Principles of Philosophy

Short description: Book by Descartes

Not to be confused with Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Principles of Philosophy

Principia Philosophiæ, 1656

Author| René Descartes
Original title| Principia Philosophiæ
Translator| Abbot Claude Picot (French)
Language| Latin
Genre| Philosophy, scientific law
Published| 1644
Part of a series on

René Descartes

Philosophy

* Cartesianism
* Rationalism
* Foundationalism
* Mechanism
* Doubt and certainty
* Dream argument
* Cogito, ergo sum
* Evil demon
* Trademark argument
* Causal adequacy principle
* Mind–body dichotomy
* Analytic geometry
* Coordinate system
* Cartesian circle * Folium
* Rule of signs
* Cartesian diver
* Balloonist theory
* Wax argument
* Res cogitans
* Res extensa

Works

* The World
* Discourse on the Method
* La Géométrie
* Meditations on First Philosophy
* Principles of Philosophy
* Passions of the Soul

People

* Christina, Queen of Sweden
* Baruch Spinoza
* Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
* Francine Descartes

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The illustration of movement of objects from the Principles

Principles of Philosophy (Latin: Principia Philosophiae) is a book by the French philosopher and scientist René Descartes. In essence, it is a synthesis of the Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.[1] It was written in Latin, published in 1644 and dedicated to Elisabeth of Bohemia, with whom Descartes had a long-standing friendship. A French version (Les Principes de la Philosophie) followed in 1647.

The book sets forth the principles of nature—the laws of physics—as Descartes viewed them. Most notably, it set forth the principle that in the absence of external forces, an object's motion will be uniform and in a straight line. Isaac Newton borrowed this principle from Descartes and included it in his own Principia; to this day, it is still generally referred to as Newton's first law of motion.[2] The book was primarily intended to replace the Aristotelian curriculum then used in French and British universities. The work provides a systematic statement of his metaphysics and natural philosophy, and represents the first truly comprehensive, mechanistic account of the universe.

## Contents

* 1 Contents
* 1.1 Preface to the French edition
* 1.2 Body of the work
* 2 Copies and modern editions
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 External links

## Contents

### Preface to the French edition

Descartes asked Abbot Claude Picot to translate his Latin Principia Philosophiae into French. For this edition, he wrote a preface disguised as a letter to the translator, whose title is "Letter of the author to the translator of the book, that may be used as a preface." This was published in 1647, when he was 51 years old and in the mature, final period of his life. In this writing, Descartes provides some reflections on his ideas of wisdom and philosophy. Its content may be summarized as follows:[3]

Concept of philosophy

Philosophy is the study of wisdom, understood as the ability to conduct the human activities; and also as the perfect knowledge of all the things that a man can know for the direction of his life, maintenance of his health, and knowledge of the arts. Only God is perfectly wise, and the man is more or less wise, in proportion to the knowledge he has of the most important truths.

The degrees of knowledge

Descartes identifies four degrees of knowledge which he names common, and a fifth degree he designates higher. The first degree consists of clear and evident notions that can be acquired without the need for any meditation. The second degree is all that is learned by means of the senses. The third comprises what we learn when talking with others. The fourth consists of what we can learn from the writings of those capable of giving good instructions.

Higher wisdom

There have been great people throughout history who have pursued a better and more secure wisdom, a fifth degree of knowledge. This has consisted of the search for the first causes, and those that have followed this pursuit have been named philosophers, but he thinks that none have yet been successful.

Doubt and certainty

Since Plato and Aristotle, there has been discussion on doubt and certainty. Those that have favoured doubt have arrived at extremes of doubting even the most evident things, and those that have sought certainty have relied excessively on the senses. Though it has been accepted that the senses may mislead us, according to Descartes, nobody had yet expressed that the truth can not be based on the senses, but in the understanding, when it is founded on evident perceptions.

Meditations on first philosophy

The search for the first causes, or basic truths, as undertaken by Descartes is contained in this work. It explains the metaphysical principles on which to build the rest of knowledge.

The tree of philosophy

Descartes describes philosophy as like a tree, whose roots are metaphysics, its trunk physics, and the branches are the rest of the sciences, mainly medicine, mechanics, and morals that is the last level of wisdom. In the same way that trees have fruits in their outer parts, the usefulness of philosophy is also contained in the areas that stem from its foundation.

### Body of the work

There are four parts:

* Part I. - of the Principles of Human Existence
* Part II. - of the Principles of Material Things
* Part III. - of the Visible World
* Part IV. - of the Earth.[4]

## Copies and modern editions

René Descartes' Principia Philosophiae. This copy was printed in 1656, and is owned by Southwest Research Institute rare book collection at the Tom Slick Memorial Library in San Antonio, Texas.

