The first biography of Descartes was Adrien Baillet’s

La Vie de Monsieur Descartes , published in 1691 (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1946), recently reprinted by Slatkine Reprints (Geneva, 1970). Modern accounts of Descartes’s life, which at times correct Baillet, include Charles Adam,

Vie et Œuvres de Descartes (1910; AT, vol. 12), on which I have relied heavily, and, in English, Jack Vrooman,

René Descartes: A Biography (New York: Putnam, 1970). Much more recent is Stephen Gaukroger,

Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), which has a very full treatment of Descartes’s scientific writings.

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Apart from Gaukroger’s biography of Descartes, one of the few recent books to cover Descartes’s philosophy and science is Daniel Garber’s excellent

Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Considerably older but still worth consulting is Jonathan Rée,

Descartes (London: Allen Lane, 1974). More on Descartes’s philosophy and science can be found in Desmond Clarke,

Descartes’ Philosophy of Science (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), and the collection of papers edited by Stephen Gaukroger,

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