Artisans, machines, and Descartes's organon

History of Science

Volumn 44, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 187-216

  Gauvin, Jean François ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33745158626     PISSN: 00732753     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/007327530604400203     Document Type: Article

References (219)

1. Descartes, Discouru de la méthode, AT vi, 75; CSM i, 149.
2. On the role of observations and experiments, see Daniel Garber. "Descartes and experiment in the Discourse and Essays", in his Descartes embodied: Reading Cartesian philosophy through Cartesian science (Cambridge. 2001), 85-110;
3. Ralph M. Blake. "The rôle of experience in Descartes' theory of method (I)", The philosophical review, xxxviii (1929), 125-43:
4. Blake, "The rôle of experience in Descartes' theory of method (II)", The philosophical review, xxxviii (1929), 201-18;
5. Alan Gewirtz, "Experience and the non-mathematical in the Cartesian method", Journal of the history of ideas, ii (1941), 183-210;
6. Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes's philosophy of science (Manchester, c. 1982):
7. Spyros Sakellariadis. "Descartes's use of empirical data to test hypotheses", Isis, lxxiii (1982), 68-76.
8. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi. 72-73; CSM i, 148.
9. Money sometimes was not a good enough incentive to hold artisans in check. When the time came, for instance, to engrave the plates for the Discours and Essais, Descartes and his printer made sure the engraver would not leave without giving an address or procrastinate for too long. The only way to enforce their wish was to keep this engraver (Franz Schooten the younger) "under house arrest": "Celui qui les taille [the plates) me contente assez, et le libraire le tient en son logis, de peur qu'il ne lui échappe". Descartes to Constantijn Huygens, 30 October 1636, AT i, 614.
10. Steven Shapin. A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago and London, 1994).
11. have contended elsewhere that volontaires, although unhelpful in producing knowledge perse. were Descartes's vectors of knowledge dissemination; they were the ones who Descartes trusted would make his philosophy known, J.-F. Gauvin. "Volontaires and artisans in Descartes's natural philosophy", unpublished manuscript presented at the History of Science Society annual meeting, Cambridge, MA, 21 November 2003.
12. Shapin, A social history of truth (ref. 5), chap. 8.
13. J. A. Bennett, "The mechanic's philosophy and the mechanical philosophy", History of science, xxiv (1986), 1-28.
14. Pamela O. Long, "Power, patronage, and the authorship of ars: From mechanical know-how 10 mechanical knowledge in the last scribal age", Isis, lxxxviii (1997), 1-41;
15. Long, Openness, secrecy, authorship: Technical arts and the culture of knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, 2001), esp. chaps. 6-7;
16. Paula Findlen, Possessing nature: Museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994);
17. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the order of nature. 1150-1750 (New York, 1998);
18. Deborah Harkness, Neighborhoods of science: Knowledge and practice in Francis Bacon's London, 1560-1620 (forthcoming);
19. Pamela H. Smith, The body of the artisan: Art and experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago and London, 2004).
20. On the latter see the essay review by Bruce T. Moran, "Knowing how and knowing that: Artisans, bodies, and natural knowledge in the Scientific Revolution", Studies in the history and philosophy of science, xxxvi (2005), 577-85.
21. As Descartes explains, "for one man cannot turn his hand to both farming and harp-playing [cithara], or to several different tasks of this kind, as easily as he can to just one of them". Descartes, Regtilœ ad directionem ingenii, AT x, 359-60; CSM i, 9.
22. "Habituum autem varia sunt genera, alii enim sunt animi. alii vero corporis." Eustachius a Sancto Paulo. Summa philosophica quadripartita (2 vols, Lyons, 1609), ii, 121.
23. See Etienne Gilson, Index scolastico-cartésien (Paris, 1912),
24. s.v. habitus, Descartes, Règles utiles et claires pour la direction de l'esprit en la recherche de la vérité, éd. and transl, by Jean-Luc Marion (The Hague, 1977), 90-91.
25. "Arithmetical demonstration and the other sciences likewise possess, each of them, their own genera; so that if the demonstration is to pass from one sphere to another, the genus must be either absolutely or to some extent the same. If this is not so, transference is clearly impossible, because the extreme and the middle terms must be drawn from the same genus: otherwise, as predicated, they will not be essential and will thus be accidents." Aristotle, Posterior analytics I.7. The Internet Classics Archives (classics.mit.edu, accessed on 3 August 2005).
26. A very good discussion is found in Peter Dear, Discipline and experience: The mathematical way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago and London, 1995), 36-46.
27. On the interconnectedness of knowledge as one of the central components of Descartes's project, Daniel Garber, Descartes's metaphysical physics (Chicago and London, 1992).
28. Descartes, Régules, AT x, 359-61; CSM i, 9-10 for the quotes.
29. Descartes, Régula, AT x, 361; CSM i, 10.
30. On the uniqueness of ars and unity of scientia, Jean-Luc Marion, Sur l'ontologie grise de Descartes: Science cartésienne et savoir aristotélicien dans les Regulæ, 2nd edn (Paris, 1981), 25-30.
31. Marion suggests that the Regulæ contain the seeds of the Cartesian metaphysics as found in the Meditations, but it does not then unfold because Descartes was unable properly to order the intellectual simple natures with the common simple natures. Jean-Luc Marion, "Cartesian metaphysics and the role of the simple natures", in The Cambridge companion to Descartes. ed. by John Cottingham (Cambridge, 1992), 115-39.
