It's all there in his book, you just have to realize what it is that he is writing about. His whole "I think therefore I am" was a youthful revolutionary vigor, he thought he was some kind of I once wrote a song that had a very witty line in it about Descartes and Robots getting killed by Zombies-- and accused Descartes of being in league with Robots against Humanity.
His whole "I think therefore I am" was a youthful revolutionary vigor, he thought he was some kind of freedom fighter who would liberate the world from all these robots, and for awhile believed himself to be the one true 'thinker' He even went as far to change his name to Rene De-Cogito , but it never caught on , before he sold-out and realized there was more dough in being in league with the Robots.
And that is how modern dualism was born. View all 9 comments. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Some years earlier, in , Descartes published Discours de la Methode, wherein he wanted to find the foundation of certainty for all of our knowledge. This book was written in French, for a general public. Hence, Descartes found himself constrained to be not too skeptical his method was based on doubting every truth claim , because the general public would not be able to apply this correctly and would probably become atheists accordingly.
In the Medidationes, Descartes tries to offer his more learned readers a process of meditatiion, by which they can clearly and distinctly discover true knowledge.
This he does in six meditations and each meditation should be followed scrupulously; readers should give themselves time after reading each meditation to reflect on their thinking, in order to fully understand Descartes' philosophy. With the clear and distinct pun intended danger of misrepresenting Descartes, the follow summary explains his philosophy per meditation. We should find certain knowledge on which to build the system of knowledge.
Certain knowledge consists of clear and distinct ideas two criteria for truth! Any idea that can be doubted should be viewed as false. The only undoubtable thing is 'cogito ergo sum': I think, therefore I exist. All my perceptions of my body and the world around me could be illusions, but me understanding those things can't be an illusion.
So a thinking thing 'res cogitans' exists; a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wishes, imagines and perceives by the senses. This is what I am.
This is the foundation of Descartes' philosophy. All the things I perceive about myself as a 'thinking thing', I can perceive in much more perfection - the logical end point of which is ultimate perfection: a thinking thing, or being, that is perfect in all possible senses. This being, otherwise known as God, is clear and distinct, and since this meets Descartes' criteria for discovering truth, it is true.
So after discovering the res cogitans as a first truth, Descartes discovers a perfect being, God, as a second truth. Since God is perfect, and therefore good, he would not deceive us. How is it possible that this perfect being created inferior beings us that make mistakes? This is because we are created with an ending i. Mistakes are sins, because of our misuse of our free will. We should use our limited intellect - God's gift - methodically and scrupulously, in order to gain reliable knowledge.
Herein lies God's grace. So now we have a thinking thing, a perfect being and our need of a method of scrupulously looking for truth. What's next? Well, we all perceive matter round us: objects, movements, etc. Even though our imperfect senses might deceive us, we can discover truth if we just observe the right method.
According to Descartes, the only true knowledge about matter, can come from geometry. This means describing matter in three dimensions. Matter is therefore nothing more, or less, than mathematical extension 'res extensa'. On a side note: Since matter is extension, it follows logically that a vacuum is impossible. This was to have disastrous effects for Descartes' physical system of the world, when, in Torricelli would prove the existence of a vacuum as a product of air pressure and thereby destroying an important pillar under Descartes' philosophy.
In the last meditation, Descartes tries to convince us of the truth of his three discoveries: res cogitans, God, res extensa. We should drop the scepticism - this was only a method by which to discover clear and distinct ideas i.
God's existence is the only thing we can fall back on to believe there's an objective reality. It is clear that Descartes' system is shaky. In the end, Descartes wants to build an entire system of knowledge on the singular claim that God exists.
As a perfect being, He would not deceive us, therefore the objects we perceive are true - albeit sometimes misrepresented, due to the frailty of our intellect. The existence of God is the crucial stone in his whole building: if we can prove this claim to be false, the whole edifice comes crumbling down. So does his proof for the existence of God stand up to the test?
