Pierre Chanut (1601-1662), diplomate et philosophe
View publication
Book Series
The Age of Descartes, vol. 11
Géraud de Cordemoy
Cosmology and Mosaic Physics
A Critical Edition of Géraud de Cordemoy’s Lettre au R.P. Cossart
Mihnea Dobre, Grigore Vida
- Pages: 135 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Illustrations:2 b/w, 10 col.
- Language(s):English, French
- Publication Year:2025
- € 80,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61939-2
- Paperback
- Forthcoming (Dec/25)
- € 80,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61940-8
- E-book
- Forthcoming
*How to pre-order?
The current edition presents Cordemoy’s attempt to explain the biblical history of Creation using the principles of Descartes’s natural philosophy.
BIO
MIHNEA DOBRE and GRIGORE VIDA are early modern scholars. Their work has focused on topics at the border between the history of science and the history of philosophy, including studies on Descartes, Cartesian philosophy, and the reception of Descartes’s thought in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Summary
The history of the reception of Descartes’s mechanical cosmology was usually told as the gradual dismissal of the vortex theory. At an early stage, however, during the decades after Descartes’s death, this reception took a theological turn, which is often overlooked by historians of philosophy and science, but also by Cartesian scholars, who tend to focus mainly on the debates concerning the Eucharist. Between 1650 and 1670, several authors attempted to uncover the fit between the Mosaic history of Creation and Descartes’s cosmological theory. Henry More, Géraud de Cordemoy, and Johannes Amerpoel are the most illustrative examples of this direction. They argued in defense of Descartes’s religious orthodoxy by explaining the biblical cosmogony according to the principles of the Cartesian mechanistic physics.
The present volume is concerned with Cordemoy’s involvement in the debate. It offers a new critical edition of Cordemoy’s letter to R. P. Cossart (Lettre écrite à un sçavant religieux, 1668, 1669), together with the English translation of 1670 on facing pages. The commentary follows the ramifications around Cordemoy’s project of explaining the agreement between Descartes’s new philosophy and the cosmogony of Genesis 1, with the aim to disentangle the associated philosophical, theological, philological, and historical issues
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Cordemoy and the Early Modern Context
1.1. Cordemoy’s life and context
1.2. Cordemoy: a lawyer or a Cartesian philosopher
1.3. The Lettre and Cordemoy’s philosophy
1.4. Cartesian Cosmology and Mosaic Physics
1.5. Concluding remarks
2. Sources for Cordemoy’s Lettre and other editions
3. The critical edition of the French text of the Lettre with facing-page English translation of the 17th century
4. Critical Notes for the Edition
Index of Names
Bibliography
