Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

Chanut’s letter reached Egmond three hours after Descartes had

departed for Paris, in May, with The Hague as the first stop on

his journey south. Once he arrived there, he heard that the Chanut letter

had already passed through The Hague and been dispatched north. Since

it included royal queries, he decided to wait for the letter to be returned

from Egmond. Descartes remained in The Hague to answer it as best he

could, although his accommodation ‘in the room of an inn’ was not ideally

suited to the intellectual challenge involved.In his reply, Descartes pro-

vides an extensive answer to all the objections raised by Queen Christina.

He also invokes the authority of Nicholas of Cusa, who – although he was

a cardinal – had also argued that we have no reason to believe that the

universe is finite (iv.).

Descartes repeats the style of argument he used in thePrinciplesto show

that the universe has no spatial boundaries. If we imagine the universe with

a finite boundary and then try to describe what lies beyond it, we are forced

to think of an empty space that has the same property of extension as matter.

Descartes concludes that we cannot imagine the universe as being spatially

bounded and, for that reason, that we should describe it as indefinitely

extended (rather than infinite, which is a feature that applies properly only

to God). He does not claim that indefinite extension in space implies that

there was an indefinitely extended time, in the past, during which God

might have created the universe had He wished to do so. However, the

Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body suggests that time must

extend indefinitely into the future. ‘For the faith teaches us that, even

though the Earth and the heavens will perish – that is, will change their

appearance – nonetheless, the world (that is, the matter of which they are

composed) will never perish. This is apparent because the faith promises

eternal life after the resurrection for our bodies and, consequently, for the

world in which they will exist’ (v.).

Descartes disposes more easily of the other objections that Queen

Christina drew from Christian faith. Genesis, according to Descartes,

tells the story of creation from the perspective of human beings and gives

us the impression that we are the centre of the universe. However, even

if there were indefinitely many worlds like ours, the mere fact that we

are not unique would not imply that the significance of human life is

devalued. God could have created an indefinitely extended universe, with

creatures similar to us on many other planets. Yet the core of the Christian

account could remain intact. As usual, Descartes follows his philosophical