Well, the ontological proof of God turns on the following question: what can it possibly mean to argue that 'existence' is part of perfection? I can think of the most perfect ice cream, but that would not be the perfect ice cream, because it is only an idea in my mind: a really existing ice cream like the one I thought of would be even better! Even though the ontological proof for the existence of God is still an open philosophical question, it is one of those statements that perfectly fit Wittgenstein's dictum: "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should remain silent.
What time is bird? Why did Descartes make his system so vulnerable? In the preface he tells us, that he wanted to offer an alternative to scholasticism, so logically he should reserve a place for God in his system why would contemporary theologians throw out Christian philosophy in favor for a godless philosophy?
But this cannot be the whole picture. I think Descartes could not avoid putting God as his foundation if he wanted to avoid a system of knowledge that excludes all doubt. Most of our systems of knowledge are built on hypotheses, gained by induction. But induction, David Hume would later on tell us, is nothing more than habit One cannot proof with certainty the existence of something, one can only disprove with certainty.
And therefore we should say with Karl Popper: no scientific system or systems of ethics, for that matter can be build on solid foundations. We build our systems on a swamp; the best we can hope for is to make the foundation as deep and stable as possible.
We should give up the hope of proving with certainty the existence of true principles on which to build. More sceptical than this, is not possible - so maybe Descartes' method of doubt is not unnecessary after all Anyway, Descartes was the first philosopher who thought deeply about the foundation of our knowledge - and the first to come up with a coherent, consistent and all-encompassing system.
In philosophical terms: Descartes was the first person to come up with a hypothetical-deductive system of knowledge - the leading and influential Aristotelian system was axiomatic-deductive. The possibility of such an alternative to scholastic theology would, later on, play a huge role in Newton's grand synthesis and everything after Newton.
To conclude this review, I'd like to point to an interesting point about Descartes' philosophy. Descartes claims we have an immortal soul, seated in our pineal gland, and that there exists an objective truth we can graps at least partially.
In effect, this means that Descartes thinks we are born with innate ideas about the world - ideas that do not come from our sensual perceptions. Seeing 10 cows in a meadow, I perceive the 10 physical objects, but I also perceive receive? For another thing, the Cartesian idea of innateness is something that later philosophers like Locke and Hume would demolish with their empirical theories of human understanding.
According to the tradition of British empiricists, we are born as blank slates and all our knowledge ultimately derives from our sensual perceptions. Our perceptions lead to ideas, and our mind can combine different ideas into second-hand, complex, new ideas, and on and on. It is ironic that Descartes' is ridiculed by many contemporary neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers, and this mainly because of his dualism. At the same time, these contemporaries venerate the British empiricists as the founders of psychology.
While both statements may be true, the irony lies in the fact that dualism might be an outdated concept, but Descartes' innate ideas are the main springs for evolutionary psychology, while the 'blank slate' doctrine building on Locke's empiricism , besides being plain wrong, has done more harm than good in the last years cf.
Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate []. I feel I understand his humongous break with the past more deeply and I can relate many of his own positions - as opposition to - to Aristotelean notions this knowledge I lacked on my first reading of the Meditations. I have to increase my rating for this book - and also my recommendation for readers unfamiliar with one of the most important works in the history of western culture.
Jul 27, B. Rinehart rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction-stuff , philosophy-stuff. The crowning achievement of Descartes and the work that would cement his legacy. He had already stunned the world in Discourse on Method with that famous Latin phrase cogito ergo sum ; in this work he defends the ideas laid down in "Discourse" and sets about giving his own spin on the ontological argument.
I know that this book gets some criticism now because time has marched on it should not be forgotten that this book changed the course of western philosophy. This work is the reason why the tim The crowning achievement of Descartes and the work that would cement his legacy. This work is the reason why the time-line of philosophy has a "pre- and post-Cartesian" era. It changed the way people thought of the mind in relation to the body and it was one of the last significant ontological arguments before Kant's Critique of Pure Reason closed shop on that philosophical exercise.
