ABSTRACT
The most comprehensive collection of essays on Descartes' scientific writings ever published, this volume offers a detailed reassessment of Descartes' scientific work and its bearing on his philosophy. The 35 essays, written by some of the world's leading scholars, cover topics as diverse as optics, cosmology and medicine, and will be of vital interest to all historians of philosophy or science.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |2 pages
Part I Mechanics and cosmology
chapter 5|18 pages
A different Descartes
Descartes and the programme for a mathematical physics in his correspondence
part |2 pages
Part II Method, optics, and the role of experiment
chapter 10|21 pages
Figuring things out: figurate problem-solving in the
Figurate problem-solving in the early Descartes
chapter 12|55 pages
Descartes opticien
The construction of the law of refraction and the manufacture of its physical rationales, 1618–29
chapter 13|17 pages
A ‘science for honnêtes hommes’: La Recherche de la Vérité and the deconstruction of experimental knowledge
deconstruction of experimental knowledge.
part |2 pages
Part III Physiology
part |2 pages
Part IV Imagination and representation
part |2 pages
Part V Mind and body, thought and sensation
chapter 30|15 pages
The texture of thought
Why Descartes’ Meditationes is meditational, and why it matters
