Polyteknisk Boghandel

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) had a remarkably short working life, and hisoutput was small, yet his contributions to philosophy and science have enduredto the present day. He is perhaps best known for his statement 'Cogito, ergosum'. By a mixture of 'intuition' and 'deduction' Descartes derived from the'cogito' principle first the existence of a material world.But Descartes did not intend the metaphysics to stand apart from his scientificwork, which included important investigations into physics, mathematics,psychology, and optics. In this book Tom Sorrell shows that Descartes was,above all, an advocate and practitioner of a new mathematical approach tophysics, and that he developed his metaphysics to support his programme in thesciences.