The Search for the Historical Gassendi

Margaret J. Osler is Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. She has published Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World (1994) and many articles on Gassendi's natural philosophy. Her most recent book is Reconfiguring the World: Nature, God, and Human Understanding from the Middle Ages to Early Modern Europe (2010). [Editors' note: Maggie Osler passed away on September 14, 2010. We remember her with fondness and we will miss her.]