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René Descartes ( , ; ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher,
''History of western philosophy''
pp. 511, 516–17. The rise of early modern rationalism as a systematic school of philosophy in its own right exerted an influence on modern
scientist
A scientist is a person who Scientific method, researches to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engag ...
, and mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy
Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern era and associated with modernity. It is not a specific doctrine or school (and thus should not be confused with ''Modernism''), although there are certain assumptions common to much of i ...
and science
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...
. Mathematics was paramount to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry
Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...
and algebra
Algebra is a branch of mathematics that deals with abstract systems, known as algebraic structures, and the manipulation of expressions within those systems. It is a generalization of arithmetic that introduces variables and algebraic ope ...
into analytic geometry
In mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry.
Analytic geometry is used in physics and engineering, and als ...
. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...
, initially serving the Dutch States Army
The Dutch States Army () was the army of the Dutch Republic. It was usually called this, because it was formally the army of the States-General of the Netherlands, the sovereign power of that federal republic. This army was brought to such a size ...
, and later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age
The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the '' Rampjaar'' occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific development ...
.
Many elements of Descartes's philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism ( ) is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by Prior Analytics, deductive logic and an Posterior Analytics, analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics ...
, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; ; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430) was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings deeply influenced the development of Western philosop ...
. In his natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. It was dominant before the develop ...
, he differed from the schools
A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of ...
on two major points. First, he rejected the splitting of corporeal substance into matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic pa ...
and form; second, he rejected any appeal to final ends, divine or natural, in explaining natural phenomena. He also insists on the absolute freedom of God's act of creation. Refusing to accept the authority of previous philosophers, Descartes frequently set his views apart from the philosophers who preceded him. In the opening section of the '' Passions of the Soul'', an early modern
The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...
treatise on emotions, Descartes goes so far as to assert that he will write on this topic "as if no one had written on these matters before." His best known philosophical statement is "" ("I think, therefore I am"; ).
Descartes has often been called the father of modern philosophy, and is largely seen as responsible for the increased attention given to epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...
in the 17th century.Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...
(2004''History of western philosophy''
pp. 511, 516–17. The rise of early modern rationalism as a systematic school of philosophy in its own right exerted an influence on modern
Western thought
Western philosophy refers to the philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. ...
in general. It was the 17th-century rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz who have given the "Age of Reason
The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a European intellectual and philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained through rationalism and empiric ...
" its name and place in history. Leibniz, Spinoza, and Descartes were all well-versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, with Descartes and Leibniz additionally contributing to a variety of scientific disciplines.
Descartes was one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of History of science, modern science during the early modern period, when developments in History of mathematics#Mathematics during the Scientific Revolution, mathemati ...
. His ''Meditations on First Philosophy
''Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated'' (), often called simply the ''Meditations'', is a philosophical treatise by René Descartes first published in Latin in 1641. T ...
'' and other philosophical works continue to be studied. His influence in mathematics is equally apparent, being the namesake of the Cartesian coordinate system
In geometry, a Cartesian coordinate system (, ) in a plane (geometry), plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point (geometry), point uniquely by a pair of real numbers called ''coordinates'', which are the positive and negative number ...
. He is credited as the father of analytic geometry, which facilitated the discovery of infinitesimal calculus
Calculus is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithmetic operations.
Originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the ...
and analysis
Analysis (: analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (38 ...
.
Life
Early life
René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, Province of Touraine (now Descartes,Indre-et-Loire
Indre-et-Loire () is a department in west-central France named after the Indre River and Loire River. In 2019, it had a population of 610,079. In May 1597, his mother Jeanne Brochard, died a few days after giving birth to a still-born child. Descartes's father, Joachim, was a member of the
By 1649, Descartes had become one of Europe's most famous philosophers and scientists. That year,
In ''The Passions of the Soul'', published in 1649, Descartes discussed the common contemporary belief that the human body contained animal spirits. These animal spirits were believed to be light and roaming fluids circulating rapidly around the nervous system between the brain and the muscles. These animal spirits were believed to affect the human soul, or passions of the soul. Descartes distinguished six basic passions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness. All of these passions, he argued, represented different combinations of the original spirit, and influenced the soul to will or want certain actions. He argued, for example, that fear is a passion that moves the soul to generate a response in the body. In line with his dualist teachings on the separation between the soul and the body, he hypothesized that some part of the brain served as a connector between the soul and the body and singled out the pineal gland as connector. Descartes argued that signals passed from the ear and the eye to the pineal gland, through animal spirits. Thus different motions in the gland cause various animal spirits. He argued that these motions in the pineal gland are based on God's will and that humans are supposed to want and like things that are useful to them. But he also argued that the animal spirits that moved around the body could distort the commands from the pineal gland, thus humans had to learn how to control their passions.
Descartes advanced a theory on automatic bodily reactions to external events, which influenced 19th-century reflex theory. He argued that external motions, such as touch and sound, reach the endings of the nerves and affect the animal spirits. For example, heat from fire affects a spot on the skin and sets in motion a chain of reactions, with the animal spirits reaching the brain through the central nervous system, and in turn, animal spirits are sent back to the muscles to move the hand away from the fire. Through this chain of reactions, the automatic reactions of the body do not require a thought process.
Above all, he was among the first scientists who believed that the soul should be subject to scientific investigation. He challenged the views of his contemporaries that the soul was Divinity, divine, thus religious authorities regarded his books as dangerous. Descartes's writings went on to form the basis for theories on emotions and how Cognition, cognitive evaluations were translated into affective processes. Descartes believed the brain resembled a working machine and that mathematics, and mechanics could explain complicated processes in it.
One of Descartes's most enduring legacies was his development - together with
"Cartesian and Lagrangian Momentum"
(2004). Descartes's discovery should not be seen as the modern law of conservation of momentum, since it had no concept of mass as distinct from weight or size, and since he believed that it is speed rather than velocity that is conserved. Descartes's Mechanical explanations of gravitation#Vortex Theory, vortex theory of planetary motion was later rejected by Newton in favor of his Newton's law of universal gravitation, law of universal gravitation, and most of the second book of Newton's ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Principia'' is devoted to his counterargument.
Descartes proposed a theory to explain magnetism and explain the observation in De Magnete, ''De Magnete'' by William Gilbert (physicist), William Gilbert. Descartes considered that 'effluvia' were emitted by a magnet, the effluvia rarefied the air creating pressure differences, and thus forces.
Descartes has often been dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy, the thinker whose approaches have profoundly changed the course of Western philosophy and set the basis for modernity. The first two of his ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', those that formulate the famous methodic doubt, represent the portion of Descartes's writings that most influenced modern thinking. It has been argued that Descartes himself did not realize the extent of this revolutionary move. In shifting the debate from "what is true" to "of what can I be certain?", Descartes arguably shifted the authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity (even though Descartes himself claimed he received his visions from God)—while the traditional concept of "truth" implies an external authority, "certainty" instead relies on the judgment of the individual.
In an Anthropocentrism, anthropocentric revolution, the human being is now raised to the level of a subject, an agent, an Emancipation, emancipated being equipped with autonomous reason. This was a revolutionary step that contributed to the basis of the Modern Era, the repercussions of which are still being felt: the emancipation of humanity from Christian revelational truth and Catholic Church, Church doctrine; humanity making its own law and taking its own stand.Martin Heidegger [1938] (2002) ''The Age of the World Picture'' quotation: Ingraffia, Brian D. (1995
''Postmodern theory and biblical theology: vanquishing God's shadow''
p. 126 In modernity, the guarantor of truth is not God anymore but human beings, each of whom is a "self-conscious shaper and guarantor" of their own reality. In that way, each person is turned into a reasoning adult, a subject and agent,Lovitt, Tom (1977) introduction to Martin Heidegger's ''The question concerning technology, and other essays'', pp. xxv–xxvi as opposed to a child obedient to God. This change in perspective was characteristic of the shift from the Christian medieval period to the modern period, a shift that had been anticipated in other fields, and which was now being formulated in the field of philosophy by Descartes. This anthropocentric perspective of Descartes's work, establishing human reason as autonomous, provided the basis for the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment's emancipation from God and the Church. According to Martin Heidegger, the perspective of Descartes's work also provided the basis for all subsequent anthropology.Heidegger [1938] (2002), p. 75 quotation: Descartes's philosophical revolution is sometimes said to have sparked modern anthropocentrism and subjectivism.
