Editing Marin Mersenne (section)

===Battles with occult and mystical thinkers===
Two German pamphlets that circulated around Europe in 1614–15, ''[[Fama fraternitatis]]'' and ''[[Confessio Fraternitatis]]'', claimed to be manifestos of a highly select, secret society of alchemists and sages called the Brotherhood of [[Rosicrucianism|Rosicrucians]]. The books were allegories, but were obviously written by a small group who were reasonably knowledgeable about the sciences of the day,{{citation needed|date=July 2022}} and their main theme was to promote educational reform (they were anti-Aristotelian). These pamphlets also promoted an occult view of science{{citation needed|date=July 2022}} containing elements of [[Paracelsus|Paracelsian philosophy]], [[Neoplatonism|neo-Platonism]], [[Christian Cabala]] and [[Hermeticism]]. In effect, they sought to establish a new form of scientific religion with some pre-Christian elements.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

Mersenne led the fight against acceptance of these ideas, particularly those of Rosicrucian promoter [[Robert Fludd]], who had a lifelong battle of words with [[Johannes Kepler]]. Fludd responded with ''Sophia cum moria certamen'' (1626), wherein he discusses his involvement with the [[Rosicrucian]]s. The anonymous ''Summum bonum'' (1629), another critique of Mersenne, is a Rosicrucian-themed text. The cabalist [[Jacques Gaffarel]] joined Fludd's side, while [[Pierre Gassendi]] defended Mersenne.

The Rosicrucian ideas were defended by many prominent men of learning, and some members of the European scholarly community boosted their own prestige by claiming to be among the selected members of the Brotherhood.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}} However, it is now generally agreed among historians that there is no evidence that an order of Rosicrucians existed at the time, with later Rosicrucian Orders drawing on the name, with no relation to the writers of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes.<ref name="Debus 2013 p. ">{{cite book | last=Debus | first=A.G. | title=The Chemical Philosophy | publisher=Dover Publications | series=Dover Books on Chemistry | year=2013 | isbn=978-0-486-15021-5 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TjLDAgAAQBAJ |page=}}</ref>

During the mid-1630s Mersenne gave up the search for physical causes in the [[Natural philosophy|Aristotelian]] sense (rejecting the idea of ''essences'', which were still favoured by the [[Scholasticism|scholastic philosophers]]) and taught that true physics could be only a descriptive science of motions (''Mécanisme''), which was the direction set by [[Galileo Galilei]].  Mersenne had been a regular correspondent with Galileo and had extended the work on vibrating strings originally developed by his father, [[Vincenzo Galilei]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Heilbron|first= J. L. |date=1979|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UlTLRUn1sy8C|title=Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics|publisher=University of California Press|isbn= 9780520034785 }}</ref>