Descartes' The World offers the most comprehensive vision of the nature of the world since Aristotle, and is crucial for an understanding of his later writings, in particular the Meditations and Principles of Philosophy. Above all, it provides an insight into how Descartes conceived of natural philosophy before he started to reformulate his doctrines in terms of a sceptically driven epistemology. Of its two parts, the Treatise on Light introduced the first comprehensive, quantitative version of a mechanistic natural philosophy, supplying a theory of matter, a physical optics, and a cosmology. The Treatise on Man provided the first comprehensive mechanist physiology. This volume also includes translations of material important for an understanding of the work: related sections from the Dioptrics and the Meteors, and an English translation of the complete text of The Description of the Human Body.

An alternative translation and more recent edition of Descartes' important treatise on the nature of the world.
Reviews
"...an important addition to Descartes scholarship and required reading for those working on Descartes and the history of science." Russell Wahl, Philosophy in Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780521631587
Author Rene Descartes
Format Hardback
Page Count 248
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 520g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 156mm * 21mm