Descartes's Manual Meditations

At the heart of this chapter is a radical rereading of Descartes's famous meditation on wax, set forth by the French philosopher in the Second Meditation of his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641). The chapter offers a close reading of the so-called wax argument from a hands-on perspective and discusses the Meditations as a manual for minds and hands. The chapter further explores Descartes's wax meditation in the context of a meditator's spiritual retreat and an experimenter's (virtual) laboratory.