Rene descartes biography pdf free
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Cogito, ergo sum: the life of Rene Descartes 1567921841
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RICHARD WATSON
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Cogito, Ergo Sum The Life of Rene Descartes RENE DESCARTES
is the philosophical architect
of our modern world. In metaphysics, he established the view that mind and body are distinct substances, a position foundational for any belief that the human soul is immortal. In mathematics, he invented analytic geometry — the basis of calculus — which makes physics as we know it possible. Descartes perfected the method of proposing and testing hypotheses with experiments that anyone can repeat, which forms the basis of modern science. In optics, he discovered and described laws of refraction and reflection. In medicine, he was a pioneer in vivisection and anatomical description for understanding the human body. In physiology, his analysis of the relations among the sense organs, nerves, and the brain is still taught today. In psychology, he discovered conditioned reflexes and
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Descartes An Intellectual Biography
René Descartes's insights into the nature of knowledge and the mind have inspired awe and debate through the centuries. But while philosophers have sought to understand the ramifications of his theories, they have paid much less attention to how, exactly, he arrived at his ideas. What twists and turns of his intellect brought him to his epochal conclusions? How did his personal ambitions and the social conditions of his era shape his thought? These questions and more are masterfully answered in Stephen Gaukroger's Descartes, a fascinating look at this most influential of all Renaissance thinkers.
In his quest to retrace Descartes's development as a scientist and philosopher, Gaukroger leaves no stone unturned. From the great man's first book on music theory (Compendium Musicae) to his masterworks Discours, Essais, Meditationes, and Principia, from his study of mathematics while attending a Jesuit college at age ten, through his dying days in t
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Rene Descartes biography
John Schuster
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2012
In this book, inom attempt to reconstruct key aspects of the early career of Descartes from 1618 to 1633; that is, up through the point of his composing his fi rst struktur of natural philosophy, Le Monde , in 1629-1633. I focus upon the overlapping and intertwined development of Descartes' projects in physico-mathematics, analytical mathematics, universal method, and, fi nally, systematic corpuscular-mechanical natural philosophy. 1 My concern fryst vatten not simply with the conceptual and technical aspects of these projects; but, with Descartes' agendas within them, and his construction and uppvisning of his intellectual identity in relation to them. Hence, my subject matter is selective and ultimately limited in relation to the potential fi flamma of concerns in which intellectual historians and historians of science and philosophy