32. Descartes to Marin Mersenne, March 1637?, AT i, 349.
33. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 61; CSM i, 142. In a very insightful analysis of Descartes's famous anaclastic line, Daniel Garber shows how the programmatic statement of the method can be reconciled with a theory of practice. Following this example closely, Garber explains that what the method gives is a "workable procedure for discovering an appropriate path" between the reductive steps the knower has to take from a question asked to the actual intuitus, in this case, of a potentia naturalis. From there, the constructive steps (deductions) take us back to the question asked, for which we are now in possession of certain knowledge.
34. Garber, Descartes's metaphysical physics (ref. 11), 35-36
35. (emphasis in original). For a very helpful diagram, see Garber, "Descartes and experiment in the Discourse and Essays", in Descartes embodied (ref. 2), 85-110, p. 100.
36. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 22; CSM i, 122. Descartes emphasizes the same point a few pages later: "Moreover, I continued practising the method I had prescribed for myself. Besides taking care in general to conduct all my thoughts according to its rules, I set aside some hours now and again to apply it more particularly to mathematical problems" (AT vi, 29: CSM i, 125).
37. See also Descartes, Règles utiles et claires pour la direction de l'esprit (ref. 9), 208.
38. A more detailed and somewhat similar analysis is given in Peter A. Schouls, Descartes and the possibility of science (Ithaca and London, 2000), 63-91.
39. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 61-62; CSM i, 142-3.
40. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 400; CSM i, 33.
41. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 400-2; CSM i, 33-34.
42. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 371; CSM i, 16. Descartes maintains that "the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false -which is what we properly call 'good sense' or 'reason' - is naturally equal in all men".
43. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 2; CSM i, 111.
44. The classic reference remains Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, technology, and the arts in the early modern era, transi, by Salvator Attanasio (New York, 1970).
45. A more sophisticated analysis has recently been published by Smith, The body of the artisan (ref. 7).
46. Descartes. Regulœ, AT x, 404; CSM i, 35.
47. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 382; CSM i, 22.
48. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 384; CSM i, 23.
49. According to Jean-Luc Marion, Descartes would have used in French the word 'adresse' - and not 'sagacité', which is close to 'perspicacité' - to designate this mental faculty, a word the natural philosopher happily applied to both mechanical and mental skills. For instance, "il faut de l'adresse et de l'habitude pour faire et pour ajuster les machines que j'ai décrites", and "savoir joindre l'adresse de la main à celle de l'esprit". Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 77 and
50. Descartes to Huygens, I November 1635. AT i, 330, respectively. Descartes, Règles utiles et claires pour lu direction de l'esprit (ref. 9), 208-9.
51. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 362-4; CSM i, 10-11.
52. In the Discours Descartes mentions that he did not "cease to value the exercises done in the Schools". Descarte,s Discours de lu méthode, AT vi. 5; CSM i, 113.
53. Descartes. Regulœ, AT x, 372: CSM i, 16.
54. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 397: CSM i, 31.
55. The "continuous and wholly uninterrupted sweep of thought" refers to Rule VII and is part of Descartes's theory of order. On the mechanical thinking process, this could explain some of Descartes's strange assertions like: "Ce qui cadre beaucoup avec ma manière de philosopher, et qui revient merveilleusement à toutes les expériences mécaniques que j'ai faites de la nature à ce sujet", Descartes to Villebressieu, summer 1631, AT i, 217. See also Descartes to Froidmont, 3 October 1637, AT i, 420-1. Descartes, Règles utiles et claires pour la direction de l'esprit (ref. 9), 204.
56. Descartes. Regulœ; AT x, 379; CSM i, 20.
57. Descartes. Regulœ; AT x, 404: CSM i, 35.
58. where it is translated as "to invent an order". For a complete discussion see Marion, Sur l'ontologie grise de Descartes (ref. 14), 71-78.
59. Jean-Paul Weber, La constitution du texte des Regulœ (Paris, 1964),
60. See also John Schuster, "Descartes' mathesis universalis, 1619-1628", in Descartes, philosophy, mathematics and physics, ed. by Stephen Gaukroger (Brighton, 1980), 41-96.
61. Descartes. Regulœ. AT x, 377-8; CSM i, 19.
62. Marion, Sur l'ontologie grise de Descartes (ref. 14), 55-69. is by far the most sophisticated and persuasive analysis of the mathesis universalis.
63. This point is made in Rule XIV of the Regulœ: "For the Rules which I am about to expound are much more readily employed in the study of these sciences [arithmetic and geometry] (where they are all that is needed) than in any other sort of problem. Moreover, these Rules are so useful in the pursuit of deeper wisdom that I have no hesitation in saying that this part of our method was designed not for the sake of mathematical problems; our intention was, rather, that ihc mathematical problems should be studied almost exclusively for the sake of the excellent practice which they give us in the method", Descartes. Regulœ, AT x, 442; CSM i, 58-59.
64. The science of order produced by the mathesis universalis represents Michel Foucault's seventeenth-century shift of épistémè. Foucuult acknowledges that order does not necessarily mean an all-out mathematuation of knowledge. Foucault. Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris, 1966, 2001), 71.
65. Rule IV should be understood as Descartes's response to the intellectual clash between the Jesuits Benito Pereira and Christopher Clavius regarding the epistemology of mathematics. Descartes's mathesis universalis is neither Pereira's philosophia prima nor Clavius's attempt at defending the philosophical status of mathematics. The mathesis is a highly developed philosophical blend between two traditions found within the Society of Jesus. Edouard Mehl. Descartes en Allemagne, 1619-1620: Le contexte allemand de l'élaboration de la science cartésienne (Strasbourg, 2001). 243-61.
