Descartes: A Biography

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

Notes to Pages– 

.Pascal (–), i..

.Ibid., i.–.

.These doubts began to emerge in the seventeenth century, and they were raised

even by well-known experimental scientists such as Robert Boyle, who supported

Pascal’s general theory but was worried that some of his experiments were only

thought experiments. For example, inHydrostatical Paradoxes(), Boyle ques-

tioned whether Pascal had done the experiment that required someone to sit fifteen

or twenty feet under water with a tube in contact with his thigh. Alexandre Koyr ́e

raised similar doubts whether glass makers in thes could have constructed

a glass tube thirty or forty feet long, with sufficiently strong sides to support a

column of water of the same length. See Boyle (–), v., and Koyr ́e

(),–.

.Pascal (–), i..

.Ibid.,–,.

.Ibid., i..

.Huygens to Descartes,November(v.–).

.Descartes to Huygens,December(v.).

.Descartes to Mersenne,December(v.).

.Descartes to Mersenne,December:‘Iadvised Mr. Pascal to experiment

if the mercury rises as much when one is high up on a mountain as when one is

atthe bottom, and I do not know if he has done the experiment yet’ (v.). Since

Mersenne had died in, Descartes wrote to Carcavi in Paris,June,

still asking whether the experiment had been done or not. ‘I hope you will not find

it unacceptable if I ask you to tell me about the results of an experiment which, I

am told, Mr. Pascal performed or had arranged to be performed on the Auvergne

mountains, to find out if mercury rises higher in a tube at the bottom of a mountain

and to what extent it rises more than when it is higher up the mountain. I should

be entitled to get the information from him rather than from you, because I was

the one who suggested, two years ago, that he do this experiment and that I had no

doubt about its success, although I had not done the experiment myself’ (v.).

.Descartes to Carcavi,August(v.).

.Carcavi to Descartes,September(v.). Pascal remained in Clermont

from Mayto November, whereas Descartes diedFebruary.

.This debate is discussed in detail in Shapin and Schaffer ().

.Brasset wrote to Brisacier,October, that Descartes had passed through The

Hague on his return journey to Egmond, where he would ‘practise his philosophy

during the winter’ (v.).

.Baillet (), ii..

.Huygens to Descartes,December(v.).

.This was sparked by a lecture she heard at Uppsala onSeptemberby

Johann Freinsheim (–), who had been professor of politics and rhetoric

atthe university and, in, became court librarian and historiographer to the

queen. He remained in Sweden until after Descartes’ death, and took up a post as

counsellor to Princess Elizabeth’s brother, the elector of Palatine, in. Chanut’s

letter was delayed in transit, and he wrote a second time, onNovember, to remind