Romiti, Andrew Joseph (Author)
Hassing, Richard F. (Advisor)
The Catholic University of America
Hassing, Richard F.
Physical Details: 196 pp.
Language: English
Building upon the arguments of Jacob Klein and Edmund Husserl that we can only understand the meaning of modern science by investigating its historical development, this dissertation aims to uncover the nature and conceptual presuppositions of Descartes’s concept of space. In analyzing this concept, the dissertation extends Klein’s analysis of Descartes’s contribution to the development of modern symbolic mathematics to Descartes’s equally important role in developing the conceptual underpinnings of modern mathematical physics by showing that Descartes’s concept of space, which spans and unites the mathematical and physical domains, is an expansion of the symbolic concept of number. The analysis of Descartes’s concept of space depends upon connecting the following aspects of Descartes’s writings: the account of mind and mathematical cognition in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, the conceptual structure of the mathematical objects and the mathematical understanding of space in the Geometry, and the physical understanding of space in the Principles of Philosophy. The dissertation ultimately concludes that Descartes’s concept of space allows the distinctive conceptual structure of modern mathematics to be applied to the physical world, whereby that concept provides a conceptual framework within which mathematical physics can exist.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Chapter
Dijksterhuis, Fokko Jan;
(2007)
Constructive Thinking: A Case for Dioptrics
(/isis/citation/CBB000774655/)
Article
Heeffer, Albrecht;
(2006)
The Logic of Disguise: Descartes' Discovery of the Law of Refraction
(/isis/citation/CBB000772577/)
Article
Edelheit, Amos;
(2009)
Francesco Patrizi's Two Books on Space: Geometry, Mathematics, and Dialectic beyond Aristotelian Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000932499/)
Book
De Risi, Vincenzo;
(2007)
Geometry and Monadology: Leibniz's Analysis Situs and Philosophy of Space
(/isis/citation/CBB000830164/)
Article
Andrew Janiak;
(2015)
Space and Motion in Nature and Scripture: Galileo, Descartes, Newton
(/isis/citation/CBB462811041/)
Thesis
Miller, David Marshall;
(2006)
Representations of Space in Seventeenth-Century Physics
(/isis/citation/CBB001561656/)
Book
Slowik, Edward;
(2002)
Cartesian Spacetime. Descartes' Physics and the Relational Theory of Space and Motion
(/isis/citation/CBB000640372/)
Article
Arthur, Richard T. W.;
(2013)
Leibniz's Theory of Space
(/isis/citation/CBB001320866/)
Article
Dmitri Levitin;
(2021)
Isaac Newton’s ‘De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum’: its purpose in historical context
(/isis/citation/CBB857612261/)
Article
Janiak, Andrew;
(2000)
Space, atoms and mathematical divisibility in Newton
(/isis/citation/CBB000111519/)
Book
Scholz, Erhard.;
(2001)
Hermann Weyl's Raum--Zeit--Materie and a General Introduction to his Scientific Work
(/isis/citation/CBB000101681/)
Article
Mancosu, Paolo;
Arana, Andrew;
(2010)
Descartes and the Cylindrical Helix
(/isis/citation/CBB001022145/)
Thesis
Biener, Zvi;
(2008)
The Unity of Science in Early-Modern Philosophy: Subalternation, Metaphysics and the Geometrical Manner in Scholasticism, Galileo and Descartes
(/isis/citation/CBB001561187/)
Article
Jesseph, Douglas M.;
(2007)
Descartes, Pascal, and the Epistemology of Mathematics: The Case of the Cycloid
(/isis/citation/CBB000830788/)
Book
Descartes, René;
(2001)
Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology
(/isis/citation/CBB000100199/)
Article
Maronne, Sébastien;
(2010)
Pascal versus Descartes on Solution of Geometrical Problems and the Sluse-Pascal Correspondence
(/isis/citation/CBB001031516/)
Article
Descotes, Dominique;
(2005)
Aspects littéraires de la “Géométrie” de Descartes
(/isis/citation/CBB000670806/)
Article
Maronne, Sébastien;
(2010)
Contexts, Emergence and Issues of Cartesian Geometry: In Honour of Henk Bos's 70th Birthday
(/isis/citation/CBB001022142/)
Thesis
Doyle, Bret J. Lalumia;
(2006)
The Logic of Descartes' Scientific Method in the “Rules,” “Geometry,” and “Optics”
(/isis/citation/CBB001561645/)
Article
Maronne, Sébastien;
(2010)
The Ovals in the “Excerpta Mathematica” and the Origins of Descartes' Method of Normals
(/isis/citation/CBB001022147/)
Historia Mathematica
Perspectives on Science
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
Foundations of Science
Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Be the first to comment!