66. Dear, Discipline and experience (ref. 10), 32-46.
67. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 366; CSM i, 12-13.
68. Marion, Sur l'ontologie grise de Descartes (ref. 14), 42: "L'apparente contradiction... du privilège préalablement reconnu aux seules mathématiques, plus qu'une incohérence, traduit le coup de force et l'intention profonde des Regulœ: mettre au jour, à rencontre de la constante aristotélicienne, où certitude et 'physique' restent inversement proportionnelles, des objets non-mathématiques (et donc 'physique') propres à fournir le même degré (voire un plus grand) de certitude, que n'en fournit l'objet des mathématiques; considérer comme certain un objet non-mathématique: telle est la tâche que se fixent les Regulœ, au terme de la seconde [règle]."
69. I follow here the theoretical idea of structures structurées et structurantes of Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique (Paris, 1980), 88-89.
70. Bourdieu, Le sens pratique (ref. 38), 92. Regarding weaving and other simple arts, "they present us in the most distinct way with innumerable instances of order, each one different from the other, yet all regular",
71. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 404; CSM i, 35.
72. On exercices structuraux Bourdieu, Le sens pratique (ref. 38), 126. Interestingly enough, perspicacitas and sagacitas as exercices structuraux for the mind find a correspondence in the mechanical arts that not even Francis Bacon dared contemplate. To him "The human mind is misled by looking at what is done in the mechanical arts, in which bodies are entirely changed by composition and separation, into supposing that something similar also happens in the universal nature of things",
73. Francis Bacon, The new organon, ed. by Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge, 2000), aphorism LXVI, 53.
74. Descartes, La recherche de la verité, AT x, 500; CSM ii, 402.
75. Descartes, La recherche de la verité, AT x, 502-3; CSM ii, 403-4.
76. The literature on this topic is rich. See, for instance, Marcel Mauss, "Body techniques", in Sociology and psychology: Essays, ed. by Ben Brewster (London, 1979), 97-135,
77. and Otto Sibum, "Reworking the mechanical value of heat: Instruments of precision and gestures of accuracy in early Victorian England", Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxvi (1995), 73-106.
78. Charles Loyseau, A treatise of orders and plain dignities, ed. and transi, by Howell A. Lloyd (Cambridge, 1994 [1610]), 179-81. Some tradesmen such as "apothecaries, goldsmiths, jewellers, haberdashers, wholesalers, drapers, hosiers, and others like them", gained some prominence because their crafts involved commerce. The latter artisans, who called themselves "honourable men" and "bourgeois", were morally superior to other tradesmen whose métiers "consisted] rather in physical labour than in commercial activity or in shrewdness of mind". Mere manual labourers were almost by definition the basest artisans of them all since "there is no worse occupation than to have no occupation". To qualify as a honnête homme an artisan had to leave the manual labour almost entirely to others, thus transforming himself into a merchant.
79. See Jean Nicot, Thresor de la langue française (1606),
80. where one can read under artisan; "Artisan, ou Artiste, Artifex, Opifex". L'Académie Française made the distinction we are accustomed to use today only in 1762: "artiste, celui qui travaille dans un art où le génie et la main doivent concourir (un peintre, un architecte sont des artistes); l'artisan est un ouvrier dans un art mécanique, un homme de métier",
81. Le Grand Robert de la langue française, ed. by Alain Rey, s. v. artisan. For an historical analysis of this significant shift,
82. Larry Shiner, The invention of art: A cultural history (Chicago and London, 2001), 99-120.
83. Jean de La Fontaine, for instance, in one of his fables - Le lion abattu par l'homme - used 'artisan' to describe a painter.
84. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 9; CSM i, 115. In the Furetière and Académie Française dictionaries, 'artiste' is used especially to portray alchemists. In the Middle Ages, it became common to name "artistes" (or sometimes artiens) those who studied the liberal arts - scholars en devenir - and "artifex" those who practised the mechanical arts.
85. Shiner, The invention of art (ref. 46), 30.
86. "Ce que l'on pourroit desirer d'eux [Peripateticiens] (au cas qu'ils voulussent ayder à establir la vraye Philosophie) consiste seulement à dresser des memoires fidelles des leurs obseruations, & de leurs expériences: ce qu'il ne faut pas espérer iusqu'à ce que les honnestes hommes s'employent à cet art, & iusques à ce que les Artistes & Opérateurs ayent quitté l'imagination de la poudre de projection, de la Magnesie des sages, & de la pierre Philosophique", Mersenne, Qvestions inovyes, ov recreation des sçavans (Paris, 1634; facsimile Stuttgart, 1972), Question xxviii, 126-7.
87. William Eamon, Science and thé secrets of nature: Books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture (Princeton, 1994), 281.
88. Eamon, Science and the secrets of nature (ref. 48), 284. On the concept of metis more generally,
89. Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Lex rusts de l'intelligence: La mètis des Grecs (Paris, 1974).
90. Friedrich Solmsen, "Nature as craftsman in Greek thought". Journal of the History of ideas, xxiv (1963). 473-96
91. (Plato, Gorgias, 503e. quoted on p. 484).
92. See also Bertrand Gille, Les mécaniciens grecs: La naissance de la technologie (Paris, 1980). On Aristotle and his legacy,
93. Smith, The hody of the artisan (ref. 7).
94. Descartes, Regulœ, AT x, 375-7: CSM i, 18-19.
95. Smith, The hotly of the artisan (ref. 7), esp. chaps 4 and 5 (quote on p. 142).
96. Pierre Gouhert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730: Contribution à l'histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1960), 281-2, 585.
