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Principia philosophiae cartesianae (PPC; "The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy") or Renati Descartes principia philosophiae, more geometrico demonstrata ("The Principles of René Descartes' Philosophy, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order") is a philosophical work of Baruch Spinoza published in Amsterdam in 1663.
Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. [1] Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. [2]
Sometime between 1654 and 1657, Spinoza started studying Latin with political radical Franciscus van den Enden, a former Jesuit and atheist, who likely introduced Spinoza to scholastic and modern philosophy, including Descartes, who had a dominant influence on Spinoza's philosophy. [70]
In philosophy and in its current sense, rationalism is a line of thought that appeals to reason or the intellect as a primary or fundamental source of knowledge or justification". [1]
It was the 17th-century arch-rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz who have given the "Age of Reason" its name and place in history. Leibniz, Spinoza, [20] and Descartes were all well-versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, with Descartes and Leibniz additionally contributing to a variety of scientific disciplines. [21]
René Descartes defined extension as the property of existing in more than one dimension, a property that was later followed up in Grassmann's n-dimensional algebra. For Descartes, the primary characteristic of matter is extension (res extensa), just as the primary characteristic of mind is thought (res cogitans).
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 ...
The Rationalists is a 1988 book by the philosopher John Cottingham, in which the author offers an overview of the most important exponents of rationalism, namely René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Other thinkers, such as Nicolas Malebranche, are also dealt with.