''Musicae Compendium''
A treatise on music theory and the aesthetics of music, which Descartes dedicated to early collaborator Isaac Beeckman (written in 1618, first published—posthumously—in 1650). * 1626–1628. ''Regulae ad directionem ingenii'' (''
File:Handwritten letter by Descartes December 1638.jpg, Handwritten letter by Descartes, December 1638
File:René Descartes 1644 Principia philosophiae.jpg, ''Principia philosophiae'', 1644
''Discours de la methode''
, 1637
''Renati Des-Cartes Principia philosophiæ''
, 1644
''Le monde de Mr. Descartes ou le traité de la lumiere''
, 1664
''Geometria''
, 1659
''Meditationes de prima philosophia''
, 1670
''Opera philosophica''
, 1672
''Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Rules for the Direction of the Natural Intelligence. A Bilingual Edition of the Cartesian Treatise on Method''
, ed. & trans. G. Heffernan (Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998). * 1633
, tr. by Michael S. Mahoney. * 1633. ''Treatise of Man'', tr. by T. S. Hall. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972. * 1637. ''Discourse on the Method, Optics, Geometry and Meteorology'', trans. Paul J. Olscamp, P. J. Olscamp, Revised edition (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Hackett, 2001). * 1637
''The Geometry of René Descartes''
, trans. D. E. Smith & Marcia Latham (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, Open Court, 1925). * 1641. ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', tr. by J. Cottingham, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Latin original. Alternative English title: ''Metaphysical Meditations''. Includes six ''Objections and Replies''. A second edition published the following year, includes an additional ''Objection and Reply'' and a ''Letter to Dinet''
HTML Online Latin-French-English Edition
. * 1644
''Principles of Philosophy''
, trans. V. R. Miller & R. P. Miller: (
''Passions of the Soul''
, trans. S. H. Voss (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989). Dedicated to Elisabeth of the Palatinate. * 1619–1648. ''René Descartes, Isaac Beeckman, Marin Mersenne. Lettere 1619–1648'', ed. by Giulia Beglioioso and Jean Robert-Armogathe, Milano, Bompiani, 2015 pp. 1696.
Descartes' Demon: A Dialogical Analysis of 'Meditations on First Philosophy.'
''Theory & Psychology'', 16, 761–781. * * A. C. Grayling, Grayling, A. C. (2005). ''Descartes: The Life of René Descartes and Its Place in His Times'', The Free Press, London. . * Martin Heidegger, Heidegger, Martin [1938] (2002) ''The Age of the World Picture'' i
''Off the Beaten Track''
pp. 57–85 * Monnoyeur, Françoise (November 2017), ''Matière et espace dans le système cartésien'', Paris, Harmattan, 266 pp. . * Moreno Romo, Juan Carlos, ''Vindicación del cartesianismo radical'', Anthropos, Barcelona, 2010. * Moreno Romo, Juan Carlos (Coord.), ''Descartes vivo. Ejercicios de hermenéutica cartesiana'', Anthropos, Barcelona, 2007. * Antonio Negri, Negri, Antonio (2007) ''The Political Descartes'', Verso. * Sasaki Chikara (2003)
''Descartes's Mathematical Thought''
. (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 237.) xiv + 496 pp., bibl., indexes. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. * Serfati, Michel, 2005, "Géometrie" in Ivor Grattan-Guinness, ed., ''Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics''. Elsevier: 1–22. * Watson, Richard A. (2007). Cogito, Ergo Sum: a life of René Descartes. David R Godine. 2002, reprint 2007. . Was chosen by the New York Public library as one of "25 Books to Remember from 2002" * Frisinger, H. Howard. “Chapter 3 .” The History of Meteorology: To 1800, American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA, 1983, pp. 37–40. * Martin, Craig. “Chapter 6.” Renaissance Meteorology: Pomponazzi to Descartes, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2011.
EarlyModernTexts.com
A site containing Descartes's main works, including correspondence, slightly modified for easier reading
The Correspondence of René Descartes
i
Early Modern Letters Online
at MacTutor *
René Descartes (1596–1650)
Published in ''Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition'' (1996) *
''Bibliografia cartesiana/Bibliographie cartésienne on-line (1997–2012)''
*
Descartes
Life and works
Epistemology
Mathematics
Physics
Ethics
Modal Metaphysics
Ontological Argument
Theory of Ideas
Pineal Gland
Descartes
Descartes: Ethics
Descartes: Mind-Body Distinction
Descartes: Scientific Method
Section 1Section 2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Descartes, Rene René Descartes, Cartesianism, * 1596 births 1650 deaths 17th-century French mathematicians 17th-century French philosophers 17th-century French scientists 17th-century French non-fiction writers 17th-century writers in Latin 17th-century French male writers 17th-century Roman Catholics Age of Enlightenment Aphorists Augustinian philosophers Burials at Saint-Germain-des-Prés (abbey) Catholic philosophers French consciousness researchers and theorists Constructed language creators Critics of animal rights Deaths from pneumonia in Sweden Dualists Enlightenment philosophers French emigrants Immigrants to the Dutch Republic French ethicists French expatriates in Sweden French expatriates in the Dutch Republic French logicians French mercenaries French music theorists French Roman Catholic writers Leiden University alumni Metaphilosophers Metaphysics writers French military personnel of the Thirty Years' War Natural philosophers Ontologists People from Indre-et-Loire People of the Age of Enlightenment French philosophers of art French philosophers of culture French philosophers of education French philosophers of history Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mathematics French philosophers of mind Philosophers of psychology French philosophers of science Philosophers of social science Philosophers of time Rationalists University of Poitiers alumni Writers about activism and social change Writers about religion and science Writers who illustrated their own writing Critics of atheism People from Touraine
Parlement of Rennes
The Parlement of Rennes or Parlement of Brittany (, ) was one of the , a court of justice under the French , with its seat at Rennes. The last building to house the Parlement still stands and now houses the Rennes Court of Appeal, the natural succ ...
at Rennes
Rennes (; ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in Northwestern France at the confluence of the rivers Ille and Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the Brittany (administrative region), Brittany Regions of F ...
. René lived with his grandmother and with his great-uncle. Although the Descartes family was Roman Catholic, the Poitou
Poitou ( , , ; ; Poitevin: ''Poetou'') was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers. Both Poitou and Poitiers are named after the Pictones Gallic tribe.
Geography
The main historical cities are Poitiers (historical ...
region was controlled by the Protestant Huguenots
The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...
. In 1607, late because of his fragile health, he entered the Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand
In France, secondary education is in two stages:
* ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 14.
* ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for students between ...
at La Flèche
La Flèche () is a town and commune in the French department of Sarthe, in the Pays de la Loire region in the Loire Valley. It is the sub-prefecture of the South-Sarthe, the chief district and the chief city of a canton, and the second most p ...
, where he was introduced to mathematics and physics. After graduation in 1614, he studied for two years (1615–16) at the University of Poitiers
The University of Poitiers (UP; , ) is a public university located in Poitiers, France. It is a member of the Coimbra Group. It is multidisciplinary and contributes to making Poitiers the city with the highest student/inhabitant ratio in France ...
, earning a ''Baccalauréat
The ''baccalauréat'' (; ), often known in France colloquially as the ''bac'', is a French national academic qualification that students can obtain at the completion of their secondary education (at the end of the ''lycée'') by meeting certain ...
'' and ''Licence
A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...
'' in canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the material accepted as officially written by an author or an ascribed author
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western canon, th ...
and civil law in 1616, in accordance with his father's wishes that he should become a lawyer. From there, he moved to Paris.
Army service
In accordance with his ambition to become a professional military officer in 1618, Descartes joined, as amercenary
A mercenary is a private individual who joins an armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather t ...
, the Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
Dutch States Army
The Dutch States Army () was the army of the Dutch Republic. It was usually called this, because it was formally the army of the States-General of the Netherlands, the sovereign power of that federal republic. This army was brought to such a size ...
in Breda
Breda ( , , , ) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant. ...
under the command of Maurice of Nassau
Maurice of Orange (; 14 November 1567 – 23 April 1625) was ''stadtholder'' of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Friesland from 1585 at the earliest until his death on 23 April 1625. Before he became Prince of Orange upo ...
, and undertook a formal study of military engineering
Military engineering is loosely defined as the art, science, and practice of designing and building military works and maintaining lines of military transport and military communications. Military engineers are also responsible for logistics b ...
, as established by Simon Stevin
Simon Stevin (; 1548–1620), sometimes called Stevinus, was a County_of_Flanders, Flemish mathematician, scientist and music theorist. He made various contributions in many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical. He a ...
. Descartes, therefore, received much encouragement in Breda to advance his knowledge of mathematics. In this way, he became acquainted with Isaac Beeckman
Isaac Beeckman (10 December 1588van Berkel, p10 – 19 May 1637) was a Dutch philosopher and scientist, who, through his studies and contact with leading natural philosophers, may have "virtually given birth to modern atomism".Harold J. Cook, in ...
