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    Brody Schuster Abstract

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    This document discusses how Descartes incorporated more factual observations in his Principia Philosophiae compared to his earlier work Le Monde. It argues that including matters of fact like sunspots, magnetism, and variable stars was part of Descartes' strategy to improve the systematic power and consistency of the natural philosophy presented in Principia. Rather than focusing on metaphysics or mechanics, the document asserts Descartes' main strategy was weaving new empirical observations into broad explanatory narratives with a radical Copernican worldview.

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    Brody Schuster Abstract

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    kleiter
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    This document discusses how Descartes incorporated more factual observations in his Principia Philosophiae compared to his earlier work Le Monde. It argues that including matters of fact like sunspots, magnetism, and variable stars was part of Descartes' strategy to improve the systematic power and consistency of the natural philosophy presented in Principia. Rather than focusing on metaphysics or mechanics, the document asserts Descartes' main strategy was weaving new empirical observations into broad explanatory narratives with a radical Copernican worldview.

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    This document discusses how Descartes incorporated more factual observations in his Principia Philosophiae compared to his earlier work Le Monde. It argues that including matters of fact like sunspots, magnetism, and variable stars was part of Descartes' strategy to improve the systematic power and consistency of the natural philosophy presented in Principia. Rather than focusing on metaphysics or mechanics, the document asserts Descartes' main strategy was weaving new empirical observations into broad explanatory narratives with a radical Copernican worldview.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    32 views1 page

    Brody Schuster Abstract

    Uploaded by

    kleiter
    This document discusses how Descartes incorporated more factual observations in his Principia Philosophiae compared to his earlier work Le Monde. It argues that including matters of fact like sunspots, magnetism, and variable stars was part of Descartes' strategy to improve the systematic power and consistency of the natural philosophy presented in Principia. Rather than focusing on metaphysics or mechanics, the document asserts Descartes' main strategy was weaving new empirical observations into broad explanatory narratives with a radical Copernican worldview.

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    Descartes and Sunspots: Matters of Fact and Systematizing Strategy in the Principia Philosophiae

    Judit Brody and John A. Schuster

    Descartes wrote two treatises of corpuscular-mechanical natural philosophy, the unfinished Le Monde (1633) and the Principia philosophiae (1644/1647). Both present Descartes vortex celestial mechanics; his explanation of the orbital behaviours of planets, comets and satellites; and his mechanistic theory of light in its cosmic setting. But the differences are dramatic: the Principles is a textbook in neoScholastic style; Le Monde an attempt at persuasion of honntes hommes in the vernacular. Beyond these differences, historians have tended to concentrate on contrasts between the treatises in regard matter theory. Commentators have also, perforce, noted the much richer invocation of well attested matters of fact in the Principia, notably Descartes attention to magnetism, sunspots, novae and variable stars. This paper argues that far from being opposed intellectual practices inside the Principles, Descartes moves in matter theory and his adoption, and re-framing, of wide swathes of novel matters of fact, were two sides of the same cointhat coin being his strategies for improving the systematic power, scope and consistency of the natural philosophy presented in the Principia compared to Le Monde. Moreover, the center of gravity of these strategies did not reside in Descartes metaphysical grounding of the natural philosophy; or in his now elaborate teaching concerning the laws of motion and collision. Rather, we argue that Descartes systematising strategy focussed mainly upon weaving ranges of novel matters of fact into explanatory and descriptive narratives with cosmic sweep and radical realist Copernican intent. Jacqueline Biro has recently identified gambits of this type as cosmographical (the natural philosophical relating of heavens and earth in contemporary usage)*, seeing them as characteristic of radical realist Copernican natural philosophers, starting with Copernicus, and running through the contributions of Bruno, Gilbert, Galileo and, as we suggest here, most elaborately, Descartes himself.
    * Jacqueline Biro, On Earth as in Heaven: Cosmography and the Shape of the Earth from Copernicus to Descartes (2009)

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