Descartes: A Biography

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The Principles of Philosophy() 

completed, and Gassendi’s extended critique of theMeditationsappeared

from his Amsterdam publisher as:A Metaphysical Disquisition: Or Doubts

and Counter Objections to the Metaphysics of Ren ́eDescartes, and his Replies.

Descartes reacted to this book as he did to most large tomes and, indeed,

to many rather small books: he did not read it. He had started to read it

onor aboutFebruaryand, having glanced over the Preface and

‘five or six pages’, he had decided initially that it deserved a reply.He was

especially annoyed that Gassendi was complaining about publication of

his objections to theMeditations,for, according to Descartes, Gassendi had

asked to have his name included – when all the other authors of objections

were anonymous – and he had availed of the opportunity even to correct

the proofs before publication. However, once Descartes had read about a

hundred pages of theDisquisition,hechanged his mind. He found that

there was nothing in the book that was worth reading and he lacked the

patience required to persevere to the end. He decided instead to retaliate

against Gassendi by deleting the Fifth Objections from the next edition of

the text, and to insert instead a brief explanation of why he had dropped

them, together with a reply to Gassendi’s new book.

Meantime, Descartes had begun to write a summary of his philosophy in

late, and he had planned to devote most ofto completing the task.

Although he originally thought of including in his new book an exposition

of scholastic textbook philosophy, he changed his mind about that during

. The revised and reduced plan was to summarize his metaphysics

and physics in a format that would make it suitable for college teachers.

The time spent preparing a second edition of theMeditationsand, even

more distractingly, the time consumed by his row with Voetius frequently

displaced thePrinciplesto the margins of his agenda. Nonetheless, he seems

to have continued working on it in his spare moments, as is evident from his

correspondence. This research included his own observations of natural

phenomena and, with his usual reluctance, a cursory review of what his

contemporaries were publishing about topics in natural philosophy that

he planned to explain.

Descartes and Digby

Kenelm Digby (–) and Thomas White (–)were two

English Catholics who had settled in Paris, where they were introduced to

Mersenne and Hobbes. When Digby was only three years old, his father,