, the principal of a Dordrecht
Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Western Netherlands, lo ...
school, for whom he wrote the ''Compendium of Music'' (written 1618, published 1650).
While in the service of the Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
Duke Maximilian of Bavaria from 1619, Descartes was present at the Battle of the White Mountain
The Battle of White Mountain (; ) was an important battle in the early stages of the Thirty Years' War. It led to the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt and ensured Habsburg control for the next three hundred years.
It was fought on 8 November 162 ...
near Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
, in November 1620.
According to Adrien Baillet
Adrien Baillet (13 June 164921 January 1706) was a French scholar and critic. He is now best known as a biographer of René Descartes.
Life
He was born in the village of Neuville near Beauvais, in Picardy. His parents could only afford to send ...
, on the night of 10–11 November 1619 (St. Martin's Day
Saint Martin's Day or Martinmas (obsolete: Martlemas), and historically called Old Halloween or All Hallows Eve, is the feast day of Saint Martin of Tours and is celebrated in the liturgical year on 11 November. In the Middle Ages and early mod ...
), while stationed in Neuburg an der Donau
Neuburg an der Donau (Central Bavarian: ''Neiburg an da Donau'') is a town which is the capital of the Neuburg-Schrobenhausen district in the state of Bavaria in Germany.
Divisions
The municipality has 16 divisions:
* Altmannstetten
* Bergen, N ...
, Descartes shut himself in a room with an "oven" (probably a cocklestove
A masonry heater (also called a masonry stove) is a device for warming an interior space through radiant heating, by capturing the heat from periodic burning of fuel (usually wood), and then radiating the heat at a fairly constant temperature fo ...
) to escape the cold. While within, he had three dreams, and believed that a divine spirit revealed to him a new philosophy. However, it is speculated that what Descartes considered to be his second dream was actually an episode of exploding head syndrome. Upon exiting, he had formulated analytic geometry
In mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry.
Analytic geometry is used in physics and engineering, and als ...
and the idea of applying the mathematical method to philosophy. He concluded from these visions that the pursuit of science would prove to be, for him, the pursuit of true wisdom and a central part of his life's work.
Career
France
In 1620, Descartes left the army. He visitedBasilica della Santa Casa
The Basilica della Santa Casa () is a Marian shrine in Loreto, Marche, Loreto, in Marche, the Marches, Italy. The basilica is known for enshrining the house in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed by some Catholics to have lived. Pious legen ...
in Loreto, then visited various countries before returning to France, and during the next few years, he spent time in Paris. It was there that he composed his first essay on method: ''Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii'' (''Rules for the Direction of the Mind
''Regulae ad directionem ingenii'', or ''Rules for the Direction of the Mind'' is an unfinished treatise regarding the proper method for scientific and philosophical thinking by René Descartes. Descartes started writing the work in 1628, and it ...
'').Durandin, Guy. 1970. ''Les Principes de la Philosophie. Introduction et notes''. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin. He arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life. Descartes was present at the siege of La Rochelle
The siege of La Rochelle (, or sometimes ) was a result of a war between the French royal forces of Louis XIII of France and the Huguenots of La Rochelle in 1627–1628. The siege marked the height of Huguenot rebellions, the struggle between ...
by Cardinal Richelieu
Armand Jean du Plessis, 1st Duke of Richelieu (9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642), commonly known as Cardinal Richelieu, was a Catholic Church in France, French Catholic prelate and statesman who had an outsized influence in civil and religi ...
in 1627 as an observer.Shea, William R. 1991. ''The Magic of Numbers and Motion''. Science History Publications. There, he was interested in the physical properties of the great dike that Richelieu was building and studied mathematically everything he saw during the siege. He also met French mathematician Girard Desargues
Girard Desargues (; 21 February 1591September 1661) was a French mathematician and engineer, who is considered one of the founders of projective geometry. Desargues' theorem, the Desargues graph, and the crater Desargues on the Moon are named i ...
. In the autumn of that year, in the residence of the papal nuncio
An apostolic nuncio (; also known as a papal nuncio or simply as a nuncio) is an ecclesiastical diplomat, serving as an envoy or a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See to a state or to an international organization. A nuncio is ...
Guidi di Bagno, where he came with Mersenne
Marin Mersenne, OM (also known as Marinus Mersennus or ''le Père'' Mersenne; ; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for ...
and many other scholars to listen to a lecture given by the alchemist, Nicolas de Villiers, Sieur de Chandoux, on the principles of a supposed new philosophy, Cardinal Bérulle urged him to write an exposition of his new philosophy in some location beyond the reach of the Inquisition.
Netherlands
Descartes returned to theDutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...
in 1628. In April 1629, he joined the University of Franeker
The University of Franeker (1585–1811) was a university in Franeker, Friesland, the Netherlands. It was the second-oldest university of the Netherlands, founded shortly after Leiden University.
History
Also known as ''Academia Franekerensis'' ...
, studying under Adriaan Metius
Adriaan Adriaanszoon, called Metius, (9 December 1571 – 6 September 1635), was a Dutch geometer and astronomer born in Alkmaar. The name "Metius" comes from the Dutch word ''meten'' ("measuring"), and therefore means something like "measurer" ...
, either living with a Catholic family or renting the Sjaerdemaslot. The next year, under the name "Poitevin", he enrolled at Leiden University
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...
, which at the time was a Protestant University. He studied both mathematics with Jacobus Golius
Jacob Golius, born Jacob van Gool (1596 – September 28, 1667), was an Orientalist and mathematician based at the Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is primarily remembered as an Orientalist. He published Arabic texts in Arabic at Leiden, ...
, who confronted him with Pappus's hexagon theorem
In mathematics, Pappus's hexagon theorem (attributed to Pappus of Alexandria) states that
*given one set of collinear points A, B, C, and another set of collinear points a,b,c, then the intersection points X,Y,Z of line pairs Ab and aB, Ac and ...
, and astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...
with Martin Hortensius. In October 1630, he had a falling-out with Beeckman, whom he accused of plagiarizing some of his ideas. In Amsterdam, he had a relationship with a servant girl, Helena Jans van der Strom, with whom he had a daughter, Francine
:''This is a disambiguation page for the common name Francine.''
Francine is a female given name. The name is of French origin. The name Francine was most popular in France itself during the 1940s (Besnard & Desplanques, 2003), and was well used ...
, who was born in 1635 in Deventer
Deventer (; Sallaans dialect, Sallands: ) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Salland historical region of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Overijssel, ...
. She was baptized a Protestant and died of scarlet fever at the age of 5.
Unlike many moralists of the time, Descartes did not deprecate the passions but rather defended them; he wept upon Francine's death in 1640. According to a 2018 biography by Jason Porterfield, "Descartes said that he did not believe that one must refrain from tears to prove oneself a man." Russell Shorto
Russell Anthony Shorto (born February 8, 1959) is an American author, historian, and journalist. He is is best known for his book on the New Amsterdam, Dutch origins of New York City, ''The Island at the Center of the World''. Shorto's research ...
speculates that the experience of fatherhood and losing a child formed a turning point in Descartes's work, changing its focus from medicine to a quest for universal answers.
Despite frequent moves, he wrote all of his major work during his 20-plus years in the Netherlands, initiating a revolution in mathematics and philosophy. In 1633, Galileo was condemned by the Italian Inquisition, and Descartes abandoned plans to publish '' Treatise on the World'', his work of the previous four years. Nevertheless, in 1637, he published parts of this work in three essays: "Les Météores" (The Meteors), " La Dioptrique" (Dioptrics) and ''La Géométrie
''La Géométrie'' () was published in 1637 as an appendix to ''Discours de la méthode'' ('' Discourse on the Method''), written by René Descartes. In the ''Discourse'', Descartes presents his method for obtaining clarity on any subject. ''La ...
'' (''Geometry''), preceded by an introduction, his famous ''Discours de la méthode'' (''Discourse on the Method
''Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences'' () is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation ...
''). In it, Descartes lays out four rules of thought, meant to ensure that our knowledge rests upon a firm foundation:
In ''La Géométrie'', Descartes exploited the discoveries he made with Pierre de Fermat
Pierre de Fermat (; ; 17 August 1601 – 12 January 1665) was a French mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his d ...
. This later became known as Cartesian geometry
In mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry.
Analytic geometry is used in physics and engineering, and als ...
.