I knew a lot of the book and its mixed legacy but I view it keeping in mind the world it was released in and the ideas and debates it sparked. This book is divided into six chapters called In theses meditations Descartes recaps his previous work and lays down his system of mathematics and physics inspired rationalist philosophy.
I won't do an intense examination but I will speak to the two things I think it spoke the most on. Meditations one, two, part of five and six pick-up from his last work and does an intense scrutiny of the body and its senses.
Descartes of course denies everything he can exist and comes to the conclusion that he can't deny the fact that he is denying which means his mind is the one thing that confirms his existence, it is his essence. Part of what he was trying to do here is to figure out if our sense perception can be trusted. He does a lot of hard scrutinizing before coming to the conclusion that it can as long as we use our intellect to rationally examine what our senses pick-up.
But what, or should I say who do we thank for this intellect and ability to reason? That brings me to the other topic that Descartes tackled The ol' ontological argument. I mean it is the subtitle of the work. This takes up meditations three the infamous Cartesian Circle , four my favorite , and the other part of five. Part of the reason why I decided to read this book is because I had earlier this year read Saint Anselm of Canterbury's Proslogion which is the book that introduces the ontological argument in Christendom Ibn Sina Avicenna was the first philosopher in the western tradition to use the ontological argument and Descartes borrows from him in his own philosophy.
I have not read Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica but I know this work draws from both but is applied using Descartes trademark mathematical and physics mindset.
I don't want to try to summarize it up because I know I will fail you should read it yourself but this part of the book contained my favorite meditation four and Descartes most infamous piece of philosophy three. I like meditation four because of how self-contained it felt compared to the rest of the work.
As I explained earlier the book is a continuation of Discourse on Method but expanded and more elaborate. Because of that there is already a complex rationalist system that is interwoven throughout the whole work.
That means most of theses meditations would barely make sense unless you read the previous meditation though the introduction and meditation 1 recap the last book. Meditation four can be stood well on its own and draws on Plato to talk about "the True and the False" concerning God.
He does a very good job putting this chapter together and it can be understood with or without the rest of the book. I knew of some of the negative criticisms of this book before I picked it up but after the first two chapters I didn't think it was bad Now I don't know what was going on with Descartes when he wrote it but this is where the infamous Cartesian Circle of logic occurs and it is bad!
He gets caught up in circular reasoning stating that perceptions like cogito ergo sum are clear and distinct because they are true and they are true because they are clear and distinct. He attempts to get out of this by saying we have clear and distinct perceptions because God exist, and we know God exist because we have clear and distinct perceptions of his existence. And we go to meditation four. I might have given this book five stars but the circular reasoning of meditation 3 brought down the overall quality of the book as I kept thinking about it during his other themes and arguments and I think had he left it out the book would have been relatively better for it.
If you read this book and get deja vu it may be because a little film called The Matrix borrowed a lot from it.
Descartes' assertion that we are basically just our minds encased in our brains encased in this weird fleshy thing called a body is classic Rene. Yeah so, one of the most important works in western thought I read this as a part of Classics of Western Philosophy View all 8 comments. Mar 17, Onaiza Khan rated it liked it Shelves: philosophy , non-fiction. I had put a lot of hope in this book to enlighten me about philosophy and Descartes himself, but it didn't seem to do that. I liked reading it.
He writes well though he did not win me over with his arguments. But the cloud of popular culture images of Descartes telling people how nothing is real and all their perceptions are being generated by a deceptive evil genius had cleared away. This idea forms only a tiny part of his philosophy and he resolves the problem at least he thinks he does that I had put a lot of hope in this book to enlighten me about philosophy and Descartes himself, but it didn't seem to do that.
This idea forms only a tiny part of his philosophy and he resolves the problem at least he thinks he does that he had so revolutionarily sparked.
