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This volume collects some of the seminal essays on Descartes and his philosophy, which have been published by the author in journals and volumes of philosophy and its history. (These essays are listed in a special appendix (Sources) of this volume; the author is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.) A central theme unifying the volume is the interconnection between Descartes' philosophical and scientific interests. The specific topics are Descartes' celebrated method, his demand for certainty in the sciences, his account of the relation of mind and body, and his conception of God's activity on the physical world. In the Introduction the author notes: ``At that time, neither philosophy nor science as we now know them could properly be said to exist as distinct domains of knowledge: What we call philosophy and what we call science were part of a single domain of inquiry, which went under the rubric of philosophy.'' Descartes' mathematical work, his \textit{La Géométrie} (1637, as a part of \textit{Discours de la Methode}), has no special attention in this volume. It is noted only that ``the more scientifically oriented \textit{Principia Philosophiae} (1644) was written in the synthetic style characteristic of Euclidean geometry.'' In connection with this modo geometrica the author mentions the role of the astrologer and Professor of Mathematics at the Collège Royal de France in 1629-1656, Jean-Baptist Morin, who was a friend of Mersenne's; his \textit{Quod Deus sit} (1635) gave an argument in geometrical style (definitions, axioms, and 30 theorems) for the existence of God. It is noted that ``Morin is probably responsible for the request that Descartes presents his arguments in geometrical form''.