97. Pierre Deyon. "Variations de la production textile aux XVIe et XVlIe siècles", Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations, xviii (1963), 921-55.
98. James R. Farr, Hand of honor: Artisans and their world in Dijon, 1550-1650 (Ithaca and London, 1988).
99. Henri Heller, Lahoitr. science and technology in France, 1500-1620 (Cambridge. 1996). chap. 6.
100. Roger Baron. Science et sagesse ehez Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris, 1957), 60-87.
101. Dominique Cardon. La draperie au Moyen Âge: Essor d'une grande industrie européenne (Paris, 1999), 416-17, 539-63.
102. See also Giorgio Israel, "Des Regulœ à la Géométrie", Revue d'histoire des sciences, li (1998), 183-236, where he discusses the role of weaving in Descartes's thinking.
103. According to Adrien Baillet, if Descartes had been raised in a condition allowing him to become an artisan, he would have been a skilful one because, we learn, he had in his youth a particular inclination for the arts. Like so many other such claims made by Baillet this one could be utterly wrong, or at best a misinterpretation. Adrien Baillet. La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (2 vols, Paris, 1691), i, 35.
104. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis believes Baillet has his chronology wrong here, and that this remark should be associated to a much later phase in Descartes's life: Rodis-Lewis, "Descartes' life and the development of his philosophy", in The Cambridge companion to Descartes (ref. 15), 21-57, p. 26. Descartes himself often contradicts Baillet's assertion. He said, for instance, that he was born without any manual abilities: "pour moy... i'estois venu au monde sans mains." Descartes lo ***. [Nov.-Dce. 1638?], AT ii, 452.
105. Descartes. Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 9: CSM i, 115. On the role of travel during the early modern period,
106. see the remarkable opus by Daniel Roche. Humeurs vagabondes: De la circulation des hommes et de l'utilité des voyages (Paris, 2003).
107. Simon Schama. The embarrassment of riches: An interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age (New York, 1997).
108. On Dutch Baconianism, Svetlann Alpers, The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century (Chicago, 1983), esp. chap. 1,
109. Smith. The body of the artisan (ref. 7), esp. chaps. 5 and 6.
110. This is first thing Beeckman writes down in his Journal: "Quæritur cur artes inter se non sint subordinate...." On the importance of both scientia and ars. he also writes down on the first page of the Journal: "Ad excitandum artium Studium illud maximè faceret, si immunitates alicujus vectigalis etc. ijs qui Euclidis Elementa intelligerent. promitterentur. Quibus bene intellects, pauci eætera studia negligerent, etiam in medijs occupationibus mechanicis." Isaac Beeckman, Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634, ed. by Cornells de Waard (4 vols, The Hague, 1939-53), i, 1.
111. Stephen Gaukroger and John Schuster, "The hydrodynamic paradox and the origins of Cartesian dynamics". Studies in the history and philosophy of science, xxiii (2002), 535-72, p. 552.
112. For a general appraisal of the Beeckman-Descartes relationship. Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An intellectual biography (Oxford, 1995), chap. 3:
113. Klaas van Berkel, "Descartes'debt to Beeckman: Inspiration, cooperation, conflict", in Descartes' natural philosophy, ed. by Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster, and John Sutton (London, 2000), 46-59.
114. The classic work on Beeckman remains Klaas Van Berkel, Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637) en de mechanisering van het wereldbeeld (Amsterdam, 1983), see pp. 217-35 for the role of technology in Beeckman's thinking.
115. Gaukroger, Descartes (ref. 60), 92-103.
116. John A. Schuster, "Descartes and the scientific revolution, 1618-1634: An interpretation", Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1977, i, 117-27.
117. Henk J. M. Bos, "On the representation of curves in Descartes' Géométrie", Archives for the history of exact sciences, xxiv (1981), 295-338.
118. Michel Serfati, "Les compas cartésiens", Archives de philosophie, lvi (1993), 197-230.
119. Baillet, La vie de M. Des-cartes (ref. 56), i, 67-70
120. on meeting the two mathematicians. On Bramer and his instruments, Descartes, Cogitationes privates, AT x, 241-2.
121. The best analysis of Descartes in Germany and the significance of this sojourn is Mehl, Descartes en Allemagne (ref. 36).
122. See also William R. Shea, The magic of numbers and motion: The scientific career of René Descartes (Canton, MA, 1991), 103-7.
123. Bennett, "The mechanics' philosophy and the mechanical philosophy" (ref. 7);
124. J. A. Bennett, "Geometry in context in the sixteenth century: The view from the museum", Early science and medicine, vii (2002), 214-30, pp. 229-30.
125. On epistemic culture see Karin Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1999).
126. The best accounts are Gaukroger, Descartes (ref. 60), 135-86;
127. John A. Schuster, "Descartes opticien: The construction of the law of refraction and the manufacture of its physical rationales", in Gaukroger, Schuster and Sutton (eds), Descartes's natural philosophy (ref. 60), 258-312;
