Julien Offroy de La Mettrie – Physician and Philosopher

Physician and Philosopher

He was born on Decmeber 25, 1709, in Saint-Malo, France and died on November 11, 1751, in Berlin.  He is a physician and philosopher whose Materialistic interpretation of psychic phenomena laid the groundwork for future developments of behaviorism and played an important part in the history of modern Materialism.  He obtained a medical degree at Reims, studied medicine in Leiden under Herman Boerhaave (some of whose works he translated into French), and served as surgeon to the French military.  A personal illness convinced him that psychic phenomena were directly related to organic changes in the brain and nervous system.  The outcry following publication of these views in Histoire naturelle de l’ame (1745; “Natural History of the Soul”) forced his departure from Paris.  The book was burned by the public hangman.  In Holland La Mettrie published L’Homme-machine (1747; L’Homme Machine: A Study in the Origins of an Ida, 1960), developing more boldly and completely, and with great originality, his materialistic and atheistic views.  The ethics of these principles were worked out in Discours sur le Bonheur ou l’ anti-Seneque (“Discourse on Happiness, or the Anti-Seneca”).  He was then forced to leave Holland but the Great, made court reader, and appointed to the academy of science.  In accord with his belief that atheism was the sole road to happiness and sense pleasure the purpose of life (Le Petit Homme a longue quequ, 1751; “The Small Man in a Long Queuq”), he was a carefree hedonist to the end, finally dying of ptomaine poisoning.  His collected works, Oeuvres philosophiques, were published in 1751, and selections were edited by Marcelle Tisserand in 1954.

Photo courtesy:  answer

Johann Heinrich Lambert

Johann Heinrich Lambert

Johann Heinrich Lambert was born on August 26, 1728 at Mulhausen, Alsace, now Mulhouse, France.  He died on September 25, 1777 at Berlin.  Swiss-German mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and philosopher who provided the first rigorous  proof than π (the ration  of a circle’s circumference to its diameter) is irrational, meaning it cannot be expressed as the quotient of two integers.

The son of tailor, Lambert was largely self-educated and early began geometric and astronomical investigations by means of instruments he designed and built himself.  He worked for a time as a bookkeeper, secretary and editor.  As a private tutor in 1748, he gained access to a good library, which he utilized for self-improvement until 1759, when he resigned to settle in Augsburg.  In 1764 he went to Berlin, where he received the patronage of Frederick the Great.  His memoir containing the proof that π is irrational was published in 1768.  In 1774 at ‘Berlin, he became editor of Astronomisches Jahrbuch oder Ephemeriden, an astronomical almanac.

Lambert made the first systematic development of hyperbolic functions.  He is also responsible for many innovations in the study of heat and light.  The lambert, a measurement of light intensity, was named in his honour.  Among his most important works are Photometria (1760), Die Theorie der Parallellinien (1766; “The Theory of Parallel Lines”), and Pyrometrie (1779).  The Neues Organon (1764; “New Organon”), his principal philosophical work, contains and analysis of a great variety of questions, among them formal logic, probability, and the principles of science.

From Philosophy to Chemistry

In life, there will be people who will tell you that your dreams are not worth pursuing.  They will tell you personal accounts about opportunities that never come along, about having the worst luck in the universe and the fact that nothing can be done about this.  But then again, in life, there are also people like Dr. Modesto T. Chua, a person who ignores what others have to say and focuses on achieving his goals.  A philosopher, a chemist, a fluent German speaker, Dr. Modesto T. Chua is an outstanding example of what a scientist out to be—hardworking, professional, and of course, devoted to excellence.

Dr. Chua graduated magna cum laude from the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) in 1957.  He majored in philosophy, but after taking a crash course in German, decided to pursue chemistry studies in Germany.

In 1965, after graduating with honors and receiving his degree in physical organic chemistry from the University of Bonn in Germany, Dr. Chua joined the ADMU’s department of chemistry.  He was the reason actually the superior force, behind the establishment of the Philippine Institute of Pure and Applied Chemistry (PIPAC) IN LATE 1972.  Dr. Chua’s efforts led to the conduction of several studies that specifically focused on molecular structure-activity correlation research.  It should be noted that it was Dr. Chua’s work that “enabled pharmaceutical chemists to design drugs and other substances for specific applications.”

Dr. Chua is also well known for his work as a consultant for United Drug Laboratories, the Beecham Group Ltd., and in the Agro-Industrial Projects of the Manila Banking Corporation.  He continues to teach chemistry at the ADMU, stating that “sound science is all about forming mind . . . hard work and careful thinking based on facts.”

Sources: 

►  Dr. Modesto T. Chua:  Institute Director, PIPAC, www.pipac.com.ph/mtc.htm

►  Dr. Modesto T. Chua: 2004 PFCS Achievement Award in Chemical Industry.  www.chem.admu.edu.ph/newsalnews00004.html

►  www.chem.admu.edu.ph/manges/mtc_closeup.jpg