Oct 11, Jess rated it it was ok. Undeniably a monumental work in the field of philosophy. Decartes gives us the bridge from scholastic thinking to modern Piercean methods. Thus opening up a huge and important discussion on the forum of the ethics of belief. A must read for parties interested in the history of modern thought. With that being said Decartes comes off as an arrogant, aristocratic, Johnnie Terry. Defending his flawed, cyclical arguments for the existence of God as if they were absolute, infallible truths.
View 1 comment. Mar 15, Nat rated it it was amazing. This is a perfect introduction to philosophy partly because it reveals, in concentrated form, the experience of studying philosophy as a whole: it begins with a very compelling worry about an important issue, pushes that worry to a worrisome extreme, then tries to address the worry in a totally unsatisfying way.
Oct 02, Thomas rated it it was ok Shelves: nonfiction , read-for-college. Reading Descartes's Meditations was like examining a speech by Hitler - while I disagreed with almost everything on the content level, I admired his rhetoric and how it made me think.
Of course this also changed the entire canon of philosophy which proves its prevalence. Some of my favorite parts include the Cartesian Circle, the mind-body substance dualism, and the power of reason. Oct 12, Rosanna Threakall rated it really liked it Shelves: educational. Conquered this beast!
The first piece of philosophical writing I have ever read and I actually really enjoy it. I like writing poems about the same kind of thing he discusses, existence, God, conscience etc so this was a really helpful and inspiring read. If you're daunted by philosophy I would definitely just pick it up because it's not too heavy, we can all empathise with questioning "why we exist" or "what the meaning of life is.
I will continue to return to this text--probably for the rest of my life--in order to undo the mis-education as regards Cartesian dualism. There is a systemic intellectual simplification of Descartes' thought within philosophy; the way that his thought has been historicized and ontologized tends toward perfidy, and I would also argue, ideology. The aporia of the Sixth Meditation is most fascinating to me.
I highly recommend anyone who is interested in "new" readings of Descartes to read Jean-Luc I will continue to return to this text--probably for the rest of my life--in order to undo the mis-education as regards Cartesian dualism.
I highly recommend anyone who is interested in "new" readings of Descartes to read Jean-Luc Marion's philosophical engagement with Cartesian philosophy. It is superb. Mar 29, Adam Brill rated it really liked it. Don't even talk to me about this book Don't even talk to me about this book Warning: highly pretentious verbal excrement ahead 'You keep using that word I do not think it means what you think it means' In The Princess Bride , the word being referred to is 'inconceivable'.
The joke is that the things being described as inconceivable are clearly not inconceivable because they are actually happening. But actually, if you think about it, it goes further than this. As soon as you say, 'X is inconceivable' you have formulated, or conceived of, the subject X, so the predicate Warning: highly pretentious verbal excrement ahead 'You keep using that word As soon as you say, 'X is inconceivable' you have formulated, or conceived of, the subject X, so the predicate 'is inconceivable' is ipso facto false, for any X.
I'm not sure how that's relevant to Descartes, but it sort of sounds similar and I've been wanting to get it off my chest for ages. Let's break it down: if the statement 'I think' is true, then the statement 'I exist' is true; or, if 'I' can be truthfully applied to the predicate 'think', then 'I' exist; or, the predicate 'think' can only truthfully take existent subjects. Now, firstly: is it the case for any predicate F, and for any subject X, that if F X is true, then X must exist?
You cannot retreat into the objection that hippogriffs do exist as a thing in my mind because a that could be said of any possible subject X - see the above discussion on 'inconceivable' I knew I could bring it in somehow and b we have not yet established the existence of my mind! That's what we're trying to do! But then, if we allow that, the statement 'hippogriffs have feathers' is false, because the hippogriffs do not exist.
But wait a minute: if we take F to be the predicate of non-existence, then the truth of F X clearly does not prove that X exists. The question is how you can meaningfully formulate an X such that it does not exist in any way how do I know that hippogriffs don't exist? In other words, we're back to Inigo Montoya's problem. Descartes occasionally wonders why, if there is a good God, he would let you ever be mistaken in anything. In other words, his epistemological problems come down to theodicy.