128. Shea, The magic of numbers and motion (ref. 62), 149-63.
129. See A. I. Sabra, Theories of light from Descartes to Newton (Cambridge, 1981), 93-135 for Fermat's criticisms.
130. Drawing accurate parabolic mirrors held no secrets for Mydorge, judging from a letter sent by Robert Cornier to Mersenne, one of the Minim's early correspondents: "I do not know of any other means of making parabolic mirrors beyond those with which you are acquainted, especially since you have the paper of Mr. Mydorge who knows all that can be known on the matter. I can only tell you that Mr. [Guillaume] Le Vasseur says that he has found an absolutely certain way by the sines. But I cannot say more since I do not yet know how he goes about it." Cornier to Mersenne, 18 August [1625], in Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne, religieux minime, ed. by Cornélls de Waard (17 vols, Paris, 1933-88), i, 260-1;
131. quoted in Shea, The magic of numbers and motion (ref. 62), 150. This Le Vasseur was an instrument-maker from Rouen, well-known in the region for his work in navigation and map-making. Cornier to Mersenne. 16 January 1626: "Je vous envoie le billet tel que Le Vasseur me l'a envoyé pour responce à ce que vous me demandiés des longitudes et latitudes",
132. Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne, i, 332;
133. see also Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne ibid., 242-3. His method of drawing parabolic shapes "by the sines" most likely has nothing to do with Descartes's (and Mydorge's) later determination of the sine law for the refraction of light. Snel (in the 1620s) and Harriot (c. 1598) found the same law of refraction, but both were unknown to Descartes.
134. Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, Histoire du miroir (Paris, 1994), 31-39. At the end of the century mirrors became common objects of consumption for the noblesse and bourgeoisie alike. On Mydorge's disbursement,
135. Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (ref. 56), ii, 326.
136. Cornier to Mersenne, 16 January 1626: "Ce que vous me mandés de l'excellence des miroirs de M' Midorge, me faict souvenir de vous prier de me mander si c'est de sa façon et, si ainsi est, quelle en est la matiere et la dose." Cornier to Mersenne, 27 Jauary 1626: "Je vous remercie de toute mon affection de la peone que vous prenés à m'expliquer les miroirs de M'Midorge et ses opinions. J'euse bien desiré scavoir son poli, mais puisqu'il se le reserve, il n'en fault point parler. J'en scay quelques uns qui sont bons et dont j'ay veu l'effect qui, je croy, se peut conduire à une grande perfection." Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne (ref. 65), i, 331, 354.
137. On Mydorge's importance for Descartes as an instrument maker cum natural philosopher, Baillet writes: "Rien au monde ne luy fut plus utile que ces verres pour connoître & pour expliquer. comme il a fait depuis dans sa Dioptrique, la nature de la lumiére, de la vision, & de la réfraction. M. Mydorge luy en fit faire de paraboliques & d'hyperboliques, d'ovales & d'élliptiques. Et comme il avoit la main aussi sûre & aussi délicate que l'esprit subtil, il voulut décrire luymême les hyperboles & les éllipses. C'est ce qui fut d'un secours merveilleux à M. Descartes non seulement pour mieux comprendre qu'il n'avoit fait jusqu'alors la nature de l'ellipse & de l'hyperbole, leur propriété touchant les réfractions, la maniére dont on doit les décrire; mais encore pour se confirmer dans plusieurs belles découvertes qu'il avoit déja faites auparavant louchant lu lumiére. & les moyens de perfectionner la vision." Baillet. La vie de Monsieur DesCartes (ref. 56), i, 149-50.
138. When Aleaume passed away late in 1627, Peiresc feared for his manuscripts (some of which written by Viète) and instruments. Peiresc thus suggested on 8 January 1628 that "l'instrument [the compass] que luy avoit faict Ferrier pour descrire la ligne necessaire à la convexité desdictes lunettes et miroirs convexes, et les verres et miroirs qu'il en avoit essayez... il faudrait que cela passast par les muins de M' Midorge, tresorier de France... lequel seul je cognois en ce pais le plus approchant de la curiosité de feu M Alleaume et de sa doctrine et prattique aux mathematiques et mechaniques." Quoted in Mersenne, Correspondance au Père Marin Mersenne (ref. 65), i, 617.
139. See also Cornier to Mersenne, 24 December [1627]: "Je troy que M Midorge ne se sera pas oublié dans lu vendue de M Alleaume", Correspondance au Père Marin Mersenne ibid., 613.
140. Furrier's first name is sometimes questioned. Maurice Daumas (Les instruments scientifiques aux XVII et XVIII siècles (Paris, 1953), 98) suggests it is Guillaume, basing his assertion on the nineteenth-century French instrument maker Camille Sébastien Nachet. Yet Jean-Baptiste Morin in a 1634 publication refers to Ferrier as "D. Ioannes Ferrier, instrumentorum mathematicorum sollertissimus et accuratissimus fabrefactor". I use this latter information in naming Ferrier.
141. Morin is quoted in Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne (ref. 65), i, 516.
142. Baillet. La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (ref. 56), i, 151.
143. Cornier to Mersenne, 16 March 1626, in Mersenne. Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne (ref. 65), i, 420.
144. This part of the letter refers, according to the editors of the Correspondance, to a letter sent by Mydorge to Mersenne regarding the hyperbolic or elliptical shape of the anaclastic line. Mydorge to Mersenne, [February-March 1626?], in Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne ibid., i, 404-15.
145. For a discussion of the dating of this letter, Gaukroger, Descartes (ref. 60), 438-39 (note 26). Regarding Ferrier and parabolic mirrors, Cornier continues: "II [Ferrier] diet une chose merveilleuse, qu'une si petite partie de parabole brusle avec effect si loing. Car d'ordinaire, pour brusler de loing, estant necessaire d'avoir une portion d'une grande circonference. cela est si plat en petit volume qu'il demeure avec très peu de force", Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne (ref. 65), i, 420. Descartes will later say that it is impossible for a miroir ardent to burn at a distance of one league (lieue) unless the mirror is over twelve metres ("plus de six toises") across, even if it had been the work of an Angel,
146. Descartes to Mersenne, January 1630, AT i, 109-10. Mersenne discusses this topic in Qvestions inoyex (ref. 47). Question xxxv.
