Abstract
This chapter concludes the detailed analysis of Le Monde, begun in the previous two chapters. It has three main goals: Firstly, Le Monde is examined as a competitive bid for supremacy in the natural philosophical field. This is done by viewing it in relation to key natural philosophical aspirations and strategies of similar contemporary actors, such as Kepler, who, like Descartes, were attempting to displace Aristotelianism, install some version of realist Copernicanism, and create alternative hegemonic natural philosophical syntheses. Secondly, Le Monde is assessed in terms of its strengths and weaknesses as a system of natural philosophy, using the model of natural philosophical systematicity developed in Chap. 2. Finally, examination of the systematicity of Le Monde leads to some striking individual examples of refinements in that regard, as displayed by the Principia philosophiae to come.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Admittedly somewhat different types of vortices in detail—star centric and planet centric.
- 2.
The rigorously contextual approach of this book, in regard to understanding the vortex mechanics and its genesis should not be taken to signal a denial of larger, long term, diachronic relevances of this inquiry or its findings. One important diachronic dimension immediately presents itself to the technical and internalist historian of classical mechanics: The natural philosophical contestation carried out by Descartes and Kepler was pursued with special attention to the subsumption of astronomy; that is, realist Copernican astronomy, variously interpreted, and to its problem of celestial causation, in particular the function of stars. The nature of one’s dynamics, the causal doctrine at the heart of one’s system of natural philosophy, was thus focalized, and this drove both to contribute claims woven by later players in unintended and unforeseeable ways, into what we recognize as the process of emergence of classical mechanics. Similarly, we should note the role of optical inquiries, in natural philosophical contexts, in shaping the later crystallization of classical mechanics, a matter hinted at in this book and related work, and currently under serious study by Russell Smith (personal communication) and also Smith (2008, 2008a) It would seem, as Stephen Gaukroger has expressed to me in discussion of themes of this and related work, that the long term genealogy of classical mechanics should be written, at least in part, in terms of the concatenation of unintended conceptual windfalls bequeathed to the emerging discipline, by this and other nodes in the natural philosophical turbulence of the early and mid seventeenth century. I have also pursued this line of analysis in Sects. 2.1 and 2.3 of my article ‘Cartesian Physics’ forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics, edited by Jed Buchwald and Robert Fox.
- 3.
The reader is reminded, on the basis of the general account of the culture of natural philosophizing and its dynamics, offered in Chap. 2, that the criteria for assessing the goodness of a natural philosophy and the modes of applying such criteria to cases, were themselves objects of negotiation, part of the weave of the contestation in natural philosophy itself. What is proposed here is not meant as the only, best, or truest way of sizing up Le Monde, or any other system, and certainly not a set of criteria Descartes embraced. Rather, it is a self-consciously designed analytical tool for dissecting this, and hopefully other systems of the time, in the interest of building better accounts of the cultural process of natural philosophizing. We use it here further to elucidate the text of Le Monde and hence the way in which it was Descartes’ first system, emergent from his particular physico-mathematical experience and practices, yet also shaped by the wider expectations and usages of the field of natural philosophy and the key nodes of debate at the time.
The careful reader should also note that when we first presented the general model of systematicity in Chap. 2, we had not yet attained our insights in Chap. 6 about Descartes’ (or anybody else’s) grand method discourse as mythic speech. It of course follows from our model of method discourse, and especially the rhetorical functions of method talk, discussed in Sect. 6.8, that a grand method doctrine can be employed in meta–level attempts to legitimate the goodness of horizontal or vertical systematizing moves in a natural philosophy. Our analysis here will not explicitly delve into such matters—they would have added too much complication to the exegesis, although they can be supplied by sympathetic readers of this book, to this point.
- 4.
Cf. Sects. 10.2.3 and 10.4, as well as Fig. 10.11.
- 5.
For the moment, we leave aside the deeper difficulties we detected above in each of these two cases. They will enter the discussion shortly.
