Descartes: A Biography

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

Notes to Pages– 

(Descartes to Pollot,February:i.). Reneri provided copies on behalf

of Descartes to Pieter Cornelisz Hooft and other prominent people in June

(Hooft,Briefwisseling, ii.–; quoted in Cohen:).

.The same general encouragement is repeated in Descartes to Mersenne, January

.‘Ihope that you will continue always to tell me frankly what is said about

me, either favourably or otherwise; you will have more opportunity in future to do

so than ever before because my book has arrived in Paris’ (i.).

.Similar descriptions of himself as a reluctant protagonist are frequently repeated.

Forexample: ‘It is not my style to spend time refuting other people’s views’

(Descartes to Plemp,March: ii.); ‘it is entirely against my character to

reproach others and I think I have never done so as much as in this case’ (Descartes

to Mersenne,May: ii.).

.Descartes to Mersenne,October(i.).

.Descartes to Van Beverwijck,July(iv.). There was a sound basis for this

complaint, because Plemp had published his own objections to Descartes and mere

summaries of Descartes’ replies in the first edition of hisDe fundamentis medicinae,

libri sex(Leuven,). The point here is simply that Descartes was so upset that

he was still complaining about the injustice involved six years later. See Descartes

to Colvius,September(iv.–).

.He wrote to Plemp later about dissecting the heart of an eel ‘before seven or eight

o’clock this morning’, onMarch(ii.).

.It was called the ‘fallacy of affirming the consequent’.

.The Aristotelian character of theMeteorologicorum Libri Sexis evident from his

definition of meteors as ‘imperfectly mixed bodies’ (p.).

.InAnti-Aristarchus(p.), Froidmont lists those who support the movement of the

Earth, including Galileo, Foscarini, Gilbert, and ‘many others throughout Europe

today’. He repeats some of the standard arguments against the Earth’s motion,

including the objection that if the Earth revolved so quickly, buildings would

collapse (p.). One of his basic arguments was that the Copernican theory was

contrary to Scripture, and that for those who accepted the infallibility of the Pope,

it was close to heresy to defend Galileo (pp.–).

.Plemp to Descartes,September(i.).

.In scholastic theories of perception, it was assumed that the form of what is

perceived must travel from the object of perception to the observer’s senses.

That led them to postulate form-preserving images that travelled somehow

from the objects of perception to the senses, and these were called intentional

species.

.Descartes to Plemp, for Fromondus,October(i.–).

.The abuse of Scripture to support scientific or philosophical views continued to

rankle with Descartes. He commented on work by Comenius [August]; ‘I

think, however, that if one wishes to derive from Holy Scripture knowledge of

truths that pertain only to the human sciences and which are not relevant to our

salvation, that is equivalent to using it for an objective that was not intended by

God and therefore abusing it’ (ii.).