Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

Despite his unwillingness to read publications by others, Descartes

remained open to answering many detailed queries about experiments

that were sent almost weekly by Mersenne. In this context, he adverted

to the recent death of Richelieu (December), commenting that he

would have needed to bequeath two or three of his millions to support

the range of experiments required ‘to discover the specific nature of every

body’ (iii.). The stark contrast within French public policy – between

raising taxes to wage war and failing to support scientific research from

royal funds – provoked the comment that such an investment ‘could lead

to great discoveries, which would be of much greater benefit to humanity

than all the victories that one could win by waging war’ (iii.).

By the following month, Descartes was sufficiently confident of

progress that he planned to put thePrinciplesinto production during

the summer, although he reminded his correspondent that it had taken

ayear to complete printing of theDioptricsand that he could expect a

similar delay in this case.He continued to perform experiments, includ-

ing those that Mersenne claimed to have done already, because he refused

to rely on experimental results that he had not replicated himself.He

was reworking the sections on astronomy that appeared in Part III of the

Principles,inApril, and inquired about Galileo’s telescope, then in

the possession of Gassendi, and whether it could be used to examine the

moons of Jupiter.However, just when he had nearly completed the text,

he was forced to return ‘from the heavens to earth’ by the publication of

Martin Schoock’s critique of Cartesianism.

The Admirable Method

Martinus Schoock’s long-winded, personal attack on Descartes, under

the titleThe Admirable Method of the New Philosophy of Ren ́e Descartes,

appeared in late March or April.Schoock had supported Voetius

previously in controversies within Dutch Calvininism, especially against

Remonstrants, and had subsequently moved from Utrecht to a chair

of rhetoric at Deventer and eventually to a chair of philosophy at

Groningen.He had begun work on his anti-Cartesian critique during

the summer holidays in,atUtrecht, where he could collaborate more

conveniently with Voetius on the content and style of the pamphlet. By

the end of the year, when he returned to Groningen for the new academic