Research Paper
sufiaan95
4._rene_descartes_intro_and_discourse_of_method.ppt*
Rene’ Descartes
(1596-1650)
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Descartes Lifeline
- Descartes was born in a village near Tours in France in 1596. He was educated at a Jesuit college which was firmly grounded in the scholastic tradition, and by no means adverse to the study of either the humanities, or science. At the school he was given privileges similar to those enjoyed by boys of noble birth, but on the grounds of his fragile health. Descartes studied a broad range of subjects, and excelled particularly in mathematics. It is clear he benefited greatly from this Jesuit education, yet Descartes (in common with many intellectuals of his time) was keen to stress the separation of reason and faith. This meant that he could be skeptical concerning the philosophical and theological positions taken by the Church, while maintaining his Catholic faith.
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Descartes Lifeline
- Descartes was establishing quite a reputation as a formidable mathematician. Descartes made a number of important contributions to mathematics and physics, among the most enduring of which was his foundation (with Galileo) of what is now known as analytic geometry.
- That is, broadly speaking, the use of geometrical analysis to solve complex algebraic problems, and vice versa.
- It is difficult to overestimate the importance for the history of mathematical physics of this bringing together of the sciences of geometry and algebra.
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Before Descartes Geometry and algebra were two separate disciplines.
- They were considered two different parts of a wide, and somewhat nebulous, field call mathematics. Geometry was about straight lines and triangle and circle—idealized visual images of the elements of the physical world.
- Algebra, however, was the study of equations—symbols and numbers on two sides of an equal sign, which had to be solved to result in some meaningful quantity.
(Descartes’ Secret Notebook: Amir D. Aczel p.45)
Analytical Geometry
- Analytical Geometry – this work is familiar to students of modern science. It ranks with Isaac Newton’s Principia as the most important contributions to mathematical reasoning from the 17th century and the most important contribution to geometrical reasoning since Euclid.
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Changing World
- Descartes lived in a time in which world-views (paradigms) were changing rapidly.
- Copernicus, Galileo and Descartes himself found proofs that the Sun was the center of our solar system.
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Galileo
- Shortly after publication of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World- Ptolemaic and Copernican the Inquisition banned its sale and ordered Galileo to appear in Rome before them.
- Found guilty, his death sentence was commuted and he was condemned to lifelong imprisonment.
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Galileo
- It was a sad end for so great a man to die condemned of heresy. His will indicated that he wished to be buried beside his father in at the family tomb in the Basilica of Santa Croce but his relatives feared, quite rightly, that this would provoke opposition from the Church.
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Galileo
- On October 31st 1992, 350 years after Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II gave an address on behalf of the Catholic Church in which he admitted that errors had been made by the theological advisors in the case of Galileo. He declared the Galileo case closed, but he did not admit that the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because of his belief that the Earth rotates around the sun.
Background on Cartesian Method
- Descartes’ Method profoundly influenced by Galileo’s success and by Galileo’s censure.
- Descartes intended to publish a substantive defense of the heliocentric model in 1633 in Le Monde (The World)
- Galileo was condemned by the church in the same year
- Descartes (like Galileo) did not believe that Galileo’s heliocentric views were prejudicial to religion but he worried that his own work might also be censured
- Descartes withdrew his manuscript on heliocentric reasoning.
- The Discourse on Method was published in 1637 –
five years later
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Changing World
- Heliocentric Universe vs. Geocentric Universe.
- Newtonian Physics was replacing the Aristotelian Physics.
- Sciences and Universal Paradigms were being overturned
- Reason trumped the superstitions of yesteryear.
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Descartes’ Philosophy
- His insistence on a radical philosophy that dispensed, as far as possible, with authority; his attempt to raise the standard of philosophical argumentation to a science akin to geometry; his close integration of philosophy and physical science; his emphasis on methodology, all were hugely important.
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Meaning…
- He wanted to make scientific discoveries and truths as concrete as mathematics.
- Searching for a ‘true and certain’ axiom that could serve as the basis for a new foundation of knowledge.
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“Give me one fixed point and I can move the world.” Archimedes
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Which road should I choose in life?
(Descartes Fitful Dream)
And the answer was that his mission in life was to unify the sciences.
Unifying the sciences meant work in mathematics.
His philosophy—his search for absolute truth and his principle of doubt – was his attempt to impose reason and rationality on the universe using the principles of logic and mathematics.
(Descartes Secret Notebook: pg. 59)
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Discourse on Method:Goal
- Descartes is looking for ‘one’ true point that he could move the world.
- To give human discovery a foundation as strong as mathematics.
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Descartes’ Methodology
- Descartes explains that he had learned a variety of methodological approaches in a variety of disciplines. They all had limits, though. Syllogistic logic, he believes, only communicates what we already know. Geometry and algebra are either too abstract in nature for practical application, or too restricted to the shapes of bodies. However, he believed that a more condensed and universal list of methodological rules was better than a lengthy and varied list.
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Descartes’ Methodology
- Descartes assessed the deficient outcomes of a traditional education, proposed a set of rules with which to make a new start, and described his original plan upon which his hope for unifying human knowledge was based
- His method shows a meticulous mathematical approach to his method to discovery.
Descartes’ Epistemology
- Descartes’ Method represents a new attitude towards reasoning – an approach that if applied judiciously towards the right subjects does bare fruit.
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Response
Compare the Method to conventional modalities
Examine the rules in detail
Offer examples of Descartes’ reasoning as applied to historical and contemporary problem solving.
