Otto Heurnius

Otto Heurnius
Born
Otto van Heurn

8 September 1577 (1577-09-08)
Utrecht, Spanish Netherlands
Died14 July 1652 (1652-07-15) (aged 74)
Leiden, Dutch Republic
EducationLeiden University
Scientific career
FieldsMedicine
InstitutionsLeiden University
Doctoral advisorJohannes Heurnius
Pierre Du Moulin
Doctoral studentsHenricus Regius
Johannes Walaeus
Other notable studentsFranciscus Sylvius

Otto Heurnius (born Otto van Heurn; 8 September 1577 – 14 July 1652) was a Dutch physician, theologian and philosopher.

Life

He studied at Leiden University. He subsequently succeeded his father Johannes Heurnius as professor of medicine at Leiden University, and took over anatomy teaching from Pieter Pauw from 1617. Alongside his practical anatomy teaching, he had the care of a very various collection of zoological and botanical specimens.[1] The aims of the collection included reconstruction of the life of the Israelites in Egypt, as in the Book of Exodus.[2]

He was also a historian of philosophy, stressing the period before the philosophers of the Ancient Greeks ("barbarian philosophy").[3] He based his ideas on the Corpus Hermeticum.[4]

References

  1. ^ Cornelis W. Schoneveld, Sea-changes: studies in three centuries of Anglo-Dutch cultural transmission (1996), pp. 9–10.
  2. ^ Klaas van Berkel and Arie Johan Vanderjagt, The Book of Nature in Early Modern and Modern History (2006), p. 51.
  3. ^ Francesco Bottin, Models of the History of Philosophy: From its origins in the Renaissance to the "historia philosophica" (1993), pp. 106–7
  4. ^ Wiep van Bunge et al. (editors), The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Philosophers (2003), Thoemmes Press (two volumes), article Heurnius, Otto, p. 430–2.