Preface -- Contents -- Chronological Table -- Introduction -- 1. 'A Learned and Eloquent Piety' -- Childhood, 1596-1606 -- The Christianization of Europe -- The Civilizing Process -- The Formation of a Gentilhomme -- The Demise of the Municipal Collège -- 2. An Education in Propriety, 1606-1618 -- La Flèche -- Christianity and the Classical Tradition -- Res Literaria, 1606-1611 -- The Philosophical Curriculum -- Dialectic, 1611-1612 -- Natural Philosophy and Mathematics, 1612-1613 -- Metaphysics and Ethics, 1613-1614 -- Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme: A Choice of Career, 1614-1618 -- 3. The Apprenticeship with Beeckman, 1618-1619 -- The Meeting with Beeckman -- Beeckman's Micro-Corpuscularianism -- Compendium Musicae -- Falling bodies -- Hydrostatics -- Proportional Compasses and the Idea of a Mathesis Universalis -- 4. The Search for Method, 1619-1625 -- Mirabilis scientiae fundamenta, November 1619 -- The Early Regulae, 1619/1620 -- Intuitus and the Doctrine of Clear and Distinct Ideas -- The Doctrine of Analysis -- Fundamentum inventi mirabilis -- Intermezzo, 1621-1625 -- 5. The Paris Years, 1625-1628 -- Libertine Paris -- The Discovery of the Law of Refraction -- Mersenne, Mechanism, and the Problem of Naturalism -- The Return to the Regulae, 1626 -- The Nature of Cognition -- The Representation of Algebra -- The Final Year in Paris -- 6. A New Beginning, 1629-1630 -- The Retreat from Society -- Grinding the Anaclastic -- The Formulation of a Metaphysics -- The Pappus Problem and the Classification of Curves -- Parhelia and the Origins of Le Monde -- The Dispute with Beeckman -- 7. A New System of the World, 1630-1633 -- The Structure of Le Monde -- A Corpuscular Theory of Matter -- The Laws of Nature -- The Construction of a New World -- The Nature of Light -- A Mechanistic Physiology -- Automata and Perceptual Cognition.

The Condemnation of Galileo and the Abandonment of Le Monde -- 8. The Years of Consolidation, 1634-1640 -- Amsterdam, 1634-1635 -- An Exercise in Autobiography, 1635-1636 -- Scepticism and the Foundations of a New Metaphysics -- Publication and Critical Response -- An Indian Summer, 1637-1639 -- Meditationes de Prima Philosophia -- Public Brawl and Personal Grief, 1639-1640 -- 9. The Defence of Natural Philosophy, 1640-1644 -- Religious Controversy -- Recherche de la verité versus Principia Philosopbiae -- A Textbook of Natural Philosophy -- The Task of Legitimation -- The Legacy of the Principia -- 10. Melancholia and the Passions, 1643-1650 -- 'A Doctor of the Soul' -- Mind in Body -- A General Theory of the Passions -- In Search of Peace, 1646-1649 -- The Move to Sweden -- Death and Dismemberment -- Notes -- Biographical Sketches -- Select Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.