Descartes' Letters to Pere marin Mersenne, Le Minime, on the Science of Sound and Music, 1629-40
Graduation Date
Spring 1982
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
This thesis completes the English translation of Descartes's works influential to the history of acoustics and music theory, directly or indirectly. They include Compendium musicae (1618), Traité de l'homme (1632), Discours de la méthode and La dioptrique (1637), and Les passions de l'ame (1649). This thesis also represents the only translation of all Descartes's responses to questions on music and the science of sound raised by Marin Mersenne, the renowned French music theorist and scientific thinker. Mersenne corresponded extensively with men prominent in scientific and musical circles both in France and throughout Europe: Giovanni Doni, Isaac Beeckman, André Villiers, Pierre Gassend, André Rivet, Jean-Baptiste van Helmont, Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon, etc. Although few of Mersenne's own letters are extant, at present the ongoing publication of the responses to his correspondence numbers thirteen volumes. Of Mersenne's other works related to music, only two are translated into English: the second book of Harmonie universelle entitled "The Books on Instruments," and the second book of his Traité (1627).
-Thesis excerpt-