Rene Descartes : An Inventor Of The Modern Scientific Method

The first thing that we will discuss is the project the Descartes assigns himself in the first meditation. Descartes has a realization that many of the things that he accepted as truths in his past have actually turned out to be false. This realization

Have you ever been driving in a car with a child who asked a million questions starting with “why”? Regardless of how well you think you answered their question, they will ask why the answer to that question is what it is, and so on and so forth. This is characteristic of all human beings; children just are not as restrained and willing to ask whatever questions comes to their minds, while adults are more inclined to accept the first level answer and question it no further. However in the back of our minds we all want to know the truth, and we will eventually conjure up a reason why what we accept as truth, in fact, the truth. Two very prominent philosophers, René Descartes, and William James were concerned with truth and how people come to believe and accept something as true or false. They believed that there is a very definite truth, but they mapped out different routes in order to get to the place where truth could be found.

This essay attempts to explain Descartes’ epistemology of his knowledge, his “Cogito, Ergo Sum” concept (found in the Meditations), and why he used it [the cogito concept] as a foundation when building his structure of knowledge. After explaining the concept I give a brief evaluation of his success in introducing and using this cogito as a foundation. Finally, I provide reasons why I think Descartes succeeded in his epistemology.

In order to understand Descartes’ way of thinking, it is crucial to note his education. He received a sufficient education in mathematics and science which led to his rejection of scholastic philosophy. He was not only taught about old philosophers such as Plato and Epictetus, but there was a recent philosopher [according to his time] named Montaigne who was a

In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes takes the reader through a methodological exercise in philosophical enquiry. After stripping the intellect of all doubtful and false beliefs, he re-examines the nature and structure of being in an attempt to secure a universally valid epistemology free from skepticism. Hoping for the successful reconciliation of science and theology, Descartes works to reconstruct a new foundation of absolute and certain truth to act as a catalyst for future scientific research by “showing that a mathematical [rational-objective] physics of the world is attainable by creatures with our intellectual capacities and faculties” (Shand 1994, p.

The Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences is one of the most influential works in the history of modern philosophy, and important to the evolution of natural sciences. In this work, Descartes tackles the problem of skepticism. Descartes modified it to account for a truth he found to be incontrovertible. Descartes started his line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions. Whereas Francis Bacon’s Scientific Method wanted to replace the deductive reasoning by inductive reasoning. The important concept in this reformed

In Daniel Garber’s article, “Descartes against his teachers: The Refutation of Hylomorphism”, the metaphysics of the early scholastics is presented to show the similarities and differences between what Descartes was taught through scholasticism and what he came to refute. Through analysis of the article I will present what Descartes considered to be the central ideas of scholastic metaphysics, as well as show what he chose reject from that doctrine, why he chose to reject it, and what he chose to retain, in the development of Cartesian metaphysics.

In order to embark on his quest for truth, Descartes first devises his four rules which should serve as a solid foundation for all else that he comes to understand. Those rules are here evaluated in terms of what they fail to take into consideration. The rules are examined individually and consecutively, and are therefore also reiterated in order to be clear about them. Furthermore, the approach of using these rules is also analyzed to some degree. Ultimately, however, it is my conjecture that Descartes’ four rules are not as solid a foundation as he claims, but fail to consider key issues which are noted herein.

Therefore in history, he was known as his own thinker. Descartes' most important theology was the existence of God. He believed God had absolute freedom in the world's creation and its living

Secondly, Descartes, by embarking on this reconstruction of his thoughts, hopes to find a stable basis for the sciences. Since Descartes was trained as a mathematician, he likes to find proofs for ideas, so that he can know them with absolute certainty. Initially, he believes philosophy to be the basis for the sciences “insofar as they [the sciences] borrow their principles from philosophy.” However, he concludes that philosophy cannot be the basis for the sciences, saying, “one could not have built anything upon such unstable foundations.” Now, he has to find a stronger foundation for the sciences and it is only through the reconstruction of his thought that he is able to do this.

After feeling extreme dissatisfaction with the education he received Descartes began to castoff the ideas and notions that came from Aristotelian philosophy for in his observance they were unviable. Consequently, this lead Descartes on a journey so that he may gain knowledge. Descartes use skeptical doubt and four rules during his journey in search for knowledge and a more viable method for gaining

Descartes was born the second child in a family of two sons and one daughter on March 31, 1596 in France. He contracted tuberculosis from his mother who died from the disease just days after his birth. At the age of eight he was sent to a Jesuit school and was educated in

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes strives first and foremost to provide an infallibly justified foundation for the empirical sciences, and second to prove the existence of God. I will focus on the first and second meditations in my attempt to show that, in his skepticism of the sources of knowledge, he fails to follow the rules he has set out in the Discourse on Method. First I claim that Descartes fails to draw the distinction between pure sensation and inference, which make up what he calls sensation, and then consider the consequences of this failure to follow his method. Second, I will show that in his treatment of thinking Descartes fails to distinguish between active and passive thinking.

With the emergence of the scientific revolution in the 17th century, views of society and nature were transformed throughout Europe. There were great developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, and chemistry. The world and its views were changing, and with that change, came a new change in thought, a new change in philosophy. Apart from ancient Greek philosophy, which was centered on finding order in a vast variety of things by searching for a fundamental amalgamating principle, Descartes sought to establish order via some fundamental division. Descartes understands and expresses that what we know about our mind is more definite than what we know about the world outside our mind. Descartes’

Upon talking about the history of modern philosophy, one of the most important philosophers, who is considered as the father of the philosophy in this period, is Descartes. He was a pioneer for the movement of the new trend of philosophy and became a break between the medieval philosophy and the modern philosophy. Being educated in the environment of medieval philosophy, specifically in the school of Jesuits, Descartes received the system of scholastic philosophy as his foundation for making a new start into the history of philosophy. In his life, Descartes tried to establish a system of philosophy which was suitable to the development of society and science. To do that, he did not collapse pre-philosophical systems, but somehow he ignored their values. In his Meditations he says “Once in my life I had to raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations, if I wanted to establish anything firm and lasting in the sciences.” Therefore, he just could begin a new system of philosophy which, he thought, would be a certain and firm foundation to get knowledge. However, to build up the principles for this foundation, Descartes had to use the concept of God in his arguments. The existence of God became an important means for the construction of his new philosophical system. Hence, I will emphasize on the importance of God in this paper by discovering the role of God as a means in Descartes’ main points of reasoning, particularly God with the method of