Abstract

Discusses possible reasons for Descartes's move to the Netherlands, and his avoidance of patronage there. Considers his work on optics, music, and metaphysics. Also deals with Descartes's construction of an artificial, universal language, changes in his thinking about the doctrine of clarity and distinctness, his solution to the Pappus problem, his classification of curves, and his work on meteorology that he expanded into a project to explain the whole of physics. This work was considerably slowed down by his dispute with Beeckman over the authorship of ideas.