| Description |
1 online resource (xi, 507 pages) : illustrations |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 489-502) and index. |
| Contents |
A lawyer's education -- In search of a career (1616-1622) -- Magic, mathematics, and mechanics: Paris, 1622-1628 -- A fabulous world (1629-1633) -- The scientific Essays and the Discourse on Method (1633-1637) -- Retreat and defence (1637-1639) -- Metaphysics in a hornet's nest (1639-1642) -- The French liar's monkey and the Utrecht crisis -- Descartes and Princess Elizabeth -- The Principles of Philosophy (1644) -- The quarrel and final rift with Regius -- Once more into battle: the Leiden theologians (1647) -- Thoughts of retirement -- Death in Sweden. |
| Summary |
"Rene 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 scepticism served mainly to fan the flames of libertinism. |
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Descartes died in Stockholm in obscurity but soon became one of the most famous philosophers of the seventeenth century, a status that he continues to enjoy today. 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."--Jacket. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Descartes, René, 1596-1650.
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|
Descartes, René, 1596-1650. |
|
Philosophers -- France -- Biography.
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Philosophers. |
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France. |
| Genre/Form |
Biographies.
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Electronic books.
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Biographies.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Clarke, Desmond M. Descartes. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2006 0521823013 (DLC) 2005008107 (OCoLC)58788939 |
| ISBN |
0511168993 (electronic book) |
|
9780511168994 (electronic book) |
|
0511167520 |
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9780511167522 |
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9780511498077 (electronic book) |
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0511498071 (electronic book) |
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0521823013 (hardback) |
|
9780521823012 (hardback) |
| Report No. |
MYILIB_CUp |
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