Otto Heurnius

Otto Heurnius (Otto van Heurn) (1577–1652) was a Dutch physician, theologian and philosopher.

Life

He succeeded his father Johannes Heurnius as professor of medicine at the University of Leiden; and took over anatomy teaching from Pieter Pauw from 1617. Along side 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]

Notes

1. ^ Cornelis W. Schoneveld, Sea-changes: studies in three centuries of Anglo-Dutch cultural transmission (1996), p. 9–10; Google Books.
2. ^ Klaas van Berkel and Arie Johan Vanderjagt, The Book of Nature in Early Modern and Modern History (2006), p. 51; Google Books.
3. ^ Francesco Bottin, Models of the History of Philosophy: From its origins in the Renaissance to the "historia philosophica" (1993), pp. 106–7; Google Books.
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.

External links

• WorldCat page