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From the Ancient Greek σῶμα, σώματος, the logic of the body could this be right? The metaphysical problem of the mind–body relation from Aristotle to Descartes

893J :  Strimesius, Samuel  (1648-1730)

Somatologia, Seu Physica, Media, Aristotelem inter & Cartesium, incedens; In gratiam Auditorum suorum Francofurtensium, Anno 1679. primum edita, nunc recognita & aucta.

Bound with:

Lineae Gnostologicae, Seu Logicae Peripateticae Reformatae Rudimenta, In Privatorum Collegiorum Usum, Anno 1680. Concinnata.

Bound with

Ontologia Et Pneumatologia Ex B. Grebenitzii Metaphysica scripta, In Usum philosophuntōn Francofurtensium, Anno 1677. contracta,

[All 3 titles] Francofurti ad Viadrum Völckerus Frankfurt  1697           Price $2,700

Octavo15.5 x 8.5 cm. Signatures: A4,  A-q⁸ pt.2: A⁸, B⁶ C-D⁸ E⁶ pt.3: A⁴ A⁸ B⁶ C-L⁸ with 2 folding copperplates. Bound in early quarter calf over speckled boards rubbed and bumped, spine slightly damaged. With the library stamp reading “STEMM.BIBLIOTH. ECCL. CONVENTUS BAJENSIS” Library of the Church of the Convent of Bayeux.

 The Somatologia project explicitly positions itself between the two systems , signaling an eclectic, anti-Cartesian but modernization-aware stance. These three works by the theologian and physicist Strimesius.

In Somatologia, Strimesius fully accepts the legitimacy of the (Cartesian) mechanical explanation. Nature operates lawfully; motion propagates through matter; regularity emerges from constraint. In this respect, Strimesius is modern.

But Somatologia is also a boundary-setting exercise. Mechanism is allowed to explain how bodies behave, but not what being is. Strimesius distances himself both from the Royal Society’s implicit autonomy of physics and from figures like Kenelm Digby, who attempted to extend mechanical causality into the soul.

In Ontologia & Pneumatologia Strimesius confronts the metaphysical consequences of mechanistic physics and draws a hard line. In the key chapter De Localitate, he rejects space as a real entity, calling it an ens imaginarium—a being of reason rather than a being of nature. Place is not an empty container, not absolute extension, and not a substance. Instead, he restores Aristotle’s definition of place as the surface of the containing body, a relational and bodily account that prevents space from becoming ontologically dominant.This move places Strimesius in striking proximity to Leibniz’s later relational theory of space, though Strimesius arrives there via Aristotle and the Cambridge Platonists rather than mathematics. It also marks a clear rejection of both Lucretian void and Cartesian absolutism. Space without bodies is not real; extension is not fundamental.

Pneumatology completes the argument. Soul and intellect are not local, not mechanical, and not explicable by transmission or contact. Spirit belongs to a different explanatory register altogether. By separating pneumatology from physics, Strimesius avoids both Cartesian dualism and Digby’s mechanization of mind.

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Only after physics and metaphysics are secured does Strimesius turn to Gnostologia. Knowledge does not ground reality; reality grounds knowledg

Here Strimesius explicitly appeals to the lumen rationis naturalis—the “light of natural reason.” This phrase is not casual scholasticism; it places him squarely in the Cambridge Platonist tradition of Nathanael Culverwel and Ralph Cudworth. Reason is not a procedural method (as in Descartes), nor a probabilistic calculus (as in Hobbes), but a participation in divine order, enabling humans to discern when concepts (like absolute space) exceed their ontological warrant. Knowledge works because the world is already ordered; it fails when it mistakes its own abstractions for realities.

The son of Johann Strimes, a merchant from Utrecht, and his wife, Regina Pettke, a native of London, he attended the city school in his hometown and the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin. In 1667, he began studying theology at the University of Frankfurt (Oder). During his studies, he achieved such outstanding results that the Faculty of Philosophy in Frankfurt an der Oder gave him a letter of recommendation for Elector Frederick William (the Great Elector), securing him a professorship. However, he first wanted to travel to England.

He embarked on this journey, spending the longest periods of time in Cambridge and Oxford. He became acquainted with the English philosopher Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), the theologians John Spencer (1630–1693), Henry More (1614–1687), the bishops John Fell (1625–1686), and Thomas Barlow (1607–1691), among other important scholars. In London, he met the theologians John Robert Tillotson (1630–1694), Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699), and the philosopher Richard Cumberland (1631–1718). Arriving in Frankfurt an der Oder on his return journey, Strimesius was appointed an extraordinary professor of philosophy in October 1674. Six months later, he became a full professor of physics and received his master’s degree.

In 1679, he became the first pastor of St. Nicholas Church in Frankfurt and an extraordinary professor of theology. When he was due to receive a full professorship in theology in 1687, he lobbied the court to ensure that the teaching post should go to Johann Christoph Beckmann, as he had a more just claim to such a promotion. After Beckmann assumed this position in 1690, Strimesius was promoted to a full professorship in theology in 1696 and became a doctor of theology that same year. He also participated in the organizational tasks of the Frankfurt University and served as rector in the summer semesters of 1682 and 1699, as well as in the winter semesters of 1688 and 1694. In 1705, he served as vice-rector of the alma mater. In later years, he became blind and died of gallstones at the age of eighty-two.

Samuel Strimesius belongs with the late-seventeenth-century circle of who sought a demonstrative and peaceable theology for an age of confessional fatigue. Strimesius wrote Praxiologia apodictica and Somatologia apodictica as exercises in “apodictic” moral and natural philosophy, mediating between Aristotelian and Cartesian systems. His later De pace ecclesiastica (1689) and De unione Evangelicorum (1711) translate the Huguenot ideal of concordia evangelica into the idiom of Brandenburg-Prussian Protestantism. In temper and tone, Strimesius is a continental counterpart to the Huguenot rational moralists—a theologian of reconciliation whose science, piety, and reasoned faith bridge the age of orthodoxy and the early Enlightenment.

The engraved plate below in Strimesius’s Somatologia depicts a demonstrative mechanical apparatus used to illustrate lawful motion and proportional causality. It exemplifies Strimesius’s position between Aristotle and Descartes: nature operates through mechanical constraint and regular motion, yet remains intelligible only within a higher metaphysical order. The machine demonstrates physical law without claiming to exhaust explanation — a visual boundary marker against both scholastic obscurity and Cartesian reduction.

  VD17 3:309076U  

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