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Alternate Modalities
- Descartes Method represents an early and “classical” attempt to model how systematic knowledge occurs.
- Descartes’ conjecture is that this process is formulaic or subject to a computational strategy
- Non-classical modern theorists have argued recently that there can be no such method – as such – because cognition or consciousness itself involves the action of intellectual processes that are impossible to formalize – because (simplistically) they are non-classical – meaning subject to quantum phenomena – phenomena that were unknown in Descartes’ era.
- In simple terms such processes do not adhere to the normal rules of traditional logic.
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Historical Approach to “Knowing”
- Scientific – Greek Platonism
- Non-Scientific – Judeo-Christian
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The Greek View
- Knowledge is a kind of “recollection” of universal ideas. (Remember Plato’s Cave? Plato’s Forms?)
- These ideas are accessed through a process of reasoning called dialectic.
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The Hebraic View
- Knowledge is revealed. Knowledge resides in authority and acquired through Faith (capital F)
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The Competition
- Francis Bacon (1620) – admired greatly by Descartes - provided a systematic inductive mode of scientific reasoning in Novum Organum.
- This Method was very successful (and fundamental to modern empirical approaches) but relies on sense perception.
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Cartesian View
- Greek & Judeo-Christian based epistemologies are set aside
- Distrust sense – Greek view relies on this
- Put God aside – no a priori God
- The Cartesian Approach is rooted in skepticism. There are no forms; there is no authority; faith is inadmissible
- Unlike Bacon’s inductive approach, the Cartesian Method is fundamentally deductive.
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Radical Nature of the Cartesian Method
- Descartes asserts that the world is knowable – God intends we know it – but the Method used must be proper.
- Objective of Method: eliminate influences of opinion or systemic bias. (modern idea)
- Refuse to accept the authority of Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophies.
- Refuses to accept the “obvious” authority of his own “obvious” senses.
- Accept only that which is “clear and distinct.”
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Descartes wanted to give human discovery a foundation as strong as mathematics.
- To go about this ‘discovery’ Descartes laid a foundation of rules to guide him in his quest.
- He set a methodology to find this certain principle to rest his foundation of unshakable knowledge.
Descartes’ Methodology:
As stated in his Discourse of Method
- The first rule was that I would not accept anything as true which I did not clearly know to be true. That is to say, I would carefully avoid being over hasty or prejudiced, and I would understand nothing by my judgments beyond what presented itself so clearly and distinctly to my mind that I had no occasion to doubt it.
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Radical Skepticism
- The reader should also notice the phrase 'never to accept anything as true' in Descartes' first rule. A quite radical initial procedure of doubting (testing whether it can be accepted as true) thus forms part of Descartes' method. This idea is pursued with the utmost ruthlessness in the Meditations.
Second Rule
- The second was to divide each difficulty which I examined into as many parts as possible and as might be necessary to resolve it better.
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Third Rule
- The third was to conduct my thoughts in an orderly way, beginning with the simplest objects, the ones easiest to know, so that little by little I could gradually climb right up to the knowledge of the most complex, by assuming the same order, even among those things which do not naturally come one after the other.
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Fourth Rule
- And the last was to make my calculations throughout so complete and my examinations so general that I would be confident of not omitting anything.
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Descartes methodology: simply put.
4 simple rules
- 1. Accept as true only what is indubitable.
- 2. Divide every question into manageable parts.
- 3. Begin with the simplest issues and ascend to
the more complex.
- 4. Review frequently enough to retain the whole argument at once.
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Rules= three mental operations
- Descartes commentator S.V. Keeling argues that Descartes' method, as expressed in the above rules, rests on three mental operations: intuition, deduction, and enumeration.
- These three abilities constitute our human reason. Intuition involves directly apprehending the simplest components (or 'simple natures') of a subject matter. Deduction is not merely syllogistic, but a process of inferring necessary relations between simple natures. Enumeration is a process of review which we use when deductions become so long that we risk error due to a faulty memory.
Radical
- Clarity – all aspects of an idea when reduced to simplest form are seen.
- Distinctness – the limit or boundary of simple idea is discerned; and therefore all relationships between two or more simple ideas are clearly seen as relationships between ideas and not part of the simple idea itself.
- Innate Ideas – Only innate ideas (God, first principles, etc.) can be certain; adventitious (sensation) and fictitious ideas never certain.
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The Foundation of the Method
- Descartes’ Method rests on a foundation built from three incontrovertible (not susceptible to doubt) and interconnected elements: 1) The doubter is; 2) Reason is; 3) God is.
- These elements are interconnected in that 3) acts as guarantor for 1) & 2).
- This explains why Descartes offers three separate “proofs” for 3).
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Proofs of the Existence of God
- It is impossible to have an idea of perfection unless that idea placed by a perfect nature (p. 22).
- Proof from geometry. Existence of god more certain than existence of geometric object (p. 23).
- It is unreasonable to deny insufficiency of evidence for God’s existence. There is thus sufficient evidence for the existence of God (p. 24)
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Descartes
- For Descartes, ‘Reason’ was both the foundation and guide for pursuing truth. He was an active participant in the scientific revolution in both scientific method and in particular discoveries. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Descartes reacted strongly against the Renaissance resurgence of ancient Greek skepticism.
- His Legacy: Never accept as true unless clear – skepticism at base of modern science.
- Thus, we find in Descartes' writings a relentless pursuit of absolute certainty.
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Because of this…..
- Rene’ Descartes is known as the ‘Father of Modern Philosophy.’
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