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



Magic, Mathematics, and

Mechanics: Paris,–

The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which

the mind’s eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.

(Rules:x.)

D

the years immediately prior to his second departure for the

United Provinces, Descartes struggled unsuccessfully with a num-

ber of fundamental problems in mathematics and philosophy. The results

of those efforts are recorded in theRules for Guiding the Mind in Searching

for the Truth, which was published posthumously, and in comments made

in the biographical paragraphs of theDiscourse on Method. The intellectual

milieu in which Descartes lived was as fluid as the uncertainty of the initial

steps on his intellectual journey suggests. His foreign travels confirmed

atleast the narrowness of the education he had received from the Jesuits.

They also exposed him to a wide range of disparate views – religious, mag-

ical, and mystical – that were defended by apparently genuine believers.

Descartes seems never to have been enamoured sufficiently of anyone’s

thought to consider seriously adopting it. This same general scepticism

applied more vigorously in the case of authors such as Campanella and

Bruno. His glancing encounter with their work, however, provided the

conditions in which Descartes briefly considered and definitively rejected

all forms of magic and mysticism in favour of an ideal of mechanical

explanation.

He had planned to return to Paris in February,but according to

Baillet he was forced to change plans in order to avoid the plague that

had afflicted the city for two years previously.He went instead to visit

his father in Rennes. Since Descartes was now twenty-six years old, his

father was able to finalize the legal formalities of his inheritance from his

mother’s will. OnApril of that year, he wrote to his brother, Pierre, about

