end CUNYB/Clarke December, :
Notes to Pages– in order to understand it, to read theseMeditationsbecause many people find that
they are much more difficult and I would be worried that her Majesty might get
tired of them.’
.In the following pages, I refer in parentheses to thePrinciplesbypart and paragraph
number, to facilitate identification of references in the Latin and French texts and
in contemporary translations.
.The second and third laws ofThe Worldare reversed, and the original formulation
of each law is amended as follows. ‘The first law is that every thing, insofar as it
is simple and undivided, remains always in the same state insofar as it can, and
it is never changed except by external causes’ (II,). ‘Another law of nature is:
no part of matter, when considered separately, ever tends to continue moving in
an oblique path but only in a straight line’ (II,). ‘The third law of nature is:
whenever a body that is moved meets another body, if it has less force to continue
in a straight line than the other body has to resist it, then it is deflected elsewhere
and, while it retains its motion, it loses only the determination of its motion. If
however it has a greater force, then it moves the other body with itself and it loses
as much of its own motion as it contributes to the other body’ (II,).
.‘If we consider what should be understood by motion, not as it is commonly used
butaccording to the truth of the reality...wecan say that it is the translation
of one part of matter or of one body from the vicinity of those bodies which are
immediately close to it and which are considered to be at rest to the vicinity of
others’ (II,).
.Thus, ‘the location [of a body] in the philosophical sense should be determined,
not by bodies that are very far away, such as the fixed stars, but by those that are
contiguous to what is said to move. Moreover, if one understands location in a
non-technical sense, there is no reason to think of the fixed stars rather than the
Earth as immobile; that would make sense only if one thinks that there are no other
bodies beyond the stars from which they recede and in relation to which they can
be said to move and the Earth can be said to be at rest, in the same sense in which
the Earth is said to move in relation to the fixed stars. However, it is unreasonable
to believe that.’ (III,). Descartes later added, in the French edition, that one
could think of the Earth as being in motion if one used the term ‘motion’ loosely,
‘in the same way that one can sometimes say, about those who are asleep and are
lying in a boat, that they move from Calais to Dover because they are in a boat
which transports them there’ (ix-.).
.He refers to these letters, which are now lost, in Descartes to Charlet [February
](iv.); Descartes to Dinet [February](iv.); and Descartes to
Bourdin [February](iv.).
.Descartes to Charlet [February](iv.–).
.Descartes to Dinet [February](iv.).
.This is reflected, for example, in the contrasting accounts by two contemporaries.
Franc ̧ois Poulain de la Barre was a Catholic priest who became a Calvinist and
then offered a detailed critique of the Catholic position. According to Poulain de
la Barre, Christ is present spiritually or symbolically in the Eucharist. Samuel
Sorbi`ere, in his discourse concerning his conversion to Catholicism, argued that