Theological Origins of Modernity

notes to pages 39–48 303
55. On this point see Th omas Spragens, Th e Politics of Motion: Th e World of Th omas
Hobbes (Lexington: Th e University of Kentucky Press, 1973), 60–74.
56. Bacon, Th e New Organon, 39.
57. Th is project fi nds its preeminent form and defi nitive methodology in the calculus
developed by Leibniz and Newton.
58. Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 13 vols.
(Paris: Vrin, 1957–68), 7:57–58 (hereaft er cited as AT); Th e Philosophical Writings
of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stootfh off , and Dugald Murdoch,
3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 2:40 (hereaft er cited as
CSM). See also Descartes to Mersenne, December 25, 1639, AT 2:628; Descartes
to Elizabeth, 3 November 1645, AT 4:332. See also Margaret Wilson, “Can I Be the
Cause of My Idea of the World? (Descartes on the Infi nite and the Indefi nite),” in
Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 350.
59. Th omas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 33.
chapter two
1. Francesco Petrarca, Rerum familiarum libri, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, 3 vols. (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1975–85), I, 1 (1:7).
2. Ibid., 1:12.
3. Ibid., 1:3.
4. Ibid., 1:14.
5. Ernest Hatch Wilkins, Life of Petrarch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1961), 3–4.
6. Ibid., 6; Kenelm Foster, Petrarch: Poet and Humanist (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1984), 2.
7. Petrarch “On his Own Ignorance and that of Many Others,” in Th e Renaissance
Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1948), 69.
8. Questions have been raised about the identity and even the reality of Laura since
Petrarch’s own time. Some have noted the striking parallel between Dante’s account
of his falling in love with Beatrice and Petrarch’s attachment to Laura and
have speculated that she was more likely a literary trope than a real person. Th e
close connection of the name Laura to laurel and the laurel crown with which
Petrarch by his own account was crowned have led others to believe that it was
not a real person but fame that Petrarch fell in love with. Others have seen a
hidden Christian symbolism in the name Laura since the cross was supposedly
constructed out of laurel. On this point, see Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Petrarch’s
Genius: Pentimento and Prophecy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1991). Th ere can be no defi nitive answer to this question, since almost
all of our knowledge of Petrarch’s life is derived from the various collections
of his letters he put together late in life. From his own testimony we know that
he reworked many of these, and from scholarly detective work we know some