- 6.
Recall our discussion of this key ‘hot-spot’ of contention in the natural philosophical field, Sect. 2.5.4.
- 7.
Dijksterhuis (2004).
- 8.
See, Sect. 4.4.
- 9.
See Sect. 10.8 above. Additionally, at AT.XI.111-112 earlier in Chap. 15 of Le Monde, Descartes discusses the refraction of light crossing vortical interfaces. He does not attribute the refraction to different forces of light on either side of the surface, but rather to the curvature of the surface itself. Earlier he had insisted that the tendency to motion of the boules on either side of the surface must be equal, but of course they are also opposite and that might be expected to cause some deflection of light. But, how exactly does the characteristic force of light in traversing a given medium arise in a universe of omnipresent vortices, celestial and planetary? Descartes has left the ideal optical world of the Dioptrique where only the corpuscular make up of media determine optical properties, and not the underlying vortex mechanical circumstances as well. The situation here is structurally identical to his problems in relating the traditional ideal statics of volumes and densities to his ‘real’ world, where weight and fall are products of the vortex mechanics.
- 10.
We do not mention here the problems inherent in thinking through the simpler case of reflection of light at a detailed corpuscular-mechanical level. Descartes did not even so much as slip toward this problem in the Dioptrique, although he did in regard to refraction, because that was his main topic and he had to articulate issues concerning it to the brink of falling into the pitfall we have discussed. Newton, of course, would very early on raise issues about the Cartesian theory of reflection as coherent rebound of incoming particles off a (necessarily microscopically wildly uneven) reflective ‘surface’ of particles. On the larger history of the successes, pitfalls and failures of the seventeenth century study of optical phenomena in relation to the mechanics of collision, see the seminal papers of Russell Smith (2008, 2008a).
- 11.
- 12.
See Appendix 2, and above Sect. 10.2.3.
- 13.
- 14.
The oceans formed, along with the other features, when an outer crust of the Earth collapsed forming protuberances and declivities, the latter filling with water. This process completes Descartes’ narrative of the formation of Earth, and indeed any planet, from a star which dies when sun spots completely encrust its roiling outer surface of first matter, its light and activity are extinguished and it is eventually pulled into the vortex of a still active neighboring star. Principia, Part IV articles 1–44 deal with the formation, and resulting structure of the Earth; while the formation of sun spots on the surfaces of stars, which may ultimately form all encompassing crusts, transforming a star into a planet or comet, is dealt with in Part III articles 90–120. Note that the crust whose collapse leads to the creation of oceans and landforms is not the crust of sun spots that extinguished the original star. That crust sits deep inside the emerging planet, under all the third matter material of water, landforms and atmosphere, which derive instead from an original stellar ‘aether’, consisting mainly of third matter, which Descartes says surrounds all stars out to around the distance of their first orbiting planet. In the process of planet formation consequent upon sun spot encrustation of a star, this aether itself consolidates and then collapses in the latter stages of the process. These issues will be discussed in more detail below in Chap. 12, especially Sects. 12.9 and 12.10 when we examine their role in the daring system-binding strategies by which the Principia far surpasses Le Monde.
- 15.
Biro (2009) 106, Cf. Descartes, Le Monde: ‘Because the air 5678 and water 1234 surrounding this earth are liquid bodies, it is evident that the same force that presses the earth in this way must also make them sink towards T, not only from the side 6, 2 but also from its opposite 8, 4, and in recompense cause them to rise in the places 5, 1 and 7, 3.’ (AT X p.81; SG 52; MSM p.141)
- 16.
Principles Part IV art. 49; Miller and Miller p.206, emphasis added by Biro (2009) 107.
- 17.
