SOURCE: "Descartes," in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: A Historical and Critical Essay, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1925, pp. 96–116.

In the following essay, Burtt examines Descartes' mathematical conception of nature and his motives for proposing a mind-body dualism.

Descartes' importance in [the] mathematical movement [in science] was twofold; he worked out a comprehensive hypothesis in detail of the mathematical structure and operations of the material universe, with clearer consciousness of the important implications of the new method than had been shown by his predecessors; and he attempted both to justify and atone for the reading of man and his interests out of nature by his famous metaphysical dualism.

While still in his teens, Descartes became absorbed in mathematical study, gradually forsaking every other interest for it, and at the age of twenty-one was in command of all that was then known on the subject. During...