147. On the history (legend) of Archimedes's great burning mirrors, D. L. Simms, "Archimedes and the burning mirrors of Syracuse", Technology and culture, xviii (1977), 1-24.
148. Descartes to Huygcns, [December 1635], AT i, 335-7.
149. "Quid ita, nunquid hujuscemodi operibus utilissitnis caremus, quia multi. qui has lineas repererunt, eus aeterno silentio involvunt, ne quando alicui proficiant." Quoted in Correspondance du Père Marin Mersenne (ref. 65), i, 299.
150. "[Descartes] devint luy-même en trés peu de têms un grand maître dans l'art de tailler les verres: & comme l'industrie des Mathématiciens se trouve souvent inutile par la faute des Ouvriers dont l'adresse ne répond pas toûjours à l'esprit des Auteurs qui les font travailler, il s'appliqua particuliérement à former la main de quelques Tourneurs qu'il trouva les plus experts, & les mieux disposez à ce travail. En quoy il eut la satisfaction de voir le succez de ses soins avant que de sortir de la France pour se retirer en Hollande", Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (ref. 56), i, 150.
151. D. Graham Burnett, Descartes and the hyperbolic quest: Lens making machines and their significance in the seventeenth century (Philadelphia, 2005), 36.
152. On Descartes, Ferrier and artisans, see also Shea, The magic of numbers and motion (ref. 62), 151-8, 191-201;
153. Giulia Belgioioso, "Descartes e gli artigiani", in La biografia intellettuale di René Descartes attraverso la Correspondance, ed. by Jean-Robert Armogathe, Giulia Belgioioso, and Carlo Vinti (Naples, 1999), 113-65.
154. Descartes is not insensitive to Ferrier's problems, which he associates with some sort of psychological unrest: "Aprés tout, ie plains fort M'. Ferrier & voudrais bien pouuoir, sans trop d'incommodité, soulager sa mauuaise fortune; car il la mérite meilleure, & je ne connois en luy de deffaut, sinon qu'il ne fait jamais son conte sur le pié des choses présentes, mais seulement de celles qu'il espere ou qui sont passées, & qu'il a vne certaine irresolution qui l'empesche d'executer ce qu'il entreprend. Ie lui ay rebattu presque la mesme chose en toutes les lettres que ie luy ai écrittes; mais vous auez plus de prudence que moy, pour sçauoir ce qu'il faut dire & conseiller", Descartes to Mersenne, [18 March 1630], AT i, 132. Ferrier's lack of mechanical skills may have been caused by a too strong inclination towards pure mathematics: "[L]a douceur qu'il [Ferrier] avoit trouvée dans la méditation, & dans les entretiens des Mathématiciens, avoit beaucoup diminué en luy l'habitude du travail [manuel]", Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (ref. 56), i, 186. In a letter Ferrier sent to Descartes, he mentions indeed how much he wants to "taste" and "comprehend" the "true foundations of science" from scholars such as Descartes "tant i'ay d'ambition de me faire connoistre par quelque chose au delà du commun", Ferrier to Descartes, 26 October 1629, AT i, 51.
155. Burnett, Descartes and the hyperbolic quest (ref. 76), 36.
156. Descartes to Golius, [January 1632], AT i, 234-5, where Descartes mentions he will send the first part of his Dioptrique that deals with refraction, without the philosophy.
157. Philippe Hamou, La mutation du visible: Essai sur la portée épistémologique des instruments d'optique au XVII' siècle (2 vols, Villeneuve D'Ascq (Nord), 1999), i, 239-88.
158. Bruce Stansfield Eastwood, "Descartes on refraction: Scientific versus rhetorical method", Isis, lxxv (1984), 481-502.
159. "Au surplus je ne croy pas que vostre mathematicien [Descartes], quelqu'habile homme qu'il soit, puisse bien donner des raisons des refractions jusques àce qu'il ait enseigné de faire des lunetes de Hollande par raison et reglement en telle longueur que l'on vouldra. Car en cela git un des plus grands secrets des refractions àmon advis...", Cornier to Mersenne, 16 March 1626, in Correspondance du Pére Marin Mersenne (ref. 65), i, 420.
160. It is interesting to note that the theoretical portion of Jacques Besson's Theatrum instrumentorum machinarum (Orleans, 1569) was never published, yet is developed in the manuscript version (British Library) of the work.
161. Alex Keller, "A manuscript version of Jacques Besson's book of machines, with his unpublished principles of mechanics", in On the pre-modern technology and science: Studies in honour of Lynn White, Jr., ed. by B. S. Hall and D. C. West (Malibu, 1976), 75-95.
162. Descartes to Ferrier, [2 December 1630], AT i, 185. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 77; CSM i, 150.
163. Descartes to Mersenne, [25 January 16387], AT i, 500-1;
164. Daumas, Les instruments scientifiques aux XVII' et XVIII" siècles (ref. 70), 99;
165. Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (ref. 56), i, 320-1.
166. Descartes is fully aware that precise instrument making is of the utmost importance to natural philosophy. Instruments can be used, for instance, to ascertain the number, velocity, and shape of sunspots and to know how the air refracts the light from the stars, and whether it also affects the light from the Moon. Descartes to Mersenne, January 1630, AT i, 113: "Mais ces choses là requierent des instrumens si Justes...."
