Descartes' Secret Notebook - A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism and the Quest to Understand the Universe
What Aczel did for mathematician Fermat (Fermat's Last Theorem) he now does for Descartes in this splendid study about the French philosopher and mathematician (1596–1650) most famous for his paradigm-smashing declaration, "I think; therefore, I am." Part historical sketch, part biography and part detective story, Aczel's chronicle of Descartes's hidden work hinges on his lost secret notebook. Of 16 pages of coded manuscript, one and a half were copied in 1676 by fellow philosopher and mathematician Leibniz.
A complete summary of the views of the most important philosophers in Western civilization. Each major field of philosophic inquiry comprises a separate chapter for greater accessibility. Includes Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Dewey, Sartre, and many others.
Descartes is often accused of having fragmented the human being into two independent substances, mind and body, with no clear strategy for explaining the apparent unity of human experience. Deborah Brown argues that, contrary to this view, Descartes did in fact have a conception of a single, integrated human being, and that in his view this conception is crucial to the success of human beings as rational and moral agents and as practitioners of science.
Lines, Planes and Solids - Studies in the Seventeenth-Century Writings
A university booklet for the students of English literature. Contains a set of essays devoted to the notions presented in the literary output by Descartes and Spinoza.
"Прямые линии, плоскости и тела" Исследования по литературе XVII века
A superb collection of classical geometrical results. Each theorem is stated, its historical significance discussed, if there are any subtle points, they are mentioned, its relation to other theorems is also discussed. Many of the results presented are mostly forgotten after the invention of co-ordinate geometry by Descartes, but with the help of this book, the reader can get the feel of geometry the way it was in Pappus's time.
