Descartes: A Biography

end CUNYB/Clarke     December, :

 Notes to Pages–

.Descartes advised Ferrier (June)totraveloverland from Paris to Calais,

and to travel by sea ‘for a day or two’ until he reached Dordrecht or Rotterdam

(i.).

.Descartes to Beeckman,March(x.).

.The dispute between Catholic theologians began with the publication ofConcordia

liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis(), by the Jesuit Luis Molina (–); the

other side of the debate was defended by a Dominican friar, Domingo Ba ̃nez

(–).

.Baillet (), i.,saysthat Descartes went to Breda in May, although he

seems to have been in Brittany in October and December.Itisunclear when

he arrived in the United Provinces, except that he was certainly there by October

.

.Twenty-eight years later, Descartes refers to the time ‘when I was once a soldier

atBreda.’ Descartes to Willem,June(iv.).

.Beeckman (–), i..

.Beeckman raised the question as follows. If we know how far a body falls in two

hours, calculate the distance the same body will fall in one hour. He comments on

Descartes’ reply: ‘This was shown by M. Perron, when I gave him the opportunity

byasking him if someone could know how much space is traversed by a falling

body in an hour, if they know how much space is traversed in two hours, according

to my principles, namely, that what is once set in motion continues in motion

forever in a vacuum, assuming that there is a vacuum between the earth and the

falling stone’ (x.).

.Stevin ()v.–.

.Beeckman to Mersenne,October(CM, iii.).

.Forexample, Descartes to G. Brandt,July. Descartes had sent his watch

to have a chain fitted, and he wrote in Dutch: ‘Excuse me if I write so poorly in

Dutch’ (iv.,)

.Euclid (,). John Pell wrote to Charles Cavendish in,following a

meeting with Descartes, that ‘he says he had no other instructor for Algebra than

the reading of Clavy Algebra above thirty yeares ago’ (iv.–).

.Descartes acknowledged in Junethat ‘Viete was undoubtedly a very good`

mathematician, although the writings we have from him are merely unconnected

pieces which do not compose a perfect body and in which he did not try to

make himself understood by everyone.’ Descartes to [Haestrecht?] [June?]

(iv.). When an edition of Viete’s work was published by Elsevier in Leiden,`

in, Descartes had no interest in getting a copy from Mersenne, to whom he

wrote (November): ‘I do not believe that there is anything in Vi`ete that I

should learn, and I am not interested in having books simply to decorate a library’

(iv.).

.Quoted in Bos (),, from Franc ̧ois Viete,` The Analytic Art,trans.T.Richard

Witner (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press,),.

.Descartes to Beeckman,March(x.).

.The concluding phrase used in letters to Beeckman, ‘love me,’ was also used

byDescartes when writing to other friends. He concluded a letter to Mersenne