Gassendi's Epicurean project

Pierre Gassendi is most frequently remembered for introducing the philosophy of the ancient atomist Epicurus into the mainstream of European thought. His revival of Epicureanism can be understood in the context of the early-seventeenth-century search for a new philosophy of nature. The young Gassendi was an active member of the intellectual community of Provence and, eventually, all of France. He conducted experiments and discussed many scientific topics, particularly in astronomy, with his patron and correspondent, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637). He was a friend of Hobbes, whom he encountered in the circle around Mersenne in Paris. He corresponded with Beeckman, Galileo, Hevelius, and other astronomers and natural philosophers. He performed the famous experiment of dropping a heavy object from the top of a moving ship's mast, an experiment previously imagined by Galileo as proving the possibility of the earth's motion. And he wrote a treatise defending Galileo's new science of motion, De motu impresso a motore translato (1642). As an active member of this community of natural philosophers, Gassendi predictably rejected the philosophy of Aristotle. There is evidence that he was interested in Epicureanism as a replacement for Aristotelianism from at least the mid-1620s.