Mersenne converted the world-soul into the mechanism of the world to avoid heresy

Evidence

In his effort to establish the validity of the mathematical method and mechanism, Mersenne challenged the presuppositions of the organic world view. His attack was directed at the Neoplatonic concept of the soul of the world, source of its vital activity. Deriving from Plato’s Timaeus, the world soul was central not only to the Neoplatonic views of Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Agrippa, but also to certain church fathers who held God to be immanent in his creation. Mersenne avoided heresy by transforming the threatening idea of the soul of the world into a mechanism of the world. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 771

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the earlier chapter-31 treatment of the female world-soul as source of natural motion in Neoplatonic cosmology. — connects to: Early seventeenth-century Western thought declared that man now commandeers the world — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 187

Broader Connections

• Early seventeenth-century Western thought declared that man now commandeers the world #expands (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 187