Samuel de Sorbiere

Samuel de Sorbiere (* 1617 in the Languedoc, † 1670 ) was a French scholar, translator and doctor.

Sorbiere came from a prominent Protestant family, studied medicine and was 1641 in Paris, where he came into contact with Pierre Gassendi and Marin Mersenne and René Descartes and 1645 Thomas Hobbes ( in the English Civil War in exile in Paris, where tutor of the exiled Charles II. ) met. He then settled in the Netherlands, where he had a French translation of the Utopia by Thomas More published in 1643 and provided for the publication of the works of Hobbes. He translated his De Cive ( 1649) and De Corpore Politico also into French. The impetus that he was responsible for the publication of the works of Hobbes ( Hobbes, he urged on publication of his natural philosophy ) came from Mersenne. In 1654 he was back in Paris, where he converted to Catholicism occurred (more for political and economic reasons than conviction, such as the physician Guy Patin wrote ), which gave him a state pension. Sorbiere won the favor of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, and was court historian. He was connected with the Academy of Henri Louis Habert de Montmor in Paris, whose founding member and secretary (from 1658) he was and whose statutes he wrote and contributed to Mont Mort 's publication of the writings of Gassendi (Lyon 1658) whose biography at. During a visit to 1663/64 in England, he became a member of the Royal Society. He played a role in the founding of the Academie des Sciences, 1666.

He was combative nature and his negative comments about his visit to England in 1664 demanded the spokesman for the Royal Society, Thomas Sprat in 1665 to an answer out. The controversy also grew into political dimensions: Sorbiere was temporarily banished from Paris.

In his book on the trip to England, he took the side of Hobbes, who was not well with the members of the Royal Society as John Wallis, who had taken apart Hobbes attempt to square the circle. Wallis had received Sorbiere friendly in Oxford and found himself in exchange for it in the book of Sorbiere ridiculed. Wallis would indeed be a good mathematician, but his behavior against Hobbes see him not as a gentleman, but as a pedant, a stay in London could not only cure his halitosis, but teach him courtly manners. Worse was Sorbières representation of the British Prime Minister Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, which he indeed zusprach legal knowledge, but otherwise found little formed him. Other peaks were directed against the English customs and English culture ( and cuisine ). The Danish ambassador in Paris also felt in the book offended and brought behind the insult of Clarendon the French Foreign Minister de Lionne, the Sorbiere temporarily banished to Brittany (England was at that time an ally of France against the Netherlands ). Advocate, he seeks, among other things Hobbes in England, though, soon led to the lifting of the ban (apparently also continued Charles II for an end to the affair a ), but his book proved detrimental as his further career.

In its response to the book Sprat sat apart, it would have the Royal Society, completely misunderstood as in stock fractious and authorities ( such as that of Descartes) hearing society that indulged in ceremonial formalities. Even the attack on Clarendon, whose patronage the Royal Society wished was rejected by Sprat.

But the outrage was not all members of the Royal Society equally strong, because they voted by a vote of 14 to 8 against the exclusion of Sorbiere.

Is still cited his advice to a young physician ( 1672) - although it would be admitting honorable medical errors, but their own practice averse.

Writings

• Lettres et discours de M. de Sorbiere, sur diverses matières curieuses, Paris 1660
• Relation d'un voyage en Angleterre, Paris 1664 English Translation 1709: A Voyage to England: Containing many things Relating to the state