Journal article
Beeckman, Descartes and the Force of Motion
Abstract
In this reassessment of Descartes' debt to his mentor Isaac Beeckman, I argue that they share the same basic conception of motion: the force of a body's motion—understood as the force of persisting in that motion, shorn of any connotations of internal cause—is conserved through God's direct action, is proportional to the speed and magnitude of the body, and is gained or lost only through collisions. I contend that this constitutes a fully …
Authors
Arthur R
Journal
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 1–28
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date
January 2007
DOI
10.1353/hph.2007.0001
ISSN
0022-5053