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Descartes: An Intellectual Biography

Author: Stephen Gaukroger

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 1995-03-30

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 0191519545

René Descartes (1596-1650) is the father of modern philosophy, and one of the greatest of all thinkers. This is the first intellectual biography of Descartes in English; it offers a fundamental reassessment of all aspects of his life and work. Stephen Gaukroger, a leading authority on Descartes, traces his intellectual development from childhood, showing the connections between his intellectual and personal life and placing these in the cultural context of seventeenth century Europe. Descartes' early work in mathematics and science produced ground breaking theories, methods, and tools still in use today. This book gives the first full account of how this work informed and influenced the later philosophical studies for which, above all, Descartes is renowned. Not only were philosophy and science intertwined in Descartes' life; so were philosophy and religion. The Church of Rome found Galileo guilty of heresy in 1633; two decades earlier, Copernicus' theories about the universe had been denounced as blasphemous. To avoid such accusations, Descartes clothed his views about the relation between God and humanity, and about the nature of the universe, in a philosophical garb acceptable to the Church. His most famous project was the exploration of the foundations of human knowledge, starting from the proof of one's own existence offered in the formula Cogito ergo sum, `I am thinking therefore I exist'. Stephen Gaukroger argues that this was not intended as an exercise in philosophical scepticism, but rather to provide Descartes' scientific theories, influenced as they were by Copernicus and Galileo, with metaphysical legitimation. This book offers for the first time a full understanding of how Descartes developed his revolutionary ideas. It will be welcomed by all readers interested in the origins of modern thought.

The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter

Author: Steven M. Nadler

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0691157308

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A unique combination of philosophy, biography, and art history. The philospher, the priest, and the painter investigates the remarkable individuals and the circumstances behind a small portrait.

Descartes: A Biography

Author: Desmond M. Clarke

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-03-06

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9780521823012

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René Descartes is best remembered today for writing 'I think, therefore I am', but his main contribution to the history of ideas was his effort to construct a philosophy that would be sympathetic to the new sciences that emerged in the seventeenth century. To a great extent he was the midwife to the Scientific Revolution and a significant contributor to its key concepts. In four major publications, he fashioned a philosophical system that accommodated the needs of these new sciences and thereby earned the unrelenting hostility of both Catholic and Calvinist theologians, who relied on the scholastic philosophy that Descartes hoped to replace. His contemporaries claimed that his proofs of God's existence in the Meditations were so unsuccessful that he must have been a cryptic atheist and that his discussion of skepticism served merely to fan the flames of libertinism. This is the first biography in English that addresses the full range of Descartes' interest in theology, philosophy and the sciences and that traces his intellectual development through his entire career.

Cogito, Ergo Sum

Author: Richard A. Watson

Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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It was Descartes (1596-1650), says Watson (philosophy, Washington U., St. Louis), who established (or perhaps discovered) the rules of Reason, the foundation on which science and philosophy have been constructed since his time. He explores the life of the mathematician and philosopher, for readers who have no background in either field, but would l

Descartes

Author: A. C. Grayling

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2009-05-26

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0802718337

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Scientist, mathematician, traveler, soldier-and spy-Rene Descartes was one of the founders of the modern world. His life coincided with an extraordinary time in history: the first half of the miraculous seventeenth century, replete with genius in the arts and sciences, and wracked by civil and international conflicts across Europe. But at his birth in 1596 the world was still dominated by medieval beliefs in phenomena such as miracles and spontaneous generation. It was Descartes who identified the intellectual tools his peers needed to free themselves from the grip of religious authority and in doing so he founded modern philosophy. In this new biography, A. C. Grayling tells the story of Descartes' life, and places it in his tumultuous times-with the unexpected result that an entirely new aspect of the story comes to light.

Cogito, Ergo Sum

Author: Richard Watson

Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9781567923353

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Rene Descartes was a highly influential philosopher, mathematician, and scientist and is regarded as the Father of modern philosophy and mathematics. This is the biography of Descartes, and it describes the life of Descartes, in the flesh and blood, rather than a technical analysis of his philosophical, scientific, and mathematical ideas.

Descartes

Author: Geneviève Rodis-Lewis

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780801486272

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This major intellectual biography illuminates the personal and historical events of Descartes's life, from his birth and early years in France to his death in Sweden, his burial, and the fate of his remains. Concerned not only with historical events but also with the development of Descartes's personality, Rodis-Lewis speculates on the effect childhood impressions may have had on his philosophy and scientific theories. She considers in detail his friendships, particularly with Isaac Beeckman and Marin Mersenne. Primarily on the basis of his private correspondence, Rodis-Lewis gives a thorough and balanced discussion of his personality. The Descartes she depicts is by turns generous and unforgiving, arrogant and open-minded, loyal in his friendships but eager for the isolation his work required. Drawing on Descartes's writings and his public and private correspondence, she corrects the errors of earlier biographies and clarifies many obscure episodes in the philosopher's life.

Descartes

Author: Geneviève Rodis-Lewis

Publisher: Comstock Publishing Associates

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Relatively compact biography of the seventeenth-century French philosopher is determined to reverse the slander of scandal in vogue among Descartes' recent biographers and to modify the view of his intellectual development.

Descartes: An Intellectual Biography

Author: Stephen Gaukroger

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1995-03-30

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 0198239947

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Descartes is one of the greatest of all thinkers. Modern philosophy is generally taken to begin with him. His unique contribution to Western thought covers not only philosophy but also science and mathematics; his studies in mechanics and optics have provided modern science with tools still used and work still built on today. This is the first intellectual biography of Descartes in English. Stephen Gaukroger traces his intellectual development from childhood, establishes the connections between his intellectual and personal life, and placing these in the context of the cultural environment of the time, offers a fundamental reassessment of all aspects of his life and work. It is usually assumed that there is a little development in Descartes' thought, but this biography shows evidence of very significant changes of view and a general shift in his concern away from natural philosophy following the condemnation of Galileo by the Church in 1633. Starting with a full account of Descartes' early scientific work, Dr Gaukroger shows how it informed and influenced his later philosophical studies. On this new view, Descartes' philosophical work was meant not a self-contained exercise in epistemology and scepticism, but rather as a defence of his physical doctrines against a hostile Church. This book allows for the first time a full understanding of Descartes' ideas in the context of his life and times. It will be welcomed by all readers interested in the origins of modern thought.

Descartes's Secret Notebook

Author: Amir D. Aczel

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2006-10-10

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0767920341

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René Descartes (1596–1650) is one of the towering and central figures in Western philosophy and mathematics. His apothegm “Cogito, ergo sum” marked the birth of the mind-body problem, while his creation of so-called Cartesian coordinates have made our physical and intellectual conquest of physical space possible. But Descartes had a mysterious and mystical side, as well. Almost certainly a member of the occult brotherhood of the Rosicrucians, he kept a secret notebook, now lost, most of which was written in code. After Descartes’s death, Gottfried Leibniz, inventor of calculus and one of the greatest mathematicians in history, moved to Paris in search of this notebook—and eventually found it in the possession of Claude Clerselier, a friend of Descartes. Leibniz called on Clerselier and was allowed to copy only a couple of pages—which, though written in code, he amazingly deciphered there on the spot. Leibniz’s hastily scribbled notes are all we have today of Descartes’s notebook, which has disappeared. Why did Descartes keep a secret notebook, and what were its contents? The answers to these questions lead Amir Aczel and the reader on an exciting, swashbuckling journey, and offer a fascinating look at one of the great figures of Western culture.