Biro (2009) 107: Descartes writes ‘[I]t must be noted that the ocean does not in fact cover the whole Earth, as we assumed a little earlier; but because the Ocean extends around the Earth’s entire periphery, as far as the general movement of the Ocean’s water is concerned, it must be understood as if the Ocean did envelope the whole Earth.’ (Principles Part IV art 55, MM.209):
- 18.
Biro, (2009) 106–7. Biro’s Note 255 at this point reads: ‘This interpretation is supported by the fact that Descartes chose to use a new term for oceans in the theory of the tides, as noted by Miller and Miller: ‘The term used at this point (in respect to the tides) in the Latin is ‘Oceanus’ which refers to the collective total of the Earth’s oceans. Previously, when referring to the ocean, the term ‘mare’ (uncapitalized) has been used. The French reflects this change as well.’ In the English edition, they translate ‘Oceanus’ as ‘Ocean’ while ‘mare’ appears as ‘ocean’. (Miller and Miller, editors’ footnote 41, to Part IV, article 55, p. 209) Interestingly, when Descartes comes to explain the absence of tides in lakes and ponds he reasons that waters contained in lakes and ponds is not ‘squeezed’ and displaced by heavenly matter (like the water in oceans) as it is physically disconnected from the mass of water in the ocean and has only a small surface area. (Principles, Part IV article 55, MM 209).’
References
Works of Descartes and Their Abbreviations
AT  =  Oeuvres de Descartes (revised edition, 12 vols.), edited by C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris, 1964–76). References are by volume number (in roman) and page number (in Arabic).
SG  =  The World and Other Writings, edited and translated by Stephen Gaukroger (Cambridge,1998).
MM  =  René Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy, translated by V. R. Miller and R. P. Miller (Dordrecht, 1991)
MSM  =  Rene Descartes, Le Monde, ou Traité de la lumière, translated by Michael S. Mahoney (New York, 1979).
CSM(K)  =  The Philosophical Writings Of Descartes, 3 vols., translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, and (for vol. 3) Anthony Kenny, (Cambridge, 1988) References are by volume number (in roman) and page number (in arabic).
HR  =  The Philosophical Works of Descartes, vol I translated by E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (Cambridge, 1968 [1st ed. 1911])
Other
Biro, Jacqueline. 2006. ‘Heavens and earth in one frame: Cosmography and the form of the earth in the scientific revolution’ Unpublished MA thesis, University of New South Wales, School of History and Philosophy of Science.
Biro, Jacqueline. 2009. On earth as in heaven: Cosmography and the shape of the earth from Copernicus to Descartes. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag.
Dijksterhuis, F.J. 2004. Once Snell Breaks Down: From Geometrical to Physical Optics in the Seventeenth Century. Annals of Science 61:165–185.
Schuster, John. 2002. L’Aristotelismo e le sue Alternative. In La Rivoluzione Scientifica, ed. D. Garber, 337–357. Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Schuster, J.A., and Graeme Watchirs. 1990. Natural philosophy, experiment and discourse: Beyond the Kuhn/Bachelard problematic. In Experimental inquiries: Historical, philosophical and social studies of experimentation in science, ed. H.E. Le Grande, 1–47. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Schuster, John, and Alan B.H. Taylor. 1996. Seized by the spirit of modern science. Metascience 9: 9–26.
Schuster, John, and Alan B.H. Taylor. 1997. Blind trust: The gentlemanly origins of experimental science. Social Studies of Science 27: 503–536.
Smith, Russell. 2008. Optical reflection and mechanical rebound: The shift from analogy to axiomatization in the seventeenth century, Part 1. British Journal for the History of Science 41: 1–18.
Smith, Russell. 2008a. ‘Optical reflection and mechanical rebound: The shift from analogy to axiomatisation in the seventeenth century’, Part 2. British Journal for the History of Science 41(2): 187–207.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schuster, J. (2012). Le Monde as a System of Natural Philosophy and Gambit in the Field. In: Descartes-Agonistes. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4746-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4746-3_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4745-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4746-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawHistory (R0)