Some Reflections on Gaukroger’s Descartes

Though Stephen Gaukroger worked on a large variety of topics, Descartes seems to have been especially important to him. In this brief essay I would like to explore his unique perspective on Descartes’ thought. As I interpret him, Gaukroger’s Descartes is the Descartes of Le monde, the Descartes who put the Copernican world, viewed through the lens of his vortex theory, at the center of his philosophy, the Descartes whose world was shaken to the core by the condemnation of Galileo in 1633, and whose later philosophy can be read as a passionate response to that cataclysmic event in the history of science.