Ancient atomism only became a full rival to Aristotle through Gassendi’s Christianized Epicurean system.

Evidence

Although Democritus and Epicurus were known during the Middle Ages, and the rediscovery of Lucretius’s poem in 1417 had sparked interest and discussion, atomism was then too limited in generality to compete with the system of Aristotle. It was discussed by the Englishman Nicholas Hill in 1601 as a philosophical system, by the Frenchman Sebastian Basso in 1621 as an argument against Aristotle, by the German iatrochemist Daniel Sennert as a medical theory (1619 and 1637) and in a treatise of 1643 by the French philosopher Claude Berigard, who taught at Pisa and Padua. Gassendi, however, developed Epicureanism in great detail as a complete physical and philosophical system, setting it in a Christian framework. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 786

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter 50 claim that ‘the organic cosmos gave way to a mechanical order’ — Gassendi’s atomist synthesis is a key step in mechanism’s displacement of the living cosmos.