René Descartes

New to Penguin Classics, the astonishing story of the Copernican Revolution, told through the words of the ground-breaking scientists who brought it about. 'How great, then, must be the incomprehensible space all the way to the furthest fixed stars? How wide and immense must be the depth of that fantastical sphere?' In the late fifteenth century, it was believed that...

René Descartes was a central figure in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. In his Discourse on Method, he outlined the contrast between mathematics and experimental sciences, and the extent to which each one can achieve certainty. Drawing on his own work in geometry, optics, astronomy, and physiology, Descartes developed the hypothetical method that characterises modern science, and this...

Descartes was prepared to go to any lengths in his search for certainty—even to deny those things that seemed most self-evident. In his Meditations of 1641, and in the Objections and Replies that were included with the original publication, he set out to dismantle and then reconstruct the idea of the individual self and its existence. In doing so, Descartes...

This second of two parts concentrates on Descartes' work on the nature and limits of human knowledge and the methods by which we can hope to acquire knowledge. It also includes the first seven chapters of The World and a selection of Descartes' correspondence and replies to his critics. The first volume (0-14-04470-1) focuses on Descartes' Meditations.