CartesianismCartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge. Aristotle and St. Augustine’s work influenced Descartes's cogito argument.
Mechanism (philosophy)Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes (principally living things) are similar to complicated machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other. The doctrine of mechanism in philosophy comes in two different flavors. They are both doctrines of metaphysics, but they are different in scope and ambitions: the first is a global doctrine about nature; the second is a local doctrine about humans and their minds, which is hotly contested.
Marin MersenneMarin Mersenne, OM (also known as Marinus Mersennus or le Père Mersenne; maʁɛ̃ mɛʁsɛn; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for Mersenne prime numbers, those which can be written in the form Mn = 2n − 1 for some integer n. He also developed Mersenne's laws, which describe the harmonics of a vibrating string (such as may be found on guitars and pianos), and his seminal work on music theory, Harmonie universelle, for which he is referred to as the "father of acoustics".
Evil demonThe evil demon, also known as Deus deceptor, malicious demon, and evil genius, is an epistemological concept that features prominently in Cartesian philosophy. In the first of his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes imagines that a malevolent God or an evil demon, of "utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me." This malevolent God or evil demon is imagined to present a complete illusion of an external world, so that Descartes can say, "I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement.
17th century in philosophyThis is a timeline of philosophy in the 17th century (17th-century philosophy). 1649 – Christina, Queen of Sweden (reigned 1632–1654) invited René Descartes to educate her in his philosophical views, particularly his insight into Catholicism. Descartes arrived on 4 October 1649, and tutored her for the next 4 months until he caught pneumonia and died ten days later on 11 February 1650. Speculations have been made as to the causes of his illness. Some cite the icy weather, others argue it may have been elicited by the rigorous schedule asked of Descartes by the queen.
AdequalityAdequality is a technique developed by Pierre de Fermat in his treatise Methodus ad disquirendam maximam et minimam (a Latin treatise circulated in France c. 1636 ) to calculate maxima and minima of functions, tangents to curves, area, center of mass, least action, and other problems in calculus. According to André Weil, Fermat "introduces the technical term adaequalitas, adaequare, etc., which he says he has borrowed from Diophantus. As Diophantus V.
OccasionalismOccasionalism is a philosophical doctrine about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God. (A related concept, which has been called "occasional causation", also denies a link of efficient causation between mundane events, but may differ as to the identity of the true cause that replaces them.) The doctrine states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another.
