Protogaea

Illustration of the 1749 edition of Protogaea by Leibniz

Protogaea is a work by Gottfried Leibniz on geology and natural history. Unpublished in his lifetime, it was conceived as a preface to his incomplete history of the House of Brunswick.[1]

Life

Protogaea is a history of the Earth written in conjectural terms; it was composed by Leibniz in the period 1691 to 1693.[2] The text was first published in full in 1749, shortly after Benoît de Maillet's more far-reaching ideas on the origin of the Earth, circulated in manuscript, had been printed.[3]

Views

Protogaea built on, and criticised, the natural philosophy of René Descartes, as expressed in his Principia Philosophiae.[4] Leibniz in the work adopted the Cartesian theory of the Earth as a sun crusted over with sunspots.[1] He relied on the authority of Agostino Scilla writing about fossils to discredit speculations of Athanasius Kircher and Johann Joachim Becher;[5] he had met Scilla in Rome a few years earlier.[6] He took up suggestions of Nicolaus Steno that argued for the forms of fossils being prior to their inclusion in rocks, for stratification, and for the gradual solidification of the Earth.[7]

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Nicholas Jolley (1995). The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz. Cambridge University Press. pp. 31–3. ISBN 978-0-521-36769-1. Retrieved 26 February 2013.
  2. ↑ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (15 September 2008). Protogaea. University of Chicago Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-226-11297-8.
  3. ↑ Michael Allaby (1 January 2009). Earth Science: A Scientific History of the Solid Earth. Infobase Publishing. p. 182. ISBN 978-1-4381-2694-4.
  4. ↑ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (15 September 2008). Protogaea. University of Chicago Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-226-11297-8.
  5. ↑ Paolo Rossi (15 September 1987). The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico. University of Chicago Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-226-72832-2.
  6. ↑ Ofer Gal; Raz Chen-Morris (28 November 2012). Science in the Age of Baroque. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 124. ISBN 978-94-007-4807-1.
  7. ↑ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (15 September 2008). Protogaea. University of Chicago Press. p. xxv. ISBN 978-0-226-11297-8.