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Descartes : an intellectual biography /
The results of Descartes' work in mathematics and science are still of benefit to science today. This book shows how he developed his ideas and how his work informed the later studies in philosophy for which he is renowned.
| Clasificación: | Libro Electrónico |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Electrónico eBook |
| Idioma: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
New York :
Oxford University Press,
1995.
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| Temas: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Texto completo |
| Sumario: | The results of Descartes' work in mathematics and science are still of benefit to science today. This book shows how he developed his ideas and how his work informed the later studies in philosophy for which he is renowned. Rene 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 a landmark publication, welcomed by all readers interested in the origins of modern thought. |
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| Descripción Física: | 1 online resource (xx, 499 pages) : illustrations |
| Bibliografía: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 481-487) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780191597480 0191597481 9780191519543 0191519545 0585128596 9780585128597 0198237243 9780198237242 |