Rudolph Goclenius
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
scholastic
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
philosopher, credited with inventing the term psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
(1590).
Life
He was born in KorbachKorbach
Korbach is the district seat of Waldeck-Frankenberg in northern Hesse, Germany. It is over a thousand years old and a former Hanseatic town. It is located on the German Framework Road.- Geography and geology :...
, Waldeck
Waldeck (state)
Waldeck was a sovereign principality in the German Empire and German Confederation and, until 1929, a constituent state of the Weimar Republic. It comprised territories in present-day Hesse and Lower Saxony, ....
(now in Waldeck-Frankenberg
Waldeck-Frankenberg
Waldeck-Frankenberg is a Kreis in the north of Hesse, Germany. Neighbouring districts are Höxter, Kassel, Schwalm-Eder, Marburg-Biedenkopf, Siegen-Wittgenstein, Hochsauerland.-History:...
, Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
)
He attended the universities at the University of Erfurt
University of Erfurt
The University of Erfurt is a public university located in Erfurt, Germany. Originally founded in 1379, the university was closed in 1816 for the next 177 years...
, the University of Marburg and the University of Wittenberg, where he finished his studies with a M.A. in 1571. In the following years he directed the gymnasiums
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
in his hometown Korbach and in Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
. In 1581, Landgraf Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel
William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel
William IV of Hesse-Kassel , also called William the Wise, was the first Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel . He was the founder of the oldest line, which survives to this day.-Life:...
, who was a reputed astronomer, refused his wish to return to Korbach, but allowed him to be appointed professor at the Philipps University of Marburg
Philipps University of Marburg
The Philipp University of Marburg , was founded in 1527 by Landgrave Philip I of Hesse as the world's oldest university dating back to a Protestant foundation...
, where he had the chairs of philosophy, logic, metaphysics and ethics. He served as a counsellor to Wilhelm and his son Moritz. The latter sent him 1618 to the Synod of Dort
Synod of Dort
The Synod of Dort was a National Synod held in Dordrecht in 1618-1619, by the Dutch Reformed Church, to settle a divisive controversy initiated by the rise of Arminianism. The first meeting was on November 13, 1618, and the final meeting, the 154th, was on May 9, 1619...
.
He died in Marburg
Marburg
Marburg is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district and its population, as of March 2010, was 79,911.- Founding and early history :...
.
Views
From his dispute with Wilhelm Adolph Scribonius of Marburg on the legality of the ordeal by water in witch trialWitch trial
A witch trial is a legal proceeding that is part of a witch-hunt. * Witch trials in Early Modern Europe, 15th–18th centuries** Salzburg witch trials - 1675-1690, Salzburg, Austria** Spa witch trial - 1616, Belgium...
s, one can deduce that Goclenius was convinced on the existence of witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
and adhered to the "Hexenhammer"
Malleus Maleficarum
The Malleus Maleficarum is an infamous treatise on witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, an Inquisitor of the Catholic Church, and was first published in Germany in 1487...
.
Works
He was highly literate and wrote articles on many subjects, not only philosophy but also mathematics, geography, astrology (or astronomy), botanic, zoology, medicine. In his Lexicon philosophicum (1613) he used the term ontologyOntology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
coined by Jacob Lorhard
Jacob Lorhard
Jacob Lorhard was a German philosopher and pedagogue based in St. Gallen, Switzerland....
in his Ogdooas Scholastica (1606).
Goclenius' crowning achievement is his original contribution made to term logic
Term logic
In philosophy, term logic, also known as traditional logic or aristotelian logic, is a loose name for the way of doing logic that began with Aristotle and that was dominant until the advent of modern predicate logic in the late nineteenth century...
, called the Goclenian Sorites
Polysyllogism
A polysyllogism is a string of any number of propositions forming together a sequence of syllogisms such that the conclusion of each syllogism, together with the next proposition, is a premise for the next, and so on...
. These take the form of a series of syllogisms chained as follows:
-
- s = t
- r = s
- q = r
- p = q
Thus:
-
- p = t.
In the words of the British logician Carveth Read
Carveth Read
Carveth Read was a 19th and 20th century British philosopher and logician. He was Grote professor of philosophy of mind and logic at the University College London from 1903 to 1911.-Bibliography:...
:
"It is the shining merit of Goclenius to have restored the Premises of the Sorites to the usual order of Fig. I.: whereby he has raised to himself a monument more durable than brass, and secured indeed the very cheapest immortality. How expensive, compared with this, was the method of the Ephesian incendiary!"
Publications
- Psychologia: hoc est, De hominis perfectione, animo et in primis ortu hujus, commentationes ac disputationes quorundam theologorum & philosophorum nostrae aetatis, Marburg 1590
- Oratio de natura sagarum in purgatione examinatione per Frigidam aquis innatantium, Marburg 1590.
- Problemata logica, 1590 (reprint: Frankfurt: Minerva, 1967, in 5 voll.)
- Partitio dialectica, Frankfurt 1595
- Isagoge in peripateticorum et scholasticorum primam philosopiam, quae dici consuevit metaphysica, 1598 (reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1976)
- Institutionum logicarum de inventione liber unus, Marburg 1598
- Physicae completae speculum, Frankfurt 1604
- Dilucidationes canonum philosophicorum, Lich 1604
- Controversia logicae et philosophiae, ad praxin logicam directae, quibus praemissa sunt theoremata seu praecepta logica, Marburg 1604
- Conciliator philosophicus, 1609 (reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1980)
- Lexicon philosophicum, quo tantam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur, 1613 (reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1980)
- Lexicon philosophicum Graecum, Marburg 1615 (reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1980)
Family
His oldest son Rudolf Goclenius, Jr.Rudolf Goclenius, Jr.
Rudolf Goclenius the Younger was a German physician and professor of physics, medicine and mathematics at the Philipps University of Marburg. He was the oldest son of Rudolph Goclenius, who was also professor of rhetoric, logic and ethics at Marburg.As a physician he worked on cures against the...
was professor in Marburg, and a celebrated mathematician. It is after Rudolph Goclenius, Jr., that the lunar crater is named.
Further reading
- Diana Kremer, "Von erkundigung und Prob der Zauberinnen durchs kalte Wasser". Wilhelm Adolph Scribonius aus Marburg und Rudolf Goclenius aus Korbach zur Rechtmäßigkeit der "Wasserprobe" im Rahmen der Hexenverfolgung, in: Geschichtsblätter für Waldeck, Bd. 84, 1996, S. 141 - 168.
- Rudolf Schmitz, Die Naturwissenschaften an der Philipps-Universität Marburg 1517 - 1927, Marburg 1978, S. 15 f.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder, Grundlage zu einer hessischen Gelehrten und Schriftsteller Geschichte. Seit der Reformation bis auf gegenwärtige Zeiten, 4. Band, Göttingen 1784, S. 428 ff.