end CUNYB/Clarke December, :
Notes to Pages–.Ibid., ii..
.Descartes to Mersenne,April(iv.). He later told him that he had
read only ‘the first five or six pages’ (to Mersenne,September:iv.) and
‘the first four or five pages’ (to Mersenne,October:iv.).
.Chanut to Descartes,August(iv.). Descartes had written,June
, that he would be willing to publish something else ‘if the aversion I have
to seeing how few people bother to read my writings did not make me negligent’
(iv.).
.Descartes to Mersenne,October(iv.).
.Descartes to De Willem,June(iv.).
.See Descartes to [Newcastle] [October]: ‘The preservation of health has
always been the principal objective of my studies, and I have no doubt that there is
awayof acquiring much knowledge of medicine which has been lacking up to now.
However, since the treatise on animals that I am thinking about, and which I have
not yet found a way of completing, is only a prelude to achieving this knowledge,
I refrain from boasting that I already possess it’ (iv.).
.Descartes to Huygens [January](v.–). Erik-Jan Bos provided informa-
tion on the redating of these letters and on the details of the incident.
.Descartes was writing in January, and theStadtholderdied onMarch.
.Descartes to Huygens,March(iv.).
.Descartes to Chanut,March(iv.–).
.Descartes to Mersenne,March(iv.), and Descartes to Cavendish,
March(iv.–). He refers to the nine-year lapse of time in his letter to
Mersenne,April(iv.).
.Descartes to Cavendish,March(iv.).
.Descartes to Mersenne,March(iv.).
.Descartes to Mersenne,April(iv.–).
.Descartes to Mersenne,November(iv.).
.Descartes to [Cavendish],November(iv.). Later in the same letter, he
makes explicit that the impedence of the air ‘cannot be determined by reasoning
butonly by experience’ (iv.). The emphasis on experience was not confined to
the oscillation of pendulums. Descartes advised Princess Elizabeth that, in political
questions, it was ‘better to be guided by experience than by reason, because one
rarely interacts with people who are perfectly reasonable’. Descartes to Elizabeth
[May](iv.).
.Descartes to Mersenne,April(iv.). Descartes repeated this charge
to Mersenne,November(iv.–), that there was no merit in reading
Roberval at all and that the only reason he bothered to do so was because of
Mersenne’s requests.
.Roberval against Descartes [September](iv.).
.Descartes to Cavendish,May(iv.).
.Descartes to Mersenne,October(iv.).
.Elizabeth to Descartes,April(iv.). When Elizabeth was about to
return the manuscript to Descartes in April, she had mislaid the name of the