Descartes continued to publish works concerning both mathematics and philosophy for the rest of his life. In 1641, he published a metaphysics treatise, ''Meditationes de Prima Philosophia'' (''Meditations on First Philosophy''), written in Latin and thus addressed to the learned. It was followed in 1644 by ''Principia Philosophiae'' (''Principles of Philosophy
''Principles of Philosophy'' () is a book by René Descartes. In essence, it is a synthesis of the '' Discourse on Method'' and '' Meditations on First Philosophy''.Guy Durandin, ''Les Principes de la Philosophie. Introduction et notes'', Libra ...
''), a kind of synthesis of the ''Discourse on the Method'' and ''Meditations on First Philosophy''. In 1643, Cartesian philosophy was condemned at the University of Utrecht
Utrecht University (UU; , formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2023, it had an enrollment of 39,769 students, a ...
, and Descartes was obliged to flee to the Hague, settling in Egmond-Binnen
Egmond-Binnen () is a village in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Bergen, and lies about southwest of Alkmaar.
History
The village was first mentioned in 922 as Ekmunde. The etymology is unknown. The mi ...
.
Between 1643 and 1649 Descartes lived with his girlfriend at Egmond-Binnen in an inn. Descartes became friendly with Anthony Studler van Zurck, lord of Bergen
Bergen (, ) is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Vestland county on the Western Norway, west coast of Norway. Bergen is the list of towns and cities in Norway, second-largest city in Norway after the capital Oslo.
By May 20 ...
, and participated in the design of his mansion and estate. He also met Dirck Rembrantsz van Nierop, a mathematician and surveyor
Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually on the ...
. He was so impressed by Van Nierop's knowledge that he even brought him to the attention of Constantijn Huygens
Sir Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem ( , , ; 4 September 159628 March 1687), was a Dutch Golden Age poet and composer. He was also secretary to two Princes of Orange: Frederick Henry and William II, and the father of the scientist C ...
and Frans van Schooten.
Descartes began (through Alfonso Polloti, an Italian general in Dutch service) a six-year correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, devoted mainly to moral and psychological subjects. Connected with this correspondence, in 1649 he published ''Les Passions de l'âme'' ('' The Passions of the Soul''), which he dedicated to the Princess. A French translation of ''Principia Philosophiae'', prepared by Abbot Claude Picot, was published in 1647. This edition was also dedicated to Princess Elisabeth. In the preface to the French edition, Descartes praised true philosophy as a means to attain wisdom. He identifies four ordinary sources to reach wisdom and finally says that there is a fifth, better and more secure, consisting in the search for first causes.
Sweden
By 1649, Descartes had become one of Europe's most famous philosophers and scientists. That year, Queen Christina of Sweden
Christina (; 18 December O.S. 8 December">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 8 December1626 – 19 April 1689), a member of the House of Vasa, was Monarchy of Sweden, Queen of Sweden from ...
invited him to her court to organize a new scientific academy and tutor her in his ideas about love. Descartes accepted, and moved to the Swedish Empire
The Swedish Empire or the Great Power era () was the period in Swedish history spanning much of the 17th and early 18th centuries during which Sweden became a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic regi ...
in the middle of winter. Christina was interested in and stimulated Descartes to publish ''The Passions of the Soul''.
He was a guest at the house of Pierre Chanut
Pierre Hector Chanut (February 22, 1601 in Riom – July 3, 1662 in Livry-sur-Seine) was a civil servant in the Auvergne, a French ambassador in Sweden and the Dutch Republic, and state counsellor.
Life
In 1626 Chanut married Marguerite Cle ...
, living on Västerlånggatan, less than 500 meters from Castle Tre Kronor (castle), Tre Kronor in Stockholm. There, Chanut and Descartes made observations with a Evangelista Torricelli, Torricellian mercury barometer. Challenging Blaise Pascal, Descartes took the first set of barometric readings in Stockholm to see if atmospheric pressure could be used in forecasting the weather.
Death
Descartes arranged to tutor Queen Christina after her birthday, three times a week at 5 am, in her cold and draughty castle. However, by 15 January 1650 the Queen had actually met with Descartes only four or five times. It soon became clear they did not like each other; she did not care for his Mechanical philosophy#Descartes, mechanical philosophy, nor did he share her interest in Ancient Greek language and Ancient Greek literature, literature. On 1 February 1650, he contracted pneumonia and died on 11 February at Chanut. The cause of death was pneumonia according to Chanut, but pleurisy, peripneumonia according to Christina's physician Johann van Wullen who was not allowed to bleed him. (The winter seems to have been mild, except for the second half of January which was harsh as described by Descartes himself; however, "this remark was probably intended to be as much Descartes's take on the intellectual climate as it was about the weather.") :de:Eike Pies, E. Pies has questioned this account, based on a letter by the Doctor van Wullen; however, Descartes had refused his treatment, and more arguments against its veracity have been raised since. ] His last words were reported to have been: As a Catholic in a Protestant nation, he was interred in the churchyard of what was to become Adolf Fredrik Church in Stockholm, where mainly orphans had been buried. His manuscripts came into the possession of Claude Clerselier, Chanut's brother-in-law, and "a devout Catholic who has begun the process of turning Descartes into a saint by cutting, adding and publishing his letters selectively." In 1663, the Pope Alexander VII, Pope placed Descartes's works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, ''Index of Prohibited Books''. In 1666, sixteen years after his death, his remains were taken to France and buried in Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. In 1671, Louis XIV prohibited all lectures in Cartesianism. Although the National Convention in 1792 had planned to transfer his remains to the Panthéon, he was reburied in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1819, missing a finger and the skull. His alleged skull is in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, but some 2020 researches confirm that it may be a forgery. The original skull was probably divided into pieces in Sweden and given to private collectors; one of those pieces arrived at the University of Lund in 1691, where it is still preserved.Philosophical work
In his ''Discourse on the Method'', he attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. To achieve this, he employs a method called hyperbolic or metaphysical doubt, also sometimes referred to as methodological skepticism or Cartesian doubt: he rejects any ideas that can be doubted and then re-establishes them in order to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge. Descartes built his ideas from scratch which he does in ''The Meditations on First Philosophy''. He relates this to architecture: the top soil is taken away to create a new building or structure. Descartes calls his doubt the soil and new knowledge the buildings. To Descartes, Aristotle's foundationalism is incomplete and his method of doubt enhances foundationalism. Initially, Descartes arrives at only a single first principle: he thinks. This is expressed in the Latin phrase in ''the Discourse on Method'' "Cogito, ergo sum" (English: "I think, therefore I am"). Descartes concluded, if he doubted, then something or someone must be doing the doubting; therefore, the very fact that he doubted proved his existence. "The simple meaning of the phrase is that if one is skeptical of existence, that is in and of itself proof that he does exist." These two first principles—I think and I exist—were later confirmed by Descartes's clear and distinct perception (delineated in his Third Meditation from ''The Meditations''): as he clearly and distinctly perceives these two principles, Descartes reasoned, ensures their indubitability. Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks. But in what form? He perceives his body through the use of the senses; however, these have previously been unreliable. So Descartes determines that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a ''thinking thing''. Thinking is what he does, and his power must come from his essence. Descartes defines "thought" (''List of Latin phrases (C), cogitatio'') as "what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it". Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which the person is immediately Consciousness, conscious. He gave reasons for thinking that waking thoughts are distinguishable from dream argument, dreams, and that one's mind cannot have been "hijacked" by an evil demon placing an illusory external world before one's senses. In this manner, Descartes proceeds to construct a system of knowledge, discarding perception as unreliable and, instead, admitting only deductive reasoning, deduction as a method.Mind–body dualism
Descartes, influenced by the automatons on display at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, investigated the connection between mind and body, and how they interact. His main influences for Mind–body dualism, dualism were theology and physics. The theory on the dualism of mind and body is Descartes's signature doctrine and permeates other theories he advanced. Known as Cartesian dualism (or mind–body dualism), his theory on the separation between the mind and the body went on to influence subsequent Western philosophies. In ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', Descartes attempted to demonstrate the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body. Humans are a union of mind and body; thus Descartes's dualism embraced the idea that mind and body are distinct but closely joined. While many contemporary readers of Descartes found the distinction between mind and body difficult to grasp, he thought it was entirely straightforward. Descartes employed the concept of ''modes'', which are the ways in which substances exist. In ''Principles of Philosophy
''Principles of Philosophy'' () is a book by René Descartes. In essence, it is a synthesis of the '' Discourse on Method'' and '' Meditations on First Philosophy''.Guy Durandin, ''Les Principes de la Philosophie. Introduction et notes'', Libra ...
