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The Search for Truth by Natural Light [1] (La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle) is an unfinished philosophical dialogue by René Descartes “set in the courtly culture of the ‘ honnête homme ’ and ‘ curiosité ’.” [2] It was written in French (presumably after the Meditations was completed [3]) but that was lost around 1700 and remained lost until a partial copy ...
Page of Descartes' La dioptrique with the wine vat example. The first discourse captures Descartes' theories on the nature of light.In the first model, he compares light to a stick that allows a blind person to discern his environment through touch.
Descartes' Le Monde, 1664 The World, also called Treatise on the Light (French title: Traité du monde et de la lumière), is a book by René Descartes (1596–1650). Written between 1629 and 1633, it contains a nearly complete version of his philosophy, from method, to metaphysics, to physics and biology.
He dismissed Descartes' theory of light because he rejected Descartes’ understanding of space, which derived from it. [8] With the publication of Opticks in 1704, [9] Newton for the first time took a clear position supporting a corpuscular interpretation, though it would fall on his followers to systemise the theory. [10]
Descartes briefly sketches how in an unpublished treatise (published posthumously as Le Monde) he had laid out his ideas regarding the laws of nature, the sun and stars, the moon as the cause of "ebb and flow" (meaning the tides), gravitation, light, and heat. Describing his work on light, he states:
René Descartes (/ d eɪ ˈ k ɑːr t / day-KART, also UK: / ˈ d eɪ k ɑːr t / DAY-kart; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt] ⓘ; [note 3] [11] 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) [12] [13]: 58 was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science.
As Descartes explained in a margin note, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt." In the posthumously published The Search for Truth by Natural Light, he expressed this insight as dubito, ergo sum, vel, quod idem est, cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I am — or what is the same — I think, therefore I am").
Descartes hypothesized that light is pressure, transmitted instantaneously through a transparent medium. Gassendi, on the contrary, held that light is a stream of tiny particles traveling with immense speed. Newton questioned Descartes' theory in many ways; in folio 103 he wrote—