‎DESCARTES (R.)‎
‎Les principes de la philosophie, écrits en latin par René Descartes, et traduits en françois par un de ses amis, revues et corrigez en cette dernière édition -- BEL EXEMPLAIRE‎

‎P., Bobin & Nicolas Le Gras, 1668, un volume in 4 relié en plein veau, dos orné de fers dorés (reliure de l'époque), (habile restauration à un coin), (28), 477pp., (1pp.), (1), 1 PLANCHE hors texte représentant les corps en mouvement, nombreuses figures dans le texte‎

Reference : 6373

‎---- BEL EXEMPLAIRE --- Traduction (du latin en français) par l'Abbé PICOT ---- "The principia philosophia contains Descartes'famous vortex theory by which he tried to reconcile Copernican astronomy with biblical teaching. It also contains the first scientific theory of magnetism". "The most comprehensive of all Descartes'works. Dedicated to the Princess Elizabeth, its three treatises embrace the whole of his philosophy, with the exception of the moral. Descartes'design in this treatise was the elaboration of a general theory which would account for the creation and the structur of the world. At the outset he scorfully rejected the whole apparatus of qualitates occultae, employed so freely by the scholastics, and in its place he tried to substitute a rational explanation of the phenomena of nature grounded upon human intelligence and erected upon the mathematical model. In this way he indicated the only solid path ever pursued by physical science, namely, its reduction to the laws of mathematics... On account of its intelligible assuptions, the theory established by Descartes withstook for more than a century all efforts to dislodge it. Fundamentally it assumed all space to be filled with matter, and this, having been endowed in the beginning with motion, has in course of time fallen into a series of vortices in which the sun and the fixed stars, the heavens and the earth, planets and comets are carried. By thus comparing the motion of the celestial bodies with that of terrestrial bodies caught up and floating in whirpools of water, Descartes provided an analogy which at least had the merit of plausibility". (Scott p. 158). "In part I, Descartes sets out the basic principles of his investigation pursuing the methods developed in his Discourse on Method. Part II is devoted to the nature of the physical world and the means by which we may comprehend it. Fundamental to Descartes'physical theories was his conviction that all space was occupied, space was identified with matter, all matter was infinitely extensible and infinnitely divisible ; within the context of this theory a vacuum was impossible as was the existence of atoms. This made for a theory highly compatible with catholic doctrine... Also presented in Part II are Descartes' three laws of motion. Part III not only presents Descartes' conception of structure of the world, but reprensents the first serious attempt at a mechanical explanation of the solar system. The Vortex Theory boldly attempted to reduce the phenomena of the universe to a single mechanical principle...". (Bibliotheca mechanica 1st latin ed. pp. 91/92) ---- DSB IV ---- Des principes de la connaissance humaine - Des principes des choses matérielles - Du monde visible - De la terre**6373/arm3‎