Descartes' Dream

Descartes' Dream PDF Author: Philip J. Davis
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486442527
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
These provocative essays take a modern look at the 17th-century thinker's dream, examining the influences of mathematics on society, particularly in light of technological advances. They survey the conditions that elicit the application of mathematic principles; the applications' effectiveness; and how applied mathematics transform perceptions of reality. 1987 edition.

Descartes' Dream

Descartes' Dream PDF Author: Philip J. Davis
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486442527
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
These provocative essays take a modern look at the 17th-century thinker's dream, examining the influences of mathematics on society, particularly in light of technological advances. They survey the conditions that elicit the application of mathematic principles; the applications' effectiveness; and how applied mathematics transform perceptions of reality. 1987 edition.

Descartes' Error

Descartes' Error PDF Author: Antonio Damasio
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014303622X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
"An ambitious and meticulous foray into the nature of being." -- The Boston Globe A landmark exploration of the relationship between emotion and reason Since Descartes famously proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person’s true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes’ Error in 1995. Antonio Damasio—"one of the world’s leading neurologists" (The New York Times)—challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wondrously engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.

The Will to Reason

The Will to Reason PDF Author: C. P. Ragland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190264454
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In 'Giving Aid Effectively', Mark T. Buntaine argues that countries that are members of international organizations have prompted multilateral development banks to give development and environmental aid more effectively by generating better information about performance.

Descartes' Bones

Descartes' Bones PDF Author: Russell Shorto
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307275663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Sixteen years after René Descartes' death in Stockholm in 1650, a pious French ambassador exhumed the remains of the controversial philosopher to transport them back to Paris. Thus began a 350-year saga that saw Descartes' bones traverse a continent, passing between kings, philosophers, poets, and painters. But as Russell Shorto shows in this deeply engaging book, Descartes' bones also played a role in some of the most momentous episodes in history, which are also part of the philosopher's metaphorical remains: the birth of science, the rise of democracy, and the earliest debates between reason and faith. Descartes' Bones is a flesh-and-blood story about the battle between religion and rationalism that rages to this day. A New York Times Notable Book

Descartes: Philosophical Essays and Correspondence

Descartes: Philosophical Essays and Correspondence PDF Author: René Descartes
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603840176
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
A superb text for teaching the philosophy of Descartes, this volume includes all his major works in their entirety, important selections from his lesser known writings, and key selections from his philosophical correspondence. The result is an anthology that enables the reader to understand the development of Descartes’s thought over his lifetime. Includes a biographical Introduction, chronology, bibliography, and index.

How To Read Descartes

How To Read Descartes PDF Author: John G. Cottingham
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 1783780541
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
'I realized it was necessary to demolish everything and start again right from the foundations, if I wanted to establish anything in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.' Ren Descartes Revered as the 'father of modern philosophy', Descartes is one of the most influential philosophers of all time, but his ideas are also highly controversial and have been subjected to intense criticism by present-day philosophers. John Cottingham examines Descartes's remarkable attempt to construct a new basis for scientific understanding, his famous first principle, 'I am thinking, therefore I exist,' and his notorious and often misunderstood account of the relation between mind and body. He also tackles fascinating and lesser-known aspects of Descartes's philosophy, including his views on language, human and animal nature, the role of the emotions in the good life, and the place of God in science and ethics. Extracts are taken from the whole range of Descartes's writings, including the Discourse on the Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, Principles of Philosophy and his last book, the Passions of the Soul, as well as extracts from his philosophical letters.

The Philosophy of Descartes

The Philosophy of Descartes PDF Author: A. Boyce Gibson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315468077
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Maintaining that it is impossible to understand the work of a philosopher without understanding the previous history of thought and the contemporaneous developments, this book, originally published in 1932, is an in-depth study of Descartes’ philosophy with a strong emphasis on the historical approach. It covers Descartes’ early life and education, before continuing to discuss his method of doubt, the existence of God, the scientific interpretation of nature, the unity of knowledge, the attributes of God and free-will.

Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings

Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings PDF Author: René Descartes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110726832X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Based on the new and much acclaimed two-volume Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes by Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch, this anthology of essential texts contains the most important and widely studied of those writings, including the Discourse and Meditations and substantial extracts from the Regulae, Optics, Principles, Objectives and Replies, Comments on a Broadsheet, and Passions of the Soul. In clear, readable, modern English, with a full text and running references to the standard Franco-Latin edition of Descartes, this book is planned as the definitive one-volume reader for all English-speaking students of Descartes.

Descartes

Descartes PDF Author: Margaret Dauler Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134963521
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
One of the most significant studies of Descartes in recent times. It concentrates on the Meditations to show Descartes' philosophy in the context of his overall scientific objectives, not all of them fully explicit in the texts.

Between Two Worlds

Between Two Worlds PDF Author: John Carriero
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691135614
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
Between Two Worlds is an authoritative commentary on--and powerful reinterpretation of--the founding work of modern philosophy, Descartes's Meditations. Philosophers have tended to read Descartes's seminal work in an occasional way, examining its treatment of individual topics while ignoring other parts of the text. In contrast, John Carriero provides a sustained, systematic reading of the whole text, giving a detailed account of the positions against which Descartes was reacting, and revealing anew the unity, meaning, and originality of the Meditations. Carriero finds in the Meditations a nearly continuous argument against Thomistic Aristotelian ways of thinking about cognition, and shows more clearly than ever before how Descartes bridged the old world of scholasticism and the new one of mechanistic naturalism. Rather than casting Descartes's project primarily in terms of skepticism, knowledge, and certainty, Carriero focuses on fundamental disagreements between Descartes and the scholastics over the nature of understanding, the relation between the senses and the intellect, the nature of the human being, and how and to what extent God is cognized by human beings. Against this background, Carriero shows, Descartes developed his own conceptions of mind, body, and the relation between them, creating a coherent, philosophically rich project in the Meditations and setting the agenda for a century of rationalist metaphysics.