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The World: or the Treatise of the light
"The effect of this man on his age and the new age cannot be imagined broadly enough... René Descartes is indeed the true beginner of modern philosophy, insofar as it makes thinking the principle. "- Hegel
"Descartes was the first to bring to light the idea of a transcendental science, which is to contain a system of knowledge of the conditions of possibility of all knowledge." - Kant
"Descartes is rightly considered the father of modern philosophy" - Schopenhauer
A new 2023 translation directly from the original manuscripts into English of Descartes' famous work "The World, or the Treatise of the light". This edition contains a new introduction and afterword from the translator, as well as a timeline of Descartes' life and summaries of each of his works.
Here, he explores the nature of light and its interaction with matter. It is significant because it helped to establish the idea of light as a wave and had a significant impact on the development of modern physics.
"Descartes was the first to bring to light the idea of a transcendental science, which is to contain a system of knowledge of the conditions of possibility of all knowledge." - Kant
"Descartes is rightly considered the father of modern philosophy" - Schopenhauer
A new 2023 translation directly from the original manuscripts into English of Descartes' famous work "The World, or the Treatise of the light". This edition contains a new introduction and afterword from the translator, as well as a timeline of Descartes' life and summaries of each of his works.
Here, he explores the nature of light and its interaction with matter. It is significant because it helped to establish the idea of light as a wave and had a significant impact on the development of modern physics.
123 pages, Paperback
Published April 12, 2023
5 people want to read
About the author
René Descartes
1,613 books2,376 followers
Meditations on First Philosophy
(1641) and
Principles of Philosophy
(1644), main works of French mathematician and scientist René Descartes, considered the father of analytic geometry and the founder of modern rationalism, include the famous dictum "I think, therefore I am."
A set of two perpendicular lines in a plane or three in space intersect at an origin in Cartesian coordinate system. Cartesian coordinate, a member of the set of numbers, distances, locates a point in this system. Cartesian coordinates describe all points of a Cartesian plane.
From given sets, {X} and {Y}, one can construct Cartesian product, a set of all pairs of elements (x, y), such that x belongs to {X} and y belongs to {Y}.
Cartesian philosophers include Antoine Arnauld.
René Descartes, a writer, highly influenced society. People continue to study closely his writings and subsequently responded in the west. He of the key figures in the revolution also apparently influenced the named coordinate system, used in planes and algebra.
Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul , a treatise on the early version of now commonly called emotions, he goes so far to assert that he writes on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before." Many elements in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or earlier like Saint Augustine of Hippo provide precedents. Naturally, he differs from the schools on two major points: He rejects corporeal substance into matter and form and any appeal to divine or natural ends in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of act of creation of God.
Baruch Spinoza and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz later advocated Descartes, a major figure in 17th century Continent, and the empiricist school of thought, consisting of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume, opposed him. Leibniz and Descartes, all well versed like Spinoza, contributed greatly. Descartes, the crucial bridge with algebra, invented the coordinate system and calculus. Reflections of Descartes on mind and mechanism began the strain of western thought; much later, the invention of the electronic computer and the possibility of machine intelligence impelled this thought, which blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His stated most in §7 of part I and in part IV of Discourse on the Method .
A set of two perpendicular lines in a plane or three in space intersect at an origin in Cartesian coordinate system. Cartesian coordinate, a member of the set of numbers, distances, locates a point in this system. Cartesian coordinates describe all points of a Cartesian plane.
From given sets, {X} and {Y}, one can construct Cartesian product, a set of all pairs of elements (x, y), such that x belongs to {X} and y belongs to {Y}.
Cartesian philosophers include Antoine Arnauld.
René Descartes, a writer, highly influenced society. People continue to study closely his writings and subsequently responded in the west. He of the key figures in the revolution also apparently influenced the named coordinate system, used in planes and algebra.
Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul , a treatise on the early version of now commonly called emotions, he goes so far to assert that he writes on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before." Many elements in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or earlier like Saint Augustine of Hippo provide precedents. Naturally, he differs from the schools on two major points: He rejects corporeal substance into matter and form and any appeal to divine or natural ends in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of act of creation of God.
Baruch Spinoza and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz later advocated Descartes, a major figure in 17th century Continent, and the empiricist school of thought, consisting of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume, opposed him. Leibniz and Descartes, all well versed like Spinoza, contributed greatly. Descartes, the crucial bridge with algebra, invented the coordinate system and calculus. Reflections of Descartes on mind and mechanism began the strain of western thought; much later, the invention of the electronic computer and the possibility of machine intelligence impelled this thought, which blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His stated most in §7 of part I and in part IV of Discourse on the Method .
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January 3, 2025
I have read an abridged copy of the World, but I must say: the amount that this text gets appreciated does not deserve this book in any way. We see here maintained, the theories of air resistance, conservation of mass/motion, the idea of the cosmos, the speed of light, every single development in physics and astrophysics is propounded in this book. Thomas Bradwardine's Proportionibus is the only thing that comes close, and for its scientific axioms, is really much more impressive than this work, however I will have to admit this work was enjoyable for what it was: an incredibly ingenious scientific treatise on motion, matter, energy, and light.
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