Descartes: The World and Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) [Paperback]

René Descartes (Author), Stephen Gaukroger (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0521636469 | ISBN-13: 978-0521636469

Descartes' The World offers the most comprehensive vision of the nature of the world since Aristotle, and is crucial for an understanding of his later writings, in particular the Meditations and Principles of Philosophy. Above all, it provides an insight into how Descartes conceived of natural philosophy before he started to reformulate his doctrines in terms of a skeptically-driven epistemology. This volume offers a new translation of the work together with related writings that illuminate it, including the first English translation of the complete text of The Description of the Human Body.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...an important addition to Descartes scholarship and required reading for those working on Descartes and the history of science." Russell Wahl, Philosophy in Review

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (December 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521636469
• ISBN-13: 978-0521636469
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,351,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Your Average Cup of Metaphysical Tea, May 7, 2007

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P. McIntyre "the body" (Joe Frazier Gym) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Descartes: The World and Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) (Paperback)

Forget what you thought you learned in your freshman survey of Western philosophy about the Descartes whose thought so nicely compliments "the Matrix".

Descartes spent a great deal of time in his other major works such as "The Discourse on Method", "The Principles of Philosophy", and even the "Meditations" trying to prepare his audiences for the mechanist theory he had already worked out in this work, which includes "The Treatise on Light "and "The Treatise on Man". My advice to you is to cut to the chase; this work is what Descartes was really about.

"The World" was never published during Descartes's lifetime, having been suppressed after the 1633 condemnation of Galileo. In the first section, Descartes presents through the imaginary figure of a "new world" a mechanist explanation of the universe and its intricate system of vorticies, in which he does his best to refute both the seventeenth century atomist and the long-reigning Aristotelian Scholasticism's cosmological theories. Similarly, in the "The Treatise on Man", Descartes describes, through the heuristic of an imaginary automatist machine, the functions of the human body, including comprehensive accounts of sensation, the circulatory system, and the nervous system (what Descartes famously calls "the animal spirits").

The fact is, Descartes' metaphysics largely simplify Medieval accounts and just reiterate what every Jesuit would have been learning in school anyway. His mechanist physics is what was new and exciting about his work within the context of the seventeenth century. If you are interested in the history of philosophy or science, you will be doing yourself a great service to familarize yourself with this work.