Descartes (1596-1650) is often called the founder of modern philosophy. For him the central problem was certainty and the general purpose of the Discourse on Method was to show how he had dealt with it. He hoped to show that his method of explaining the physical universe placed in his hands a philosophy with proofs (as convincing as those of mathematics) of the existence of God and of the nature of the human soul, and thereby to be accepted in place of Aristotle. This volume also contains his Meditations and the letter-preface to his Principles of Philosophy. The cover shows a detail of 'Portrait of a Man' by Pierre Pourbus the elder, at the Municipal Fine-Art Museum of Bruges (Snark International)