DESCARTES ET LE RÊVE (BACONIEN) DE « LA PLUS HAUTE ET PLUS PARFAITE SCIENCE »
DESCARTES AND THE (BACONIAN) DREAM OF “THE HIGHEST AND THE MOST PERFECT SCIENCE”

Summary/Abstract: Descartes and the (Baconian) Dream of “the Highest and the most Perfect Science”. The question of Descartes’ connection to his key contemporary, Francis Bacon, arises naturally from the examination of his correspondence, which I carried out on the basis of the occurrences of Francis Bacon’s name in Descartes’ letters and of some fragments of Descartes’ published works that are someway implied in the correspondence and therefore require interpretation. The advantage of working from the correspondence is that names in it are linked to certain periods of Descartes’ activity as well as to intellectual contexts within which the urgency of some specific issues needs to be properly grasped. Thus I have shown the connection between the letters from 1630-1632 and, notably, the 6th part of the Discourse on Method that some historians regard as the original preface, written in 1635-1636, to the Dioptrics and The Meteors.

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