Protogaea
{{Short description|Work by Gottfried Leibniz}}
{{italic title}}
File:Houghton GC6.L5316.749p - Liebniz, Svmmi polyhistorias, tab III.jpg
ProtogaeaFull title in German: Protogaea oder Abhandlung von der ersten Gestalt der Erde und den Spuren der Historie in Denkmalen der Natur (Protogaea or Treatise on the First Form of the Earth and the Trail of History in Monuments of Nature). is a work by Gottfried Leibniz on geology and natural history. Unpublished in his lifetime, but made known by Johann Georg von Eckhart in 1719,J. G. Eckhart, "Beschreibung desjenigen, was bey Grabung des Herrenhäuser‐Canals am Lein‐Strome her Curiöses in der Erde gefunden worden", Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen auf das Jahr 1719,
Nr. 24, 185–192, see [https://sites.google.com/site/drcsteckner/showcase/domain1/Cornelius_Steckner_Lügenstein_und_Weltarchäologie_2018.pdf Cornelius Steckner: Lügenstein und Weltarchäologie]. it was conceived as a preface to his incomplete history of the House of Brunswick.{{cite book|author=Nicholas Jolley|title=The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SnRis5Gdi8gC&pg=PA32|accessdate=26 February 2013|year=1995|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-36769-1|pages=31–3}}
Life
Protogaea is a history of the Earth written in conjectural terms; it was composed by Leibniz in the period from 1691 to 1693.{{cite book|author=Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz|title=Protogaea|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_QFdQJznrQsC&pg=PR13|date=2008|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-11297-8|page=13}} A summary in Latin was published in 1693 in the Leipzig Acta Eruditorum.{{cite journal|doi=10.3366/jsbnh.1978.9.1.56|title=The first published version of Leibniz's Protogaea |year=1978 |last1=Oldroyd |first1=D. R. |author-link=David R. Oldroyd|last2=Howes |first2=J. B. |journal=Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History |volume=9 |pages=56–60 }} The text was first published in full in 1749, shortly after Benoît de Maillet's more far-reaching ideas on the origin of the Earth, circulated in manuscript, had been printed.{{cite book|author=Michael Allaby|title=Earth Science: A Scientific History of the Solid Earth|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fAFvvG3SWgwC&pg=PT182|date=1 January 2009|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=978-1-4381-2694-4|page=182}}
Views
Protogaea built on, and criticized, the natural philosophy of René Descartes, as expressed in his Principia Philosophiae.{{cite book|author=Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz|title=Protogaea|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_QFdQJznrQsC&pg=PR20|date=2008|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-11297-8|page=20}} Leibniz in the work adopted the Cartesian theory of the Earth as a sun crusted over with sunspots. He relied on the authority of Agostino Scilla writing about fossils to discredit the speculations of Athanasius Kircher and Johann Joachim Becher;{{cite book|author=Paolo Rossi|title=The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-LwevE639_gC&pg=PA23|date=1987|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-72832-2|page=23}} he had met Scilla in Rome a few years earlier.{{cite book|author1=Ofer Gal|author2=Raz Chen-Morris|title=Science in the Age of Baroque|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ujDxezMEMgkC&pg=PA124|date=2012|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=978-94-007-4807-1|page=124}} He took up suggestions of Nicolaus Steno that argued for the forms of fossils being prior to their inclusion in rocks, for stratification, and for the gradual solidification of the Earth.{{cite book|author=Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz|title=Protogaea|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_QFdQJznrQsC&pg=PR25|date=2008|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-11297-8|page=xxv}}
Notes
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External links
- [http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/earththeory/id/1694 Protogaea] (1749, German), full digital facsimile from Linda Hall Library
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Category:1693 non-fiction books
Category:1749 non-fiction books
Category:Books by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Category:History of Earth science
Category:Natural history books