The Importance of the Idea of “Destroying of the World” in Shaping the Philosophy of Nature of Jan Jonston in His Work A History of the Constancy of Nature

Abstract

In this article, I would like to outline (very selectively) Jan Jonston’s (Johannes Jonstonus) 1603–1675 views on the history of nature and man and briefly present his profile. While reconstructing these philosophical and methodological issues, it is also worth recalling some issues connected with the biography of this scholar and the reception of his works.

            Jonston was a naturalist, a physician and a philosopher. Today he is little known and forgotten, and, as a consequence, his philosophy of nature and philosophy of man, his vision of the world, and therefore in a certain sense his Cosmology, have been forgotten and marginalized. His philosophy and methodology of science have also languished in obscurity.

            Jonston belonged to Descartes’ generation, however, his views on nature and science were closer to British than continental philosophy and related to ideas formulated by Francis Bacon and later continued by Robert Boyle. Arguably, Jonston’s position was shaped during his studies at universities in Britain. These inspirations from the methodology of the sciences deserve to be the subject of a separate discussion, but due to the limited nature of the work, they will be omitted here.

            In his work An History of the Constancy of Nature, Jonston formulates his philosophy of nature. This natural philosophy is shaped in confrontation with the views of the Chiliasts concerning the nature of man and indirectly of nature as a whole. The views of the Chiliasts stemmed from a specific interpretation of the Bible that spoke of the “ageing” of the human world, culture, and consequently of nature. Owing to the fact that the idea of chiliasts encompasses natural and anthropological phenomena, and that, in addition, it has a historical character, Jonston, in his counter-arguments, had to refer both to empirics and to history: biblical and natural. Thus, he participated not only in the creation of modern philosophy of nature, but also modern ‘natural history’ and modern methodology, postulating the mathematization of knowledge about nature.