TY - BOOK ID - 77531107 TI - Descartes : a biography PY - 2006 SN - 0521823013 9780521823012 9780511498077 9781107601468 0511168993 9780511168994 0511167520 9780511167522 0511498071 1107146100 128043709X 051116856X 0511312377 0511168071 1107601460 PB - New York : Cambridge University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Philosophers KW - Descartes, René KW - Descartes, Renatus KW - Cartesius, Renatus KW - Descartes, René, KW - Arts and Humanities KW - Philosophy KW - Descartes, Rene, UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:77531107 AB - René Descartes is best remembered today for writing 'I think, therefore I am', but his main contribution to the history of ideas was his effort to construct a philosophy that would be sympathetic to the new sciences that emerged in the seventeenth century. To a great extent he was the midwife to the Scientific Revolution and a significant contributor to its key concepts. In four major publications, he fashioned a philosophical system that accommodated the needs of these new sciences and thereby earned the unrelenting hostility of both Catholic and Calvinist theologians, who relied on the scholastic philosophy that Descartes hoped to replace. His contemporaries claimed that his proofs of God's existence in the Meditations were so unsuccessful that he must have been a cryptic atheist and that his discussion of skepticism served merely to fan the flames of libertinism. This is the first biography in English that addresses the full range of Descartes' interest in theology, philosophy and the sciences and that traces his intellectual development through his entire career. ER -