René Descartes; vertaald door Florentius Schuyl - Renatus Des Cartes De Homine figuris et Latinitate donatus a Florentio Schuyl - 1662

The mechanization of the worldview – groundbreaking and fundamental book.

René Descartes
Renatus Des Cartes De Homine, furnished with figures and Latin by Florentius Schuyl, senator of the illustrious city of Sylva Ducis, and there professor of philosophy.
Leiden (Batavian), Franciscus Moyardus & Petrus Leffen, 1662.

4to (21.5 x 16.5 cm), (36), 121 (1) p., complete with 10 engraved plates, of which 2 with movable parts. Fig. I-b (heart) without the underlying flap, Fig. LIV (brain) with the rarely present movable part. Numerous engravings and woodcuts in the text. Title page with decorative printer’s mark.

Very attractive and solid copy, bound in 17th-century parchment. Fresh text block with ample margins. Sharp impression of text and images. A small burn mark in the margin on p. 6. Indications by stamps on the title page and flyleaf that it originated from monastery ownership.

Groundbreaking book by the influential French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650). This first edition appeared posthumously in 1662 in a Latin translation from the French by Florentius Schuyl. Two years later followed a French edition. Descartes did not allow the book to be printed during his lifetime because he anticipated trouble due to his 'heretical' ideas.

Descartes, De Homine (Traité de l'homme; Treatise of Man), is designed as a medical handbook for physiology. It is the ultimate example of his mechanistic worldview. Descartes describes the human being as a machine. The soul also had a place in it; it resided in the pineal gland (epiphysis) in the brain. The body was no longer a sacred mystery, but a mechanism that could be disassembled, understood, and repaired. These insights have a lasting influence on modern science and philosophy.

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