Date: 1641

"As I have just used it, 'nature' is simply a label which depends on my thought; it is quite extraneous to the things to which it is applied, and depends simply on my comparison between the idea of a sick man and a badly-made clock, and the idea of a healthy man and a well-made clock."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1641

"Yet a clock constructed with wheels and weights observes all the laws of its nature just as closely when it is badly made and tells the wrong time as when it completely fulfils the wishes of the clockmaker. In the same way, I might consider the body of a man as a kind of machine equipped with an...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1641

A geometrical argument fills the mind and allows one to see everything at a single glance

— Mersenne, Marin (1588-1648)

Date: 1641

A calm mind, free from the hurly-burly of external things, may fix its gaze on itself

— Arnauld, Antoine (1612-1694)

Date: 1641

"But if the entire soul is something of this kind, why should you, who may be thought of as the noblest part of the soul, not be regarded as being, so to speak, the flower, or the most refined and pure and active part of it?"

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1641

The self may be imagined as a "pure, transparent, rarefied substance like a wind."

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1641

The common view is that the mind is like "a wind or similar body"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1641

The mind is a craftsman, the body his tool

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1641

"Now if we are to become aware of something, it is necessary for the thing to act on the cognitive faculty by transmitting its semblance to the faculty or by informing the faculty with its semblance. Hence it seems clear that the faculty itself, not being outside itself, cannot transmit a semblan...

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1641

"If you do not accept this, then you must untie the knot which in your view must be binding us with adamantine bonds and preventing our mind from soaring above every kind of body."

— Mersenne, Marin (1588-1648)