167. Descartes to Golius. [2 February 1632]. AT i, 236-40. "Ie ne doute point que vous ne puissiés trouuer plusieurs autres inuentions meilleures que celle cy pour faire la mesme experience, si vous prenés la peine d'en chercher: mais pource que ie scay que vous aués beaucoup d'autres occupations. I'ay creu que si vous n'y uniés pas encore pensé, ie vous soulagerais peut-estre d'autant..." (ibid., 240).
168. Arthur H. Sehryncmukers, "Descartes and the weight-driven chain-clock", Isis. Ix (1969), 233-6.
169. On the Archimedean screw. Descartes to Huygens, 15 November 1643. AT iv, 761-6. According to Leucheron, the experiment was done many times with the same result. Descartes does not doubt the outcome per se, but still believes it is worth exploring further. Mersenne asked someone to do the experiment with an arquebuze. giving again the same result as in the Récréations mathématiques. Descartes, however, is not convinced and does not judge it sufficient to draw certain knowledge from it (quelque chose de certain). He therefore suggests doing the experiment again with an instrument of his own design, using a cannon always kept in the upright position by a system of pulleys. Descartes to Mersenne. [April 1634]. AT i, 287: Descartes to Mersenne. 15 May 1634, AT i, 293-94. The choice of a cannon that could support a cannonball of 30 to 40 pounds is better because the iron from which it is made does not melt as easily as the lead ball from the arquebus; and moreover such a big ball would be found more easily if it came back to earth.
170. Descartes uses these fashionable machines to investigate the phenomenon, as well as to relocate wonder from garden engineers to natural philosophers, thus displacing a "science of miracles" from simple technical achievements to the knowledge of mathematics and mechanical philosophy. Simon Werrett, "Wonders never cease: Descartes's Météores and the rainbow fountain", The British journal for the history of Science, xxxiv (2001). 129-47.
171. Davis Baird, Thing knowledge: A philosophy of scientific instruments (Berkeley, 2004).
172. Burnett, Descartes and the hyperbolic quest (ref. 76). 132, for the association of the lens-grinding machine to an "epistemological instrument". On the philosophy of instrumentation,
173. Hans Radder (ed.), The philosophy of scientific, experimentation (Pittsburgh, 2003).
174. Descartes to Bunnun, AT v, 174. English translation in John Cottingham (ed.), Descartes' conversation with Burmun (Oxford, 1976), 44, §73.
175. Burnett, Descartes and the hyperbolic quest (ref. 76), 125-32.
176. Galileo Galilei, Sidereus nuncius, in Le opere di Galileo Galilei, ed. by Antonio Favaro (20 vols, Florence, 1890-1909), iii, 53-96, p. 59.
177. For the English translation. Galileo. Sidereus nuncius or The sidereal messenger, transl. by Albert van Helden (Chicago and London, 1989), 35.
178. A very good analysis of organon qua instrument is given by Don Bates, "Machina ex Deo: William Harvey and the meaning of instrument". Journal of the history of ideas. lxi (2000), 577-93.
179. See also Dennis Des Chene. Spirits and clocks: Machine and organism in Descartes (Ithaca and London, 2001). 89-95 for an analysis of Suárez's notion of instrument.
180. "Si bien qu'il ne nous reste a considerer que les organes exterieurs, entre lesquels ie comprens toutes les parties transparentes de l'œil, aussy bien que tous les autres cors qu'on peut mettre entre luy & l'ohiet", Descartes, Dioplrique, AT vi, 148.
181. Descartes, Dioptrique, AT vi, 114-17.
182. Matthew L. Jones argues somewhat similarly when he writes that Descartes's compasses "offered the crucial heuristic, a material propaedeutic, for Descartes'[s] revised account of mathematics freed from memory and subject to a criterion of graspable unity. A simple mathematical instrument became the model and exemplar of the knowledge of Descartes's new subject, the one supposedly so removed from the material". Jones, "Descartes's geometry as spiritual exercise", Critical inquiry, xxviii (2001), 40-71, p. 61.
183. Ambroise Paré, Les œuvres de M. Ambroise Paré conseiller, et premier chirurgien du roy (Paris, 1598), chap. 22, "Des moyens & artifices d'adiouster ce qui defaut naturellement ou par accident".
184. Huygens to Descartes, 8 September 1637, AT i, 395-96: "Mais comme il [le tourneur d'Amsterdam] est homme industrieux en matiere de mouuemens mechaniques, il presume de venir a bout de vostre inuention a beaucoup moins de façon. En effect, il produit des choses si estranges par des petites machines de deux liards, que si ce n'estoit vous, Monsieur, i'espererois qu'il abregerait de quelque chose ce que vous auez desseigné pour arriuer a la perfection de ces verres; nous verrons ce qui arriuera, & vous en rendrons compte." Descartes to Huygens, 5 October 1637, AT i, 433: "Mais puisqu'il vous plaist en sçauoir mon opinion, ie vous diray franchement que tant s'en faut que i'espere qu'il en viene a bout, auec des machines qui ayent moins de façon que la miene, qu'au contraire ie me persuade qu'on y doit encore adiouster diuerses choses, que i'ay omises, mais que ie croy n'estre point si difficiles a inuenter que l'vsage ne les enseigne."