By the way, it was originally in French, so it comes up as je pense, donc je suis rather than cogito, ergo sum. So there. I was pretty much sold on this book after that. View all 4 comments. Jan 08, Kristi rated it it was amazing. Way good book. Descartes is clearly a funny intelligent humble man. He opens with a letter to some scholarly men explaining what will be discussed throughout the book.
It is completely entertaining. Clearly a man of words and people, he manages to state that his work is more clear than simple geometry but that people will not understand it, all while maintaining the appearance of being a humble man. He manages to imply that he is the only philosopher that could have accomplished this idea, but al Way good book. He manages to imply that he is the only philosopher that could have accomplished this idea, but all while flattering the intelligence of those to whome he is writing to.
The entire book is cleverly written and interesting. It is, however, not for every reader. As Descartes clearly establishes in his opening letter It is written eloquently- which may slow some people down, and it is a topic that requires a reader to leave thier inhibition with their pop culture- and truly read with an open mind.
Not by way of discussing theology, but through philosophy instead. He provides basic logic as his reasoning rather than faith based on the Bible, or the Bible being truth by faith. Amazing book! It's one of oldest philosophical notation and Author had comprehensively acknowledged the notation in simplest though broad way. Jul 03, Brandon rated it did not like it.
Quite frankly, I thought this was garbage. I felt like it was written by a modern day apologetic trying to convince themselves of God's existence. There are about 5 pages where Descartes displays a healthy dose of skepticism and makes some fairly astute introspective observations. The rest is him making outrageous assumptions, and then making further assumptions based off those first assumptions. I do think it's important to know about his ideas if you are into philosophy.
Perhaps, when taken int Quite frankly, I thought this was garbage. Perhaps, when taken into context of the 's, it gets him off the hook a bit. But, I really did not find anything illuminating about this treatise. This one took a frustratingly long time to get through for a short book but it's done and I'm pleased.
Descartes is not the most exhilarating read. I didn't mind it so bad, but I doubt whether any of this was completely new to me. It read kind of like a textbook I suppose because that's how I came to know him first. All the same, I enjoyed the little passage on madness with which Derrida really clubs Foucault about in Cogito and the History of Madness.
Descartes' literariness is nice when it app This one took a frustratingly long time to get through for a short book but it's done and I'm pleased. Descartes' literariness is nice when it appears, though it is rare. I hadn't realised that W. Yeats' 'How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Also appreciate the image!! Aug 06, Ali Reda rated it liked it. And that's how Modern Philosophy and science were born. Unlike Al-Ghazali whose method was " a light from god in his heart" and that's why Al-Ghazali's skepticism didn't stir a revolution in the way we think as much as Descartes. Aug 29, Ipsa rated it liked it. Descartes was arguably the most important philosopher after Aristotle in the western world.
His objective was to find for philosophy the certainty of a mathematical proof, and the goal of philosophical inquiry was to find clear and distinct knowledge by applying the Method of Doubt radically in literally everything. Meditation on First Philosophy is divided into six meditations tackling the questions of Mind, God, and Body in a definite order; this for Descartes constituted the domain of reality Descartes was arguably the most important philosopher after Aristotle in the western world.
Meditation on First Philosophy is divided into six meditations tackling the questions of Mind, God, and Body in a definite order; this for Descartes constituted the domain of reality.
The affirmation of the mind is the beginning of all knowledge; everything is derived from this primary truth. Cogito Ergo Sum prevents the MoD from leading to a paralyzing skepticism but I feel it does create a different kind of solipsism. In Descartes, there is a culmination of all the implications of Mind-Body Dualism.
After going on for several pages about the existence of the mind, he finally moves onto the question of God which, as we see later, is very closely related to the existence of the material world. Since we already know God in his infinite perfection cannot deceive, therefore physical world exists. Mind and