DESCARTES, René - CORDEMOY, Géraud de; BAYLE, François.

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A Discourse Written to a Learned Frier, First edition in English of Cordemoy's Copie d'une lettre ecrite à un sçavant Réligieux de la Compagnie de Jésus (1668), which attempts to reconcile Cartesian philosophy with the Christian creation story as outlined in Genesis. The latter part of the edition, with separate title page and continuous pagination, is a translation of "Systema generale philosophica" written by François Bayle and Henri Grangeron, this marking its only publication."Géraud de Cordemoy (1626-1684) was one of the more important Cartesian philosophers during the decades immediately following the death of Descartes. While he is in some respects a very orthodox Cartesian, Cordemoy was the only Cartesian to embrace atomism, and one of the first to argue for occasionalism" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).The original of the Systeme General is apparent lost: "Despite a painstaking and exhaustive search, we have been unable to locate either a French or a Latin version, much less a manuscript, prior (or for that matter, posterior) to the English translation" (Patricia Easton and Tom Lennon, The Cartesian Empiricism of Francois Bayle, 1992). The treatise has an interesting section on meteors, which the author takes to be all types of non-terrestrial natural phenomena, and has an advanced understanding of rainbows: "A Rain-bow is nothing else but many drops of rain, which receiving the Rayes of the Sun, break them many different ways, and which, after they have thus

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