Descartes și Roberval: premise metafizice și epistemologice ale unui sistem fizic
Descartes and Roberval: Metaphysical and Epistemological Assumptions in Natural Philosophy

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with the long-lasting rivalry between René Descartes and Gilles Personne de Roberval. Between 1638 and 1649, they have had opposing views about mathematical procedures, mechanics, optics and metaphysics, which usually resulted in intense disputes. One of the extensive critiques of Descartes concerns Roberval’s system of natural philosophy, but this did not generate an explicit debate, and has thus been neglected by current scholarship. I argue that Descartes’s rejection of Roberval’s system rests on some crucial underlying metaphysical and epistemological disagreements. They regard the possibility of applying mathematics to nature and the conditions that explanations of natural phenomena have to meet in order to be intelligible and successful

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