Étienne Chauvin (18 April 16406 April 1725), French

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

divine Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine< ...

, was born in Nîmes. At the revocation of the

Edict of Nantes The Edict of Nantes () was signed in April 1598 by King Henry IV and granted the Calvinist Protestants of France, also known as Huguenots, substantial rights in the nation, which was in essence completely Catholic. In the edict, Henry aimed pr ...

he retired to

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...

where he was for some years preacher at the Walloon church. In 1695 the elector of

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 sq ...

appointed him pastor and professor of philosophy, and later inspector of the French college at

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, where he enjoyed considerable reputation as a representative of

Cartesianism Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is o ...

and as a student of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

. His principal work is a laborious ''Lexicon Rationale, sive Thesaurus Philosophicus'' (Rotterdam, 1692; new and enlarged edition, Leeuwarden, 1713). He also wrote ''Theses de Cognitione Dei'' (1662), and started the ''Nouveau Journal des Savants'' (1694–1698).

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chauvin, Etienne 1640 births 1725 deaths People from Nîmes French Calvinist and Reformed ministers 17th-century Dutch Calvinist and Reformed ministers French philosophers Huguenots