'', Descartes explained, "we can clearly perceive a substance apart from the mode which we say differs from it, whereas we cannot, conversely, understand the mode apart from the substance". To perceive a mode apart from its substance requires an intellectual abstraction, which Descartes explained as follows:
The intellectual abstraction consists in my turning my thought away from one part of the contents of this richer idea the better to apply it to the other part with greater attention. Thus, when I consider a shape without thinking of the substance or the extension whose shape it is, I make a mental abstraction.According to Descartes, two substances are really distinct when each of them can exist apart from the other. Thus, Descartes reasoned that God is distinct from humans, and the body and mind of a human are also distinct from one another. He argued that the great differences between body (an extended thing) and mind (an un-extended, immaterial thing) make the two Ontology, ontologically distinct. According to Descartes's indivisibility argument, the mind is utterly indivisible: because "when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any part within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete." Moreover, in The ''Meditations'', Descartes discusses a piece of wax and exposes the single most characteristic doctrine of Cartesian dualism: that the universe contained two radically different kinds of substances—the mind or soul defined as Thought, thinking, and the body defined as matter and unthinking. The Aristotelianism, Aristotelian philosophy of Descartes's day held that the universe was inherently purposeful or teleological. Everything that happened, be it the motion of the stars or the growth of a tree, was supposedly explainable by a certain purpose, goal or end that worked its way out within nature. Aristotle called this the "final cause", and these final causes were indispensable for explaining the ways nature operated. Descartes's theory of dualism supports the distinction between traditional Aristotelian science and the new science of Johannes Kepler, Kepler and Galileo, which denied the role of a divine power and "final causes" in its attempts to explain nature. Descartes's dualism provided the philosophical rationale for the latter by expelling the final cause from the physical universe (or ''res extensa'') in favor of the mind (or ''res cogitans''). Therefore, while Cartesian dualism paved the way for modern physics, it also held the door open for religious beliefs about the immortality of the soul. Descartes's dualism of mind and matter implied a concept of human beings. A human was, according to Descartes, a composite entity of mind and body. Descartes gave priority to the mind and argued that the mind could exist without the body, but the body could not exist without the mind. In The ''Meditations'', Descartes even argues that while the mind is a substance, the body is composed only of "accidents". But he did argue that mind and body are closely joined:
Nature also teaches me, by the sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a pilot in his ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit. If this were not so, I, who am nothing but a thinking thing, would not feel pain when the body was hurt, but would perceive the damage purely by the intellect, just as a sailor perceives by sight if anything in his ship is broken.Descartes's discussion on embodiment raised one of the most perplexing problems of his dualism philosophy: What exactly is the relationship of union between the mind and the body of a person? Therefore, Cartesian dualism set the agenda for philosophical discussion of the mind–body problem for many years after Descartes's death. Descartes argued the theory of innate knowledge and that all humans were born with knowledge through the higher power of God. It was this theory of innate knowledge that was later combated by philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), an empiricist.
Physiology and psychology
In ''The Passions of the Soul'', published in 1649, Descartes discussed the common contemporary belief that the human body contained animal spirits. These animal spirits were believed to be light and roaming fluids circulating rapidly around the nervous system between the brain and the muscles. These animal spirits were believed to affect the human soul, or passions of the soul. Descartes distinguished six basic passions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness. All of these passions, he argued, represented different combinations of the original spirit, and influenced the soul to will or want certain actions. He argued, for example, that fear is a passion that moves the soul to generate a response in the body. In line with his dualist teachings on the separation between the soul and the body, he hypothesized that some part of the brain served as a connector between the soul and the body and singled out the pineal gland as connector. Descartes argued that signals passed from the ear and the eye to the pineal gland, through animal spirits. Thus different motions in the gland cause various animal spirits. He argued that these motions in the pineal gland are based on God's will and that humans are supposed to want and like things that are useful to them. But he also argued that the animal spirits that moved around the body could distort the commands from the pineal gland, thus humans had to learn how to control their passions.
Descartes advanced a theory on automatic bodily reactions to external events, which influenced 19th-century reflex theory. He argued that external motions, such as touch and sound, reach the endings of the nerves and affect the animal spirits. For example, heat from fire affects a spot on the skin and sets in motion a chain of reactions, with the animal spirits reaching the brain through the central nervous system, and in turn, animal spirits are sent back to the muscles to move the hand away from the fire. Through this chain of reactions, the automatic reactions of the body do not require a thought process.
Above all, he was among the first scientists who believed that the soul should be subject to scientific investigation. He challenged the views of his contemporaries that the soul was Divinity, divine, thus religious authorities regarded his books as dangerous. Descartes's writings went on to form the basis for theories on emotions and how Cognition, cognitive evaluations were translated into affective processes. Descartes believed the brain resembled a working machine and that mathematics, and mechanics could explain complicated processes in it.
On animals
Descartes denied that animals had reason or intelligence. He argued that animals did not lack sensations or perceptions, but these could be explained mechanistically. Whereas humans had a soul, or mind, and were able to feel pain and anxiety, animals by virtue of not having a soul could not feel pain or anxiety. If animals showed signs of distress then this was to protect the body from damage, but the innate state needed for them to Suffering, suffer was absent. Although Descartes's views were not universally accepted, they became prominent in Europe and North America, allowing humans to treat animals with impunity. The view that animals were quite separate from humanity and merely machines allowed for the Cruelty to animals, maltreatment of animals, and was sanctioned in law and societal norms until the middle of the 19th century. The publications of Charles Darwin would eventually erode the Cartesian view of animals. Darwin argued that the continuity between humans and other species suggested the possibility of animal suffering.Moral philosophy
For Descartes, ethics was a science, the highest and most perfect of them. Like the rest of the sciences, ethics had its roots in metaphysics. In this way, he argues for the existence of God, investigates the place of man in nature, formulates the theory of mind–body dualism, and defends free will. However, as he was a convinced rationalist, Descartes clearly states that reason is sufficient in the search for the goods that individuals should seek, and virtue consists in the correct reasoning that should guide their actions. Nevertheless, the quality of this reasoning depends on knowledge and mental condition. For this reason, he said that a complete moral philosophy should include the study of the body. He discussed this subject in the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and as a result wrote his work ''The Passions of the Soul'', that contains a study of the Psychosomatic medicine, psychosomatic processes and reactions in man, with an emphasis on emotions or passions.Blom, John J., Descartes. His moral philosophy and psychology. New York University Press. 1978. His works about human passion and emotion would be the basis for the philosophy of his followers, and would have a lasting impact on ideas concerning what literature and art should be, specifically how it should invoke emotion. The moral writings of Descartes came at the last part of his life, but earlier, in his ''Discourse on the Method'', he adopted three maxims to be able to act while he put all his ideas into doubt. Those maxims are known as his Discourse on the Method#Part III: Morals, and Maxims accepted while conducting Method, "Provisional Morals".God
In the third and fifth ''Meditation'', Descartes offers Proof (truth), proofs of a benevolent God (the trademark argument and the ontological argument#René Descartes, ontological argument respectively). Descartes has faith in the account of reality his senses provide him, since he believed that God provided him with a working mind and Sensory nervous system, sensory system and does not desire to deceive him. From this supposition, however, Descartes finally establishes the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the world based on deduction and perception. Regardingepistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...
, therefore, Descartes can be said to have contributed such ideas as a conception of foundationalism and the possibility that reason is the only reliable method of attaining knowledge. Descartes, however, was very much aware that experimentation was necessary to verify and validate theories.
Descartes invokes his causal adequacy principle to support his trademark argument for the existence of God, quoting Lucretius in defence: ''"Ex nihilo nihil fit"'', meaning "Creation ex materia, Nothing comes from nothing" (Lucretius). The argument is "that our idea of perfection is related to its perfect origin (God), just as a stamp or trademark is left in an article of workmanship by its maker." In the fifth Meditation, Descartes presents a version of the ontological argument which is founded on the possibility of thinking the "idea of a being that is supremely perfect and infinite," and suggests that "of all the ideas that are in me, the idea that I have of God is the most true, the most clear and distinct."
Descartes' attempt to ground theological beliefs on reason encountered intense opposition in his time. Blaise Pascal, Pascal regarded Descartes's views as a rationalist and mechanist, and accused him of deism: "I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God," while a contemporary, Martin Schoock, accused him of Atheism, atheist beliefs, though Descartes had provided an explicit critique of atheism in his ''Meditations''. The Catholic Church prohibited his books in 1663.Descartes, René. (2009). ''Encyclopædia Britannica 2009 Deluxe Edition''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
Descartes also wrote a response to Philosophical skepticism, external world skepticism. Through this method of skepticism, he does not doubt for the sake of doubting but to achieve concrete and reliable information. In other words, certainty. He argues that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily, and are not willed by him. They are external to his senses, and according to Descartes, this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind, and thus, an external world. Descartes goes on to argue that the things in the external world are material by arguing that God would not deceive him as to the ideas that are being transmitted, and that God has given him the "propensity" to believe that such ideas are caused by material things. Descartes also believes a substance is something that does not need any assistance to function or exist. Descartes further explains how only God can be a true "substance". But minds are substances, meaning they need only God for it to function. The mind is a thinking substance. The means for a thinking substance stem from ideas.
