Descartes: World & Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

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. Cover Title Page Copyright CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction The origins of The World The Treatise on Light The Treatise on Man The abandonment of The World Chronology Further Reading Note on the Texts The Treatise on Light & related material Treatise on Light and other principal objects of the senses Chapter 1 On the difference between our sensations and the things that produce them Chapter 2 What the heat and the light of fire consist in Chapter 3 Hardness and fluidity Chapter 4 On the void, and how it comes about that our senses do not perceive certain bodies Chapter 5 On the number of elements and their qualities Chapter 6 Description of a new world, and the qualities of the matter of which it is composed Chapter 7 The Laws of Nature of this new world Chapter 8 On the formation of the sun and the stars in this new world Chapter 9 On the origin and the course of the planets and comets in general, and of comets in particular Chapter 10 Of the planets in general, and in particular of the Earth and the Moon Chapter 11 On weight Chapter 12 On The ebb and flow of the sea Chapter 13 On light Chapter 14 On the properties of light Chapter 15 That the face of the heaven of this new world must appear to its inhabitants completely like that of our world Appendix 1: The Dioptrics Discourse 2: Of Refraction Appendix 2: The Meteorology Discourse 8: On the Rainbow The Treatise on Man & related material Treatise on Man [Part 1: On the machine of the body] [Part 2: How the machine of the body is moved] [Part 3: The external senses of this machine and how they are related to ours] [Part 4: On the internal senses which are to be found in this machine] [Part 5: On the structure of the brain of this machine, and how the spirits are distributed there so as to cause its... The Description of the Human Body and All Its Functions, those that do not depend on the Soul as well as those that do. And... [Part 1. Preface] [Part 2. On the motion of the heart and the blood] [Part 3. On nutrition] [Part 4. The bodily parts that are formed in the seed] [Part 5. On the formation of the solid parts] Index "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. Of its two parts, The Treatise on Light introduced the first comprehensive, quantitative version of a mechanistic natural philosophy, supplying a theory of matter, physical optics, and a cosmology, and The Treatise on Man provided the first comprehensive mechanist physiology. This volume also includes translations of material important for an understanding of the work: related sections from The Dioptrics and The Meteors, and the first English translation of the complete text of The Description of the Human Body."--Jacket