Descartes' Metaphysical Physics - Brossura

Garber, Daniel

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0226282198 ISBN 13: 9780226282190

Casa editrice: University of Chicago Press, 1992

Riassunto

In this first book-length treatment of Descartes' important and influential natural philosophy, Daniel Garber is principally concerned with Descartes' accounts of matter and motion—the joint between Descartes' philosophical and scientific interests. These accounts constitute the point at which the metaphysical doctrines on God, the soul, and body, developed in writings like the Meditations, give rise to physical conclusions regarding atoms, vacua, and the laws that matter in motion must obey.

Garber achieves a philosophically rigorous reading of Descartes that is sensitive to the historical and intellectual context in which he wrote. What emerges is a novel view of this familiar figure, at once unexpected and truer to the historical Descartes.

The book begins with a discussion of Descartes' intellectual development and the larger project that frames his natural philosophy, the complete reform of all the sciences. After this introduction Garber thoroughly examines various aspects of Descartes' physics: the notion of body and its identification with extension; Descartes' rejection of the substantial forms of the scholastics; his relation to the atomistic tradition of atoms and the void; the concept of motion and the laws of motion, including Descartes' conservation principle, his laws of the persistence of motion, and his collision law; and the grounding of his laws in God.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sugli autori

Daniel Garber is professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Daniel Garber is professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: University of Chicago Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1992
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0226282198
• ISBN 13: 9780226282190
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 404
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile