Principles of Philosophy
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Principles of Philosophy
| Full title | Principles of Philosophy (Principia Philosophiae) |
|---|---|
| Author | René Descartes |
| Published | 1644 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Descartes’ 1644 attempt to lay out an entire system in textbook form: part one restates the Meditations’ rebuilding of certainty from the doubting mind, and the rest is a physics with no purposes in it — matter in motion under a few laws. The physics did not survive Newton; the method — begin from what cannot be doubted, admit only mechanical causes, write it as a system — is roughly the shape modern science took. |
Principles of Philosophy
Where I heard about it
- Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, the 137-entry Himalaya Capital bibliography, under History of Western Civilization, where the walk goes Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Freud. Descartes is the hinge: the point where the authority for a claim moves from the tradition that hands it to you to the individual mind that can check it.
Connections
- Descartes — the author.
- Doubt — used here as a method rather than a mood.
- Epistemology — the part-one question: what may be counted as known, and on whose authority.
- Science — the mechanical, purpose-free physics this book tried to found.
- Philosophy — the systematising instinct, in its most explicit form.
- Li Lu · Himalaya Capital — the curator and the bibliography.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.