Introduction: Problems of Descartes and the Scientific Revolution
This chapter defines the scope of the work and some of the obstacles to accomplishing it: This volume reconstructs key aspects of the early career of Descartes from 1618 to 1633; that is, up through the point of his composing his first system of natural p
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Introduction: Problems of Descartes and the Scientific Revolution
1.1
Prologue: The ‘Young’ and the ‘Mature’ Descartes, Natural Philosopher
In this book, I 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 first system 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, finally, systematic corpuscular-mechanical natural philosophy.1 My concern is not simply with the conceptual and technical aspects of these projects; but, with Descartes’ agendas within them, and his construction and presentation of his intellectual identity in relation to them. Hence, my subject matter is selective and ultimately limited in relation to the potential field of concerns in which intellectual historians and historians of science and philosophy might place Descartes, or even the young Descartes. Nevertheless, as explained below in Sect. 1.3.3, my focus on technical projects, agendas and identity well fits the scope and aim of scientific or intellectual biography. On my analysis, Descartes’ technical projects, agendas and senses of identity all shift over time, entangle and display great successes and deep failures. This motivates my choice of title, ‘Descartes Agonistes’: In all three dimensions—projects, agendas and identity concerns—the young Descartes struggles and contends, with himself and with real or virtual peers and competitors between 1618 and 1633, as he morphs from a mathematically competent, Jesuit–trained graduate in neo-Scholastic Aristotelianism to aspiring prophet of a firmly systematized corpuscular-mechanism,
1 Physico-mathematics is defined in a preliminary way below, in Sect. 1.3.2, and more fully in Sect. 2.5.3; Descartes’ early projects within the intended scope of this discipline are explored in Chap. 3. Also see below, Sect. 1.4 ‘Overview of Argument’, for more on the way this category will recur, be studied and explored throughout this work.
J. Schuster, Descartes-Agonistes: Physico-mathematics, Method & CorpuscularMechanism 1618-33, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 27, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4746-3_1, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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1 Introduction: Problems of Descartes and the Scientific Revolution
passing through stages of being a committed physico-mathematicus, advocate of a putative ‘universal mathematics’, and projector of a grand methodological dream. I argue that Descartes’ evolving program in physico-mathematics was the central, but not exclusive element in this complicated story, and thereby I indicate how the more usual tales of Descartes’ development can and must be retold around this axis. Unlike my previous work, the present book establishes that early on Descartes was very far from being interested in constructing a systematic natural philosophy, and that his commitment to corpuscular mechanism, though real, was more periphe
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