This class is designed to serve as an introduction to Descartes, who we will be studying for the first three weeks after midsemester. The selection from Kuhn picks up from his account of Kepler and Galileo and ends with a few pages on Descartes, so it makes sense to read that first. Dear's ch. 5 is devoted almost exclusively to Descartes.

Kuhn's story is of delayed progress in physics and cosmology. Accounts of the physical nature of the universe were left behind by the advances in astronomy running from Copernicus to Galileo, and supporters of heliocentric astronomy faced the problem of explaining the motions that it described. Since the reorientation of astronomy had also undermined the Aristotelian account of motion on Earth, new explanations were required there, too, explanations that had to be consistent with the laws Galileo had discovered. Although many of these problems were only finally solved by Newton, already in the 1630s and 40s, Descartes was able to provide a new picture of the universe that was as detailed as Aristotle's had been.

Dear will survey Descartes's work and also, to some extent, his life. At the end of our study of Descartes, we will look briefly at some of works where he set out his basic philosophical principles; but, until then, you will need to rely on Dear's discussion for a sense of the philosophical commitments lying behind the more concrete discussion of physical phenomena that we will be reading. Although Dear is more focused on a single figure in this chapter than he usually is, he provides some discussion of Descartes's intellectual context. Watch, in particular, for his references to Pierre Gassendi, whose views about the nature of the universe were closer to ancient atomism than Descartes's were and were thus, in some ways, closer also to the views of scientists who came after Descartes.

You will begin reading Descartes's The World as you assignment for Thursday. We will go on to read all of the Treatise on Light and the Treatise on Man (the two major works in Gaukroger's edition). So, if you want get ahead with reading over the break, this is a natural place to do that.