185. "[M]ais pour reuenir à ceux qui ont eu cognoissance des Machines mouuantes & Hidrauliques, peu en ont escrit de nostre temps, bien est vray, que Jacob Besson, Augustin Ramelly, & quelques autres ont mis en lumiere quelques Machines par eux inventees sur le papier, mais peu d'icelles peuuent auoir aucun effect, & ont creu, que par vne multiplication de roües dentelees, lesdites machines auroient effect, selon leur pensee, & n'ont pas consideré, que ladite multiplication est liee auec le temps, comme il sera monstré en son lieu...", Salomon de Caus, Les Raisons des forces movvantes Auec diuerses Machines tant vtilles que plaisantes Aus quelles sont adioints plusieurs debeings de grotes et fontaines (Frankfurt, 1615), n.p., Epistre au Lecteur. De Caus gives an example (Theoresme XVI) of a machine to raise weights made of six geared wheels of increasing size. Although, theoretically, multiplying the number of wheels can expand infinitely the load a machine can lift, in this theorem de Caus calculates that a worker would have to turn the crank 2,985,984 times to cause the sixth and biggest wheel to make a single revolution. Assuming this worker could turn the crank 10,000 times a day, it would still take 298 days for the sixth wheel to complete one revolution!
186. Des Chene, Spirits and clocks (ref. 93), 101-2.
187. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT vi, 57; CSM i, 140.
188. See also Descartes, Règles utiles et claires pour la direction de l'esprit (ref. 9), 89-91.
189. On the representation of bodily parts in Descartes's first two posthumous editions of the treatise on man, Rebecca M. Wilkin, "Figuring the dead Descartes: Claude Clerselier's Homme de René Descartes (1664)", Representations, lxxxiii (2003), 38-66.
190. Descartes, L'homme, AT xi, 120; CSM i, 99.
191. Descartes, Le monde, AT xi, 34-35, 46-47; quotation, CSM i, 97.
192. Gaukroger, Descartes (ref. 60), 63-64
193. . Werrett, "Wonders never cease" (ref. 88).
194. On clocks see Otto Mayr, Authority, liberty & automatic machinery in early modern Europe (Baltimore and London, 1986),
195. and Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, The history of the hour: Clocks and modern temporal orders, transl. by Thomas Dunlap (Chicago and London, 1996), esp. chap. 8.
196. Loyseau, A treatise of orders and plain dignities (ref. 44), 5.
197. Robert Muchembled, Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France moderne (XV-XVHI siècle), 2nd edn (Paris, 1991), 225-85.
198. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris. 1975), esp. 159-227.
199. Norbert Elias, The civilizing process: Sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations, rev. edn (Oxford and Malden, MA, 2000).
200. An interesting criticism of Elias's thesis is found in Hans Peter Duerr, Nudité et pudeur: Le mythe du processus de civilisation, transl. by Véronique Bodin and Jacqueline Pincemin (Paris, 1998).
201. Such a radical rationalization of the state and social life can only be understood in the light of the disorders created by the Wars of Religion. See, for instance, Denis Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525-vers 1610 (2 vols, Seyssel, 1990), ii, 624,
202. and Mack P. Holt, The French wars of religion, 1562-1629 (Cambridge, 1995), 210-16.
203. One of the most interesting sociological studies on this topic is Pierre Bourdieu, Méditations pascaliennes, rev. edn (Paris, 2003), 185-234:
204. "Les injonctions sociales les plus sérieuses s'adressent non à l'intellect mais au corps" (p. 204).
205. Barthélemy de Laffemas, Reiglement genéral pour dresser les manufactures en ce royaulme (Paris, 1603). where he wrote: "Le defaut de nos polices a perverti l'ordre qui s'observoit, tant a la fabrique des manufactures qu'à l'effet de tout ce qui en dépend...." Hence the King had to reestablish the "manufactures de draperie et de teintures en leur légalité, bonté et perfection anciennes".
206. Quoted in Emile Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France avant 1789 (2 vols, Paris, 1900-1), ii, 155. Contemporary to Laffemas, Antoine de Monchrestien cornes to an identical conclusion in 1615 when he says that "Le plus Royal exercice que peuvent prendre Vos Majestés c'est de ramener à l'ordre ce qui est détraqué. De régler et distinguer les Arts tombez en une monstrueuse confusion",
207. Monchrestien, Trakté de l'œconomie politique, ed. by François Billacois (Geneva, 1999). 66.
208. James R. Farr, "Cultural analysis and early modern artisans", in The artisan and the European town, 1500-1900. ed. by Geoffrey Crossick (Aldershot, 1997). 56-74, p. 67.
209. For "masters of letters", Loyseau. A treatise of orders and plain dignities (ref. 44), 226.
210. For how "unfair" was the production of masterpieces. Levasseur.
211. Neil M. Ribe pointedly argues that nature in the end "is not a source of standards but is itself subject to the higher standard of Cartesian rationality", Ribe, "Cartesian optics and the mastery of nature", Isis, lxxxviii (1997), 42-61, p. 53.
212. Matthew L. Jones. "Descartes's geometry as spiritual exercise" (ref. 96).
213. Mersenne, Qvestions inovyes (ref. 47). Question xii, 45-46.
214. Descartes's universal bon sens is the very first assertion he makes in the Discours de la méthode. On Descartes's philosophy of education in general,
215. Daniel Garber, "Descartes, or the cultivation of the intellect", in Descartes embodied (ref. 2), 277-95.
216. Peter Dear, "A mechanical microcosm: Bodily passions, good manners, and Cartesian mechanism", in Science incarnate: Historical embodiments of natural knowledge, ed. by Christopher Lawrence and Steven Shapin (Chicago and London. 1998), 51-82.
217. Bacon. The new organon (ref. 40), Aphorism CXXII, 95.
218. On Descartes's audience generally, Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, "Descartes stratège de la destination", XVII siècle, clxxvii (1992). 551-9;
219. Cavaillé, '"Le plus éloquent philosophe des derniers temps': Les stratégies d'auteur de René Descartes", Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales, 1994, 349-67.