Physica electiva sive hypothetica.

The mathematician and philosopher Johann Christoph Sturm (1635-1703) began his teaching career in Jena before becoming professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Altdorf where he lectured with great success for 34 years. This work – which may be considered his major contribution to scholarship – has been included in the supplementary series to the complete works of Christian Wolff, Materialien und Dokumente, because Wolff himself often quoted it and was unstinting in his praise of its author, the first man to use experimental demonstrations in lectures at a German institution. Sturm’s desacralized view of nature influenced Wolff. It may even have been his reading of Sturm’s work which encouraged Wolff to use the same methods as the foundation of philosophy as well as of mathematics.