Meditations on First Philosophy de Rene Descartes

Meditations on First Philosophy

Rene Descartes

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 28 feb 2011

Meditations on First Philosophy is a philosophical treatise written by Ren Descartes first published in Latin in 1641. The book is made up of six meditations, in which Descartes first discards all belief in things which are not absolutely certain, and then tries to establish what can be known for sure. The meditations were written as if he was meditating for 6 days: each meditation refers to the last one as "yesterday." However, Descartes did not take 6 days to complete this work; it actually took several years.

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René Descartes (1596-1650) was a pioneering metaphysician, a masterful mathematician, and a significant scientific thinker. He was primarily a mathematician throughout his life, followed by a natural scientist or "natural philosopher" and a metaphysician. He created the methods in mathematics that allowed for algebraic (or "analytic") geometry. He co-formulated the sine rule of refraction, created a significant empirical account of the rainbow, and proposed a naturalistic explanation for how the earth and planets formed in natural philosophy, among other notable accomplishments. A world of matter with a few basic properties and interacting according to a few universal principles was his new conception of the natural world, which has influenced how we think about it even today. Descartes created the contemporary interpretation of the mind-body problem by proposing that this natural world had an immaterial mind that was directly tied to the brain in humans. He offered proof for the existence of God in metaphysics, demonstrating that the nature of matter is an extension and the essence of the mind is thought. Early on, Descartes asserted that he had a unique method, which he later claimed to have used in metaphysics, natural philosophy, and many applications of mathematics.