Samuel Christian Hollmann

Samuel Christian Hollmann (1696 - 1787) was a German philosopher. Between 1750 and 1776, Hollmann published numerous volumes in the fields of logic and medicine.

Background
Samuel Christian Hollmann was born in 1696 in Szczecin, Poland. In 1730, Hollmann worked as a supervisor to Anton Wilhelm Amo both during his work at the University of Wittenberg, and a few months later when Hollman was appointed to the newly opened University of Göttingen. Samuel Christian Hollmann was also a professor of logic to Henry Muhlenberg.

Legacy
In 2003, Martin Stuber described Samuel Christian Hollmann's theory of earthquakes as Aristotelean and unpopular amongst his peers; specifically Stuber stated that "vague theories of subterranean caverns and explosive materials were... the starting point for precautionary measures suggested in 1756 by Gottingen professor of philosophy, Samuel Christian Hollmann, to prevent further earth quakes. His idea was to bore thin vertical shafts down to the underground caverns to draw off any explosive vapours. However, it found little favour, also in [his] correspondence" with Swiss physiologist Albrecht von Haller. In 2005, however, Hubert Steinke stated that von Haller "named his friend and professor of philosophy, Samuel Christian Hollmann as the only non-student witness" to Haller's experiments.

In 2020, Stephen Menn wrote that Hollman was critical of Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony; specifically Menn described Hollmann as "a young critic of the Leibnizian-Wolffian doctrine of preestablished harmony, who in... 1730 had published at Wittenberg a book entitled On Philosophical Reformation (De reformatione philosophica), which is basically Cartesian in its approach to theory construction and its core philosophical commitments."