Descartes - An Intellectual Biography Hardcover - 1995
by Stephen Gaukroger
Rene Descartes' insights into the nature of knowledge and the mind have inspired awe and debate through the centuries. In his quest to retrace Descartes' development as a scientist and philosopher, Gaukroger provides a portrait that brims with penetrating and often surprising insights into the philosopher's life and work. Illustrations.
From the rear cover
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 howDescartes developed his revolutionary ideas. It will be a landmark publication, welcomed by all readers interested in the origins of modern thought.
Details
- Title Descartes - An Intellectual Biography
- Author Stephen Gaukroger
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition First Edition
- Pages 520
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher OUP Oxford, Oxford
- Date 1995-05-25
- Features Bibliography
- ISBN 9780198239949 / 0198239947
- Weight 2.3 lbs (1.04 kg)
- Dimensions 9.51 x 6.47 x 1.39 in (24.16 x 16.43 x 3.53 cm)
- Reading level 1670
- Library of Congress subjects Descartes, Rene, Philosophers - France - Biography
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 94031924
- Dewey Decimal Code B
Media reviews
Citations
- Kirkus Reviews, 04/01/1994, Page 442
- Library Journal, 05/01/1995, Page 100
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