Descartes steered clear of theological questions, restricting his attention to showing that there is no incompatibility between his metaphysics and theological orthodoxy. He avoided trying to demonstrate theological dogmas metaphysically. When challenged that he had not established the immortality of the soul merely in showing that the soul and the body are distinct substances, he replied, "I do not take it upon myself to try to use the power of human reason to settle any of those matters which depend on the free will of God."
Mathematics
''x'' for unknown; exponential notation
Descartes "invented the convention of representing unknowns in equations by ''x'', ''y'', and ''z'', and knowns by ''a'', ''b'', and ''c''". He also "pioneered the standard notation" that uses Subscript and superscript, superscripts to show the powers or exponents; for example, the 2 used in x2 to indicate x squared.Analytic geometry
One of Descartes's most enduring legacies was his development - together with Pierre de Fermat
Pierre de Fermat (; ; 17 August 1601 – 12 January 1665) was a French mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his d ...
- of Cartesian or analytic geometry
In mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry.
Analytic geometry is used in physics and engineering, and als ...
, which uses algebra to describe geometry; the Cartesian coordinate system
In geometry, a Cartesian coordinate system (, ) in a plane (geometry), plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point (geometry), point uniquely by a pair of real numbers called ''coordinates'', which are the positive and negative number ...
is named after him. Descartes' work on geometry was written to demonstrate its application to correct reasoning he discussed in the ''Discourse on the Method
''Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences'' () is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation ...
'', which consists of reasoning based on self-evident principles. He was first to assign a fundamental place for algebra in the system of knowledge, using it as a method to automate or mechanize reasoning, particularly about abstract, unknown quantities.
Both Descartes and Fermat were inspired by the works of the Ancient Greek mathematicians Pappus of Alexandria and Apollonius of Perga, especially by their techniques of analysis. Crucial for their work was also the symbolic algebra of François Viète and the results of Islamic mathematicians such as Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi and Omar Khayyam. The step that their predecessors failed to take was using coordinates to study the relationship between geometry and algebra.
European mathematicians had previously viewed geometry as a more fundamental form of mathematics, serving as the foundation of algebra. Algebraic rules were given geometric proofs by mathematicians such as Luca Pacioli, Pacioli, Gerolamo Cardano, Cardano, Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia, Tartaglia and Lodovico Ferrari, Ferrari. Equations of Degree of a polynomial, degree higher than the third were regarded as unreal, because a three-dimensional form, such as a cube, occupied the largest dimension of reality. Descartes professed that the abstract quantity ''a2'' could represent length as well as an area. This was in opposition to the teachings of mathematicians such as François Viète, who insisted that a second power must represent an area.
Although Descartes did not pursue the subject, he preceded Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in envisioning a more general science of algebra or "universal mathematics", as a precursor to Mathematical logic, symbolic logic, that could encompass logical principles and methods symbolically, and mechanize general reasoning.
Influence on Newton's mathematics
It is often said that Descartes had the most influence of anyone on the young Isaac Newton. Descartes's influence extended not directly from his original French edition of ''La Géométrie'', however, but rather from Frans van Schooten's expanded second Latin edition of the work. Newton continued Descartes's work on cubic equations, which freed the subject from the fetters of the Greek perspectives. The most important concept was his very modern treatment of single variables.The basis of calculus
Descartes's work provided the basis for thecalculus
Calculus is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithmetic operations.
Originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the ...
developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leibniz and Isaac Newton, Newton, who applied the infinitesimal calculus to the Tangent#Analytical approach, tangent line problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics. His Descartes' rule of signs, rule of signs is also a commonly used method to determine the number of positive and negative roots of a polynomial.
Physics
Mechanics
Mechanical philosophy
The beginning of Descartes's interest in physics is accredited to the amateur scientist and mathematicianIsaac Beeckman
Isaac Beeckman (10 December 1588van Berkel, p10 – 19 May 1637) was a Dutch philosopher and scientist, who, through his studies and contact with leading natural philosophers, may have "virtually given birth to modern atomism".Harold J. Cook, in ...
, whom he met in 1618, and who was at the forefront of a new school of thought known as mechanical philosophy. With this foundation of reasoning, Descartes formulated many of his theories on Geometric mechanics, mechanical and geometric physics. It is said that they met when both were looking at a placard that was set up in the Breda marketplace, detailing a mathematical problem to be solved. Descartes asked Beeckman to translate the problem from Dutch to French. In their following meetings Beeckman interested Descartes in his corpuscularian approach to mechanical theory, and convinced him to devote his studies to a mathematical approach to nature. In 1628, Beeckman also introduced him to many of Galileo's ideas.Harold J. Cook, in ''The Scientific Revolution in National Context'', Roy Porter, Mikuláš Teich, (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 1992, pages 127–129 Together, they worked on free fall, catenary, catenaries, conic sections, and fluid statics. Both believed that it was necessary to create a method that thoroughly linked mathematics and physics.
Anticipating the concept of work
Although the concept of work (in physics) was not formally used until 1826, similar concepts existed before then. In 1637, Descartes wrote:Conservation of motion
In ''Principles of Philosophy
''Principles of Philosophy'' () is a book by René Descartes. In essence, it is a synthesis of the '' Discourse on Method'' and '' Meditations on First Philosophy''.Guy Durandin, ''Les Principes de la Philosophie. Introduction et notes'', Libra ...
'' (''Principia Philosophiae'') from 1644 Descartes outlined his views on the universe. In it he describes his three laws of motion. (Newton's laws of motion, Newton's own laws of motion would later be modeled on Descartes's exposition.) Descartes defined "quantity of motion" (''Latin language, Latin: quantitas motus'') as the product of size and speed, and claimed that the total quantity of motion in the universe is conserved.Descartes had discovered an early form of the law of conservation of momentum. He envisioned quantity of motion as pertaining to motion in a straight line, as opposed to perfect circular motion, as Galileo had envisioned it.Alexander Afriat"Cartesian and Lagrangian Momentum"
(2004). Descartes's discovery should not be seen as the modern law of conservation of momentum, since it had no concept of mass as distinct from weight or size, and since he believed that it is speed rather than velocity that is conserved. Descartes's Mechanical explanations of gravitation#Vortex Theory, vortex theory of planetary motion was later rejected by Newton in favor of his Newton's law of universal gravitation, law of universal gravitation, and most of the second book of Newton's ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Principia'' is devoted to his counterargument.
Magnetism
Descartes proposed a theory to explain magnetism and explain the observation in De Magnete, ''De Magnete'' by William Gilbert (physicist), William Gilbert. Descartes considered that 'effluvia' were emitted by a magnet, the effluvia rarefied the air creating pressure differences, and thus forces.
Glass science
In 1644, Descartes provides one of the earliest microscopic theories of glass. He considered that glass was formed by particles frozen in motion after heated. He also provides one of the earliest understanding of the role of stress and its relief by Annealing (glass), annealing.Optics
Descartes also made contributions to the field of optics. He showed by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known as Descartes's law in France, or more commonly Snell's law elsewhere) that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 degrees (i.e., the angle subtended at the eye by the edge of the rainbow and the ray passing from the sun through the rainbow's centre is 42°). He also independently discovered the Specular reflection, law of reflection, and his essay on optics was the first published mention of this law.Meteorology
Within ''Discourse on the Method
''Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences'' () is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation ...
'', there is an appendix in which Descartes discusses his theories on meteorology known as ''Les Météores''. He first proposed the idea that the elements were made up of small particles that join together imperfectly, thus leaving small spaces in between. These spaces were then filled with smaller much quicker "subtile matter". These particles were different based on what element they constructed, for example, Descartes believed that particles of water were "like little eels, which, though they join and twist around each other, do not, for all that, ever knot or hook together in such a way that they cannot easily be separated." In contrast, the particles that made up the more solid material, were constructed in a way that generated irregular shapes. The size of the particle also matters; if the particle was smaller, not only was it faster and constantly moving, it was more easily agitated by the larger particles, which were slow but had more force. The different qualities, such as combinations and shapes, gave rise to different secondary qualities of materials, such as temperature. This first idea is the basis for the rest of Descartes's theory on meteorology.
