Book
Les Passions de l'âme, le Monde, ou Traité de la lumière, et la Géométrie, par René Descartes. Nouvelle édition,enrichie de figures en taille-douce. Augmentée d'un discours sur le mouvement local et sur la fièvre, suivant les principes du même auteur
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la 2eme partie: la Géométrie n'a pas de titre,a une pagination particulière ; trés rare.Edition of Descartes's important psychological treatise, one of his most influential works, and the last work published before his death in the following year. This is a fine copy in an untouched contemporary binding. "Les passions de l'ame, which drew heavily on the then-unpublished Traité de l'homme, contains the application of Descartes's mechanistic physiology to the relationship between mind and body. Descartes made an essential distinction between the soul as the divinely-endowed seat of consciousness, will and rational thought, and the body as a machine or automaton subject to the laws of physics, and only indirectly controlled by the soul through the nerves. Using this dualistic model, he was able to make the important distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions, a distinction discussed further in the Traité. Descartes located the soul in the pineal gland, which thus served as the locus for interaction between soul and body; he had defined the pineal gland's function in the Traité, but Les passions de l'ame contains his first published account of it. The work also contains the first use of the word "reflex" in connection with the action of the nervous system" (Norman). Remise de 20% pour toutes commandes supérieures à 200 €