A copy of Descartes' Principia philosophiae dated 1656 is owned by the Tom Slick rare book collection at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas. The book was translated into Italian in 1722 by Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola (it). (Cf. C. Landolfi, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola: Opere scelte, Mirista-moderna, Salerno 2024)

D. Reidel, a Dutch publisher, released an English edition of Principia philosophiae in 1983 (ISBN 90-277-1451-7), translated by Valentine Rodger and Reese P. Miller with explanatory notes. Though a translation of the original 1644 Latin work, this edition by Rodger and Miller includes additional material from the 1647 French translation.

## See also

* Bucket argument
* Conservation of momentum

Related works

* The World (Descartes)
* Principia philosophiae cartesianae by Baruch Spinoza

## References

1. ↑ Guy Durandin, Les Principes de la Philosophie. Introduction et notes, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, Paris, 1970.
2. ↑ D. T. Whiteside, "The prehistory of the Principia", Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 45/13 (1991).
3. ↑ René Descartes. "Letter of the Author to the French Translator of the Principles of Philosophy serving for a preface". http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/principles/preface.htm.
4. ↑ René Descartes. "Selections from the Principles of Philosophy of Rene Decartes (1596-1650)". http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/principles/index.htm.

## External links

* Descartes' 1644 Principia philosophiae (free Google eBook)
* Selections from the Principles of Philosophy at Project Gutenberg
* Principles of Philosophy, modified for easier reading
* Principia philosophiae. Amstelodami, apud Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1644. From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress

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Philosophy of science

| Concepts|

* Analysis
* Analytic–synthetic distinction
* A priori and a posteriori
* Causality
* Commensurability
* Consilience
* Construct
* Creative synthesis
* Demarcation problem
* Empirical evidence
* Explanatory power
* Fact
* Falsifiability
* Feminist method
* Functional contextualism

* Ignoramus et ignorabimus
* Inductive reasoning
* Intertheoretic reduction
* Inquiry
* Nature
* Objectivity
* Observation
* Paradigm
* Problem of induction
* Scientific law
* Scientific method
* Scientific revolution
* Scientific theory
* Testability
* Theory choice
* Theory-ladenness
* Underdetermination
* Unity of science

|

Metatheory
of science|

* Coherentism
* Confirmation holism
* Constructive empiricism
* Constructive realism
* Constructivist epistemology
* Contextualism
* Conventionalism
* Deductive-nomological model
* Hypothetico-deductive model
* Inductionism
* Epistemological anarchism
* Evolutionism
* Fallibilism
* Foundationalism
* Instrumentalism
* Pragmatism
* Model-dependent realism
* Naturalism
* Physicalism
* Positivism / Reductionism / Determinism
* Rationalism / Empiricism
* Received view / Semantic view of theories
* Scientific realism / Anti-realism
* Scientific essentialism
* Scientific formalism
* Scientific skepticism
* Scientism
* Structuralism
* Uniformitarianism
* Vitalism

Philosophy of|

* Physics
* thermal and statistical
* Motion
* Chemistry
* Biology
* Environment
* Geography
* Social science
* Technology
* Engineering
* Artificial intelligence
* Computer science
* Information
* Mind
* Psychiatry
* Psychology
* Perception
* Space and time

Related topics|

* Alchemy
* Criticism of science
* Epistemology
* Faith and rationality
* History and philosophy of science
* History of science
* History of evolutionary thought
* Logic
* Metaphysics
* Pseudoscience
* Relationship between religion and science
* Rhetoric of science
* Science studies
* Sociology of scientific knowledge
* Sociology of scientific ignorance

Philosophers of science by era

| Ancient|

* Plato
* Aristotle
* Stoicism
* Epicureans

|

Medieval|

* Averroes
* Avicenna
* Roger Bacon
* William of Ockham
* Hugh of Saint Victor
* Dominicus Gundissalinus
* Robert Kilwardby

Early modern|

* Francis Bacon
* Thomas Hobbes
* René Descartes
* Galileo Galilei
* Pierre Gassendi
* Isaac Newton
* David Hume

Late modern|

* Immanuel Kant
* Friedrich Schelling
* William Whewell
* Auguste Comte
* John Stuart Mill
* Herbert Spencer
* Wilhelm Wundt
* Charles Sanders Peirce
* Wilhelm Windelband
* Henri Poincaré
* Pierre Duhem
* Rudolf Steiner
* Karl Pearson

Contemporary|

* Alfred North Whitehead
* Bertrand Russell
* Albert Einstein
* Otto Neurath
* C. D. Broad
* Michael Polanyi
* Hans Reichenbach
* Rudolf Carnap
* Karl Popper
* Carl Gustav Hempel
* W. V. O. Quine
* Thomas Kuhn
* Imre Lakatos
* Paul Feyerabend
* Jürgen Habermas
* Ian Hacking
* Bas van Fraassen
* Larry Laudan
* Daniel Dennett

* Category
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