While rejecting most of Aristotle's theories on meteorology, he still kept some of the terminology that Aristotle used such as vapors and exhalations. These "vapors" would be drawn into the sky by the sun from "terrestrial substances" and would generate wind. Descartes also theorized that falling clouds would displace the air below them, also generating wind. Falling clouds could also generate thunder. He theorized that when a cloud rests above another cloud and the air around the top cloud is hot, it condenses the vapor around the top cloud, and causes the particles to fall. When the particles falling from the top cloud collided with the bottom cloud's particles it would create thunder. He compared his theory on thunder to his theory on avalanches. Descartes believed that the booming sound that avalanches created, was due to snow that was heated, and therefore heavier, falling onto the snow that was below it. This theory was supported by experience: "It follows that one can understand why it thunders more rarely in winter than in summer; for then not enough heat reaches the highest clouds, in order to break them up."
Another theory that Descartes had was on the production of lightning. Descartes believed that lightning was caused by exhalations trapped between the two colliding clouds. He believed that in order to make these exhalations viable to produce lightning, they had to be made "fine and inflammable" by hot and dry weather. Whenever the clouds would collide, it would cause them to ignite, creating lightning; if the cloud above was heavier than the bottom cloud, it would also produce thunder.
Descartes also believed that clouds were made up of drops of water and ice, and believed that rain would fall whenever the air could no longer support them. It would fall as snow if the air was not warm enough to melt the raindrops. And hail was when the cloud drops would melt, and then freeze again because cold air would refreeze them.
Descartes did not use mathematics or instruments (as there were not any at the time) to back up his theories on Meteorology and instead used qualitative reasoning in order to deduce his hypothesis.
Historical impact
Emancipation from Church doctrine
Descartes has often been dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy, the thinker whose approaches have profoundly changed the course of Western philosophy and set the basis for modernity. The first two of his ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', those that formulate the famous methodic doubt, represent the portion of Descartes's writings that most influenced modern thinking. It has been argued that Descartes himself did not realize the extent of this revolutionary move. In shifting the debate from "what is true" to "of what can I be certain?", Descartes arguably shifted the authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity (even though Descartes himself claimed he received his visions from God)—while the traditional concept of "truth" implies an external authority, "certainty" instead relies on the judgment of the individual.
In an Anthropocentrism, anthropocentric revolution, the human being is now raised to the level of a subject, an agent, an Emancipation, emancipated being equipped with autonomous reason. This was a revolutionary step that contributed to the basis of the Modern Era, the repercussions of which are still being felt: the emancipation of humanity from Christian revelational truth and Catholic Church, Church doctrine; humanity making its own law and taking its own stand.Martin Heidegger [1938] (2002) ''The Age of the World Picture'' quotation: Ingraffia, Brian D. (1995''Postmodern theory and biblical theology: vanquishing God's shadow''
p. 126 In modernity, the guarantor of truth is not God anymore but human beings, each of whom is a "self-conscious shaper and guarantor" of their own reality. In that way, each person is turned into a reasoning adult, a subject and agent,Lovitt, Tom (1977) introduction to Martin Heidegger's ''The question concerning technology, and other essays'', pp. xxv–xxvi as opposed to a child obedient to God. This change in perspective was characteristic of the shift from the Christian medieval period to the modern period, a shift that had been anticipated in other fields, and which was now being formulated in the field of philosophy by Descartes. This anthropocentric perspective of Descartes's work, establishing human reason as autonomous, provided the basis for the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment's emancipation from God and the Church. According to Martin Heidegger, the perspective of Descartes's work also provided the basis for all subsequent anthropology.Heidegger [1938] (2002), p. 75 quotation: Descartes's philosophical revolution is sometimes said to have sparked modern anthropocentrism and subjectivism.
Reception
The ''Discourse'' appeared during Descartes's lifetime in a single edition of 500 copies, 200 of which were set aside for the author. Sharing a similar fate was the only French edition of The ''Meditations'', which had not managed to sell out by the time of Descartes's death. A concomitant Latin edition of the latter was, however, eagerly sought out by Europe's scholarly community and proved a commercial success for Descartes. Although Descartes was well known in academic circles towards the end of his life, the teaching of his works in schools was controversial. Henri de Roy (Henricus Regius, 1598–1679), Professor of Medicine at the University of Utrecht, was condemned by the Rector of the university, Gisbertus Voetius, Gijsbert Voet (Voetius), for teaching Descartes's physics. According to philosophy professor John Cottingham, Descartes's ''Meditations on First Philosophy'' is considered to be "one of the key texts of Western philosophy". Cottingham said that the ''Meditations'' is the "most widely studied of all Descartes' writings". According to author Anthony Gottlieb, one of the reasons Descartes and Thomas Hobbes continue to be debated in the second decade of the twenty-first century, is that they still have something to say to us that remains relevant on questions such as, "What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and our ideas of God?" and "How is government to deal with religious diversity."Bibliography
Writings
* 1618''Musicae Compendium''
A treatise on music theory and the aesthetics of music, which Descartes dedicated to early collaborator Isaac Beeckman (written in 1618, first published—posthumously—in 1650). * 1626–1628. ''Regulae ad directionem ingenii'' (''
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
''Regulae ad directionem ingenii'', or ''Rules for the Direction of the Mind'' is an unfinished treatise regarding the proper method for scientific and philosophical thinking by René Descartes. Descartes started writing the work in 1628, and it ...
''). Incomplete. First published posthumously in Dutch translation in 1684 and in the original Latin at Amsterdam in 1701 (''R. Des-Cartes Opuscula Posthuma Physica et Mathematica''). The best critical edition, which includes the Dutch translation of 1684, is edited by Giovanni Crapulli (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966).
* c. 1630. ''De solidorum elementis''. Concerns the classification of Platonic solids and three-dimensional figurate numbers. Said by some scholars to prefigure Euler's polyhedral formula. Unpublished; discovered in Descartes's estate in Stockholm 1650, soaked for three days in the Seine in a shipwreck while being shipped back to Paris, copied in 1676 by Leibniz, and lost. Leibniz's copy, also lost, was rediscovered circa 1860 in Hannover.
* 1630–1631. ''La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle'' (''The Search for Truth by Natural Light'') unfinished dialogue published in 1701.
* 1630–1633. ''Le Monde'' (''The World (Descartes), The World'') and ''Treatise on Man, L'Homme'' (''Man''). Descartes's first systematic presentation of his natural philosophy. ''Man'' was published posthumously in Latin translation in 1662; and ''The World'' posthumously in 1664.
* 1637. ''Discours de la méthode'' (''Discourse on the Method
''Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences'' () is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation ...
''). An introduction to the ''Essais'', which include the ''Dioptrique'', the ''Météores'' and the ''Géométrie''.
* 1637. ''La Géométrie
''La Géométrie'' () was published in 1637 as an appendix to ''Discours de la méthode'' ('' Discourse on the Method''), written by René Descartes. In the ''Discourse'', Descartes presents his method for obtaining clarity on any subject. ''La ...
'' (''Geometry''). Descartes's major work in mathematics. There is an English translation by Michael Mahoney (New York: Dover, 1979).
* 1641. ''Meditationes de prima philosophia'' (''Meditations on First Philosophy
''Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated'' (), often called simply the ''Meditations'', is a philosophical treatise by René Descartes first published in Latin in 1641. T ...
''), also known as ''Metaphysical Meditations''. In Latin; a second edition, published the following year, included an additional objection and reply, and a ''Letter to Dinet''. A French translation by the Duke of Luynes, probably done without Descartes's supervision, was published in 1647. Includes six Meditations on First Philosophy#Objections and replies, Objections and Replies.
* 1644. ''Principia philosophiae'' (''Principles of Philosophy
''Principles of Philosophy'' () is a book by René Descartes. In essence, it is a synthesis of the '' Discourse on Method'' and '' Meditations on First Philosophy''.Guy Durandin, ''Les Principes de la Philosophie. Introduction et notes'', Libra ...
''), a Latin textbook at first intended by Descartes to replace the Aristotelian textbooks then used in universities. A French translation, ''Principes de philosophie'' by Claude Picot, under the supervision of Descartes, appeared in 1647 with a letter-preface to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia.
* 1647. ''Notae in programma'' (''Comments on a Certain Broadsheet''). A reply to Descartes's one-time disciple Henricus Regius.
* 1648. ''La description du corps humain'' (''The Description of the Human Body''). Published posthumously by Clerselier in 1667.
* 1648. ''Responsiones Renati Des Cartes...'' (''Conversation with Burman''). Notes on a Q&A session between Descartes and Frans Burman on 16 April 1648. Rediscovered in 1895 and published for the first time in 1896. An annotated bilingual edition (Latin with French translation), edited by Jean-Marie Beyssade, was published in 1981 (Paris: PUF).
* 1649. ''Les passions de l'âme'' ('' Passions of the Soul''). Dedicated to Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate.
