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Descartes's ambitions

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Descartes's original title for Discourse on Method was "Project for a Science that Can Raise our Nature to its Highest Degree of Perfection." And for a number of years he worked on a treatise in which he "resolved to explain all the phenomena of nature, that is all of physics" and to "make all my thoughts known so that they will convince some . . . and so that the others will not be able to contradict them."

The notion that he could encompass all of physics in a single treatise is only part of his ambition. The original title of the Discourse also points to the ambition to transform human existence.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, August 11, 2006 at 05:00 PM

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