Cartesianism in Britain

This chapter provides a broad picture of the reception of Descartes’s philosophy in England and Scotland, from the 1630s through to the post-Newtonian attacks on Cartesian physics and cosmology at the end of the seventeenth century. It starts with an overview of the earliest encounters between Britons and Descartes, the reception of Cartesianism in British universities, translations into English, and British editions of Cartesian works. It then discusses some of the individual responses to Cartesianism which are not discussed elsewhere in this Handbook, among them the Cavendish circle (including Margaret Cavendish), Le Grand, Barrow, Boyle, Charleton, Conway, Cudworth, and Clarke.