* 1657. ''Correspondance'' (three volumes: 1657, 1659, 1667). Published by Descartes's literary executor Claude Clerselier. The third edition, in 1667, was the most complete; Clerselier omitted, however, much of the material pertaining to mathematics.
In January 2010, a previously unknown letter from Descartes, dated 27 May 1641, was found by the Dutch philosopher Erik-Jan Bos when browsing through Google Search, Google. Bos found the letter mentioned in a summary of autographs kept by Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The college was unaware that the letter had never been published. This was the third letter by Descartes found in the last 25 years.
Collected editions
* ''Oeuvres de Descartes'' edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1897–1913, 13 volumes; new revised edition, Paris: Vrin-CNRS, 1964–1974, 11 volumes (the first five volumes contain the correspondence). [This edition is traditionally cited with the initials ''AT'' (for Adam and Tannery) followed by a volume number in Roman numerals; thus ''AT'' VII refers to ''Oeuvres de Descartes'' volume 7.] * ''Étude du bon sens, La recherche de la vérité et autres écrits de jeunesse (1616–1631)'' edited by Vincent Carraud and Gilles Olivo, Paris: PUF, 2013. * Descartes, ''Œuvres complètes'', new edition by Jean-Marie Beyssade and Denis Kambouchner, Paris: Gallimard, published volumes: ** I: ''Premiers écrits. Règles pour la direction de l'esprit'', 2016. ** III: ''Discours de la Méthode et Essais'', 2009. ** VIII.1: ''Correspondance, 1'' edited by Jean-Robert Armogathe, 2013. ** VIII.2: ''Correspondance, 2'' edited by Jean-Robert Armogathe, 2013. * ''René Descartes. Opere 1637–1649'', Milano, Bompiani, 2009, pp. 2531. Edizione integrale (di prime edizioni) e traduzione italiana a fronte, a cura di G. Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, M. Marrone, M. Savini . * ''René Descartes. Opere 1650–2009'', Milano, Bompiani, 2009, pp. 1723. Edizione integrale delle opere postume e traduzione italiana a fronte, a cura di G. Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, M. Marrone, M. Savini . * ''René Descartes. Tutte le lettere 1619–1650'', Milano, Bompiani, 2009 IIa ed., pp. 3104. Nuova edizione integrale dell'epistolario cartesiano con traduzione italiana a fronte, a cura di G. Belgioioso con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, M. Marrone, F.A. Meschini, M. Savini e J.-R. Armogathe . * ''René Descartes, Isaac Beeckman, Marin Mersenne. Lettere 1619–1648'', Milano, Bompiani, 2015 pp. 1696. Edizione integrale con traduzione italiana a fronte, a cura di Giulia Beglioioso e Jean Robert-Armogathe .Early editions of specific works
''Discours de la methode''
, 1637
''Renati Des-Cartes Principia philosophiæ''
, 1644
''Le monde de Mr. Descartes ou le traité de la lumiere''
, 1664
''Geometria''
, 1659
''Meditationes de prima philosophia''
, 1670
''Opera philosophica''
, 1672
Collected English translations
* 1955. ''The Philosophical Works'', Elizabeth Haldane, E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, trans. Dover Publications. This work is traditionally cited with the initials ''HR'' (for Haldane and Ross) followed by a volume number in Roman numerals; thus ''HR'' II refers to volume 2 of this edition. * 1988. ''The Philosophical Writings of Descartes'' in 3 vols. John Cottingham, Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., Anthony Kenny, Kenny, A., and Murdoch, D., trans. Cambridge University Press. This work is traditionally cited with the initials ''CSM'' (for Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch) or ''CSMK'' (for Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch, and Kenny) followed by a volume number in Roman numeral; thus ''CSM'' II refers to volume 2 of this edition. * 1998. ''René Descartes: The World and Other Writings.'' Translated and edited by Stephen Gaukroger. Cambridge University Press. (This consists mainly of scientific writings, on physics, biology, astronomy, optics, etc., which were very influential in the 17th and 18th centuries, but which are routinely omitted or much abridged in modern collections of Descartes's ''philosophical'' works.)Translation of single works
* 1628''Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Rules for the Direction of the Natural Intelligence. A Bilingual Edition of the Cartesian Treatise on Method''
, ed. & trans. G. Heffernan (Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998). * 1633
, tr. by Michael S. Mahoney. * 1633. ''Treatise of Man'', tr. by T. S. Hall. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972. * 1637. ''Discourse on the Method, Optics, Geometry and Meteorology'', trans. Paul J. Olscamp, P. J. Olscamp, Revised edition (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Hackett, 2001). * 1637
''The Geometry of René Descartes''
, trans. D. E. Smith & Marcia Latham (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, Open Court, 1925). * 1641. ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', tr. by J. Cottingham, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Latin original. Alternative English title: ''Metaphysical Meditations''. Includes six ''Objections and Replies''. A second edition published the following year, includes an additional ''Objection and Reply'' and a ''Letter to Dinet''
HTML Online Latin-French-English Edition
. * 1644
''Principles of Philosophy''
, trans. V. R. Miller & R. P. Miller: (
Dordrecht
Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Western Netherlands, lo ...
/Boston/London: Springer Science+Business Media#History, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1982).
* 1648. ''Descartes' Conversation with Burman'', tr. by J. Cottingham, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
* 1649''Passions of the Soul''
, trans. S. H. Voss (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989). Dedicated to Elisabeth of the Palatinate. * 1619–1648. ''René Descartes, Isaac Beeckman, Marin Mersenne. Lettere 1619–1648'', ed. by Giulia Beglioioso and Jean Robert-Armogathe, Milano, Bompiani, 2015 pp. 1696.
See also
* Bucket argument * Cartesian circle * Cartesian plane * Cartesian product * Cartesian product of graphs * Cartesian theater * Cartesian tree * Descartes number * Descartes' rule of signs * Descartes' theorem (4 tangent circles) * Angular defect, Descartes's theorem on total angular defect * Folium of Descartes * List of things named after René DescartesNotes
References
Citations
Sources
* * * Farrell, John. "Demons of Descartes and Hobbes." ''Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau'' (Cornell UP, 2006), chapter 7. * * Gillespie, A. (2006)Descartes' Demon: A Dialogical Analysis of 'Meditations on First Philosophy.'
''Theory & Psychology'', 16, 761–781. * * A. C. Grayling, Grayling, A. C. (2005). ''Descartes: The Life of René Descartes and Its Place in His Times'', The Free Press, London. . * Martin Heidegger, Heidegger, Martin [1938] (2002) ''The Age of the World Picture'' i
''Off the Beaten Track''
pp. 57–85 * Monnoyeur, Françoise (November 2017), ''Matière et espace dans le système cartésien'', Paris, Harmattan, 266 pp. . * Moreno Romo, Juan Carlos, ''Vindicación del cartesianismo radical'', Anthropos, Barcelona, 2010. * Moreno Romo, Juan Carlos (Coord.), ''Descartes vivo. Ejercicios de hermenéutica cartesiana'', Anthropos, Barcelona, 2007. * Antonio Negri, Negri, Antonio (2007) ''The Political Descartes'', Verso. * Sasaki Chikara (2003)
''Descartes's Mathematical Thought''
. (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 237.) xiv + 496 pp., bibl., indexes. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. * Serfati, Michel, 2005, "Géometrie" in Ivor Grattan-Guinness, ed., ''Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics''. Elsevier: 1–22. * Watson, Richard A. (2007). Cogito, Ergo Sum: a life of René Descartes. David R Godine. 2002, reprint 2007. . Was chosen by the New York Public library as one of "25 Books to Remember from 2002" * Frisinger, H. Howard. “Chapter 3 .” The History of Meteorology: To 1800, American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA, 1983, pp. 37–40. * Martin, Craig. “Chapter 6.” Renaissance Meteorology: Pomponazzi to Descartes, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2011.
External links
Digital collections
* * * *EarlyModernTexts.com
A site containing Descartes's main works, including correspondence, slightly modified for easier reading
Physical collections
The Correspondence of René Descartes
i
Early Modern Letters Online
Biographical links
at MacTutor *
René Descartes (1596–1650)
Published in ''Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition'' (1996) *
Bibliographies and works
''Bibliografia cartesiana/Bibliographie cartésienne on-line (1997–2012)''
*
''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
Descartes
Life and works
Epistemology
Mathematics
Physics
Ethics
Modal Metaphysics
Ontological Argument
Theory of Ideas
Pineal Gland
''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
Descartes
Descartes: Ethics
Descartes: Mind-Body Distinction
Descartes: Scientific Method
Other
* Video: Bryan Magee interviews Bernard Williams about Descartes on ''Men of Ideas''Section 1
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