Descartes and his discourse

Title

Creator

Sommers, T. Van

Language

English

Year

1965

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

The scientific method of investigation.

Fulltext

■ The scientific method of investigation. DESCARTES AND HIS DISCOURSE Rene Descartes, the French thinker, has been called the founder of modern philoso phy. Descartes had given the world a whole new system of reasoning, clearing away many of the accumulated prejudices of centuries. He was born in 1596, of a pros perous Breton middle-class family. Although he always had a private income, which helped leave him free for his philosophies and scientific studies, he often complained of inadequate means. It was feeling this pinch that set him to writing. But first he studied law and medicine at the University of Poitiers, spent some years in travel about Europe, and even served a term as a volunteer soldier. When he finally de cided to take up writing as a profession, he spent nine years in study before he pro duced his first published work, the "Discourse on Method." In his day, learned works were nearly always com posed in Latin. Descar tes broke with tradition by writing the “Discourse” in French. He intended it not merely for scholars, but for the average educated person of his day. The book’s un affected, colloquial style and narrative form make it still easy to read, and it has a warm, personal touch. Because of this deceptive easiness of style and the fact that the methods of reason ing Descartes recommends are accepted in the main without question today, it is some times difficult to keep in mind that in his time he was a startingly original thinker. For he dared to suggest that an intelligent man should begin his mental processes by doubting everything he has been taught on the sub ject he wishes to examine. In Part I of the "Dis course,” Descartes makes the October 1965 19 famous statement: "It is not enough to have a good mind; the principal requirement is that we should apply it in the right way.” He him self, he adds modestly, has only an average mind, but has had the good fortune in early-youth to form a method of thinking which has in creased his knowledge step by step and raised it gradual ly to its highest possible point. Disillusioned with book learning, Descartes tells how he then turned entirely to practical matters, traveling widely and serving terms in courts and armies, to learn from "the great book of the world.” Finally, he decided to study his own nature. This decision was the result of a kind of revelation, or flash of spiritual insight. Descartes went about his mental reformation with the precision of a bom mathe matician. He drew up a set of four rules to steer him by: 1. “The first rule was to accept as true nothing that I did not know to be evident ly so; that is to say, to avoid, carefully, precipitancy and prejudice and to apply my judgment to nothing but that which showed itself so clear ly and distinctly to my mind that I should never have oc casion to doubt it. 2. “The second was to di vide each difficulty, I should examine into as many parts as possible, and as would be required the better to solve it. 3. “The third was to con duct my thoughts in an or derly fashion, starting with what was simplest and easiest to know, and rising little by little to the knowledge of the most complex, even suppos ing an order where there is no natural precedence among the objects of knowledge. 4. “The last rule was to make so complete an enume ration of the links in an ar gument, and to pass them all so thoroughly under review, that. I could be sure I had missed nothing.” In these four rules Des cartes produced a blueprint for the modern scientific ap proach to investigation of all kinds. Next, Descartes tells how he applied his method to both geometry and algebra, in order to “correct the de 20 Panorama fects of the one by the other.” The result, known as analy tical geometry, is one of Des cartes’ great contributions to the science of mathematics. In Part III of the “Dis course” Descartes tells how, in case he should fall into moral error during this time when he was clearing his mind of preconceptions, he formulated a “provisional morality” for himself, based on a few simple maxims. He resolved that he should obey the laws and customs of his country and adhere to the re ligion he had held since childhood (he was a devout Roman Catholic). He would be firm and resolute in his actions and, once he had made up his mind on a sub ject, he would adhere to his views strongly. Finally, he would accept the belief that “there is nothing that lies wholly within our power save our thoughts.” During the period of nine years when Descartes was emptying his mind, then re filling it with ideas which he had, by using his own method of analysis, decided were true, he lived in Holland. He deli berately exiled himself so that he could live the soli tary life of a man wholly devoted to mental exercises. In Section IV of the “Dis course” he reveals the foun dation on which he built all his new philosophical rea soning — the “Cogito ergo sum.” “As I strove to think of everything as false,” he says, “I realized that, in the very act of thinking everything false, I was aware of myself as something real; and ob serving that the truth: ‘I think, therefore I am,’ was so firm and so assured that the most extravagant arguments of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I concluded that I might have no scruple in taking it as that first prin ciple of philosophy for which I was looking ... I conclud ed that I was a substance whose whole essence or na ture consists in thinking.” The next step was to examine why he should have doubts; why, in other words, his thinking was not always perfect and, consequently, his nature was not perfect. He came to the conclusion that his sense of doubt and imperfection sprang basically from the fact that somehow he knew, in his innermost October 1965 21 being, what perfection should be — and therefore how far he fell short of it. This idea of perfection could come to him only from some outside source more perfect than he, Descartes reasoned. Therefore it must come from God. In this fas hion, by analysis back to first causes, he proved entirely to his own satisfaction (if not to that of later thinkers) that God does indeed exist, and is the source of all per fection and truth. Because Descartes was pre occupied with mathematics, and because so many mathe matical propositions stood up to the tests of logic he had evolved — and so could be proved to be "true” — it is not surprising that he ap pears to have thought of God in one s^nse as the ultimate and sublime mathematician, and that he looked for a mathematical order under lying all creation. This sense of the orderly one-ness of the universe is one of Descartes’ significant contribution to Western thought. He began to write a long treatise to illustrate his me chanistic views, and this he describes briefly in Part V of the “Discourse.” He tells how he discussed the motions of the heavenly bodies and the nature of inanimate bo dies and plants. Using the English physician William Harvey’s recent discoveries on the circulation of the blood, Descartes deduces that the heart is a type of ma chine. Indeed, all living bo dies are machines, he says, motivated b y mechanical laws. The important differ ence between man and the rest of the animal kingdom, however, is that man also has an immortal soul, which has an independent existence. In proposing this dualism between body and mind or soul in man. Descartes launched an argument which has continued among Europ ean philosophers ever since. So far, in a few brief pages, Descartes has proposed seve ral new concepts. But now comes the bombshell. In the final, Part VI of the "Dis course” he tells how he has given up all idea of publish ing the treatise he has des cribed. It might give offense to certain persons to whose authority he defers, he says. — T. Van Sommers, from Va riety. 22 Panorama

Media