinatione per somnum, ad Aristotelem. 1585.
  • Opera Medica. 1636, with the following parts:
    • De longitudine et brevitate vitae.
    • In lib. Aristotelis Physiognomicon Commentarius.
    • De divinatione per somnum.
    • Quod nihil scitur.
  • Tractatus philosophici. 1649.

literature

Web links

Commons : Francisco Sanches  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ João-Maria Nabais: A diáspora de Francisco Sanches, na busca da consciência do Eu. Assistant Hospitalar Graduado; Universidade de Lisboa, p. 359, online
  2. ↑ Francisco Sanches (approx. 1551-1623) Filósofo, matemático e médico - Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (Portuguese)
  3. ^ João-Maria Nabais: A diáspora de Francisco Sanches, na busca da consciência do Eu. Assistant Hospitalar Graduado; Universidade de Lisboa, pp. 357-368, online
  4. ^ Richard H. Popkin: The History of Skepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle: From Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-1953-5539-3 , pp. 38 f.
  5. ↑ Nicolas François Joseph Eloy: Dictionnaire historique de la médecine ancienne et modern: ou Mémoires disposés en ordre alphabétique pour servir a l'histoire de cette science, et a celle des medecins, anatomists, botanists, chirurgiens et chymistes de toutes nations. vol. 2, H. Hoyois, Mons 1778, p. 572 [1]
  6. ↑ Diplôme de docteur en médecine de l'Université de Montpellier, décerné à Jean Mercator, originaire de Marcigny en Bourgogne (...), France Archive [2]
  7. ↑ Elaine Limbrick, Douglas FS Thompson:   Francisco Sanches (Franciscus Sanchez). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, ISBN 0-521-35077-8 ( online , PDF).
  8. ^ Francisco Sanches: Quod nihil scitur. Toulouse 1581.
  9. ^ Francisco Sanches, Encyclopædia Britannica [3]
personal data
SURNAME Sanches, Francisco
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Philosopher and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH 1550
PLACE OF BIRTH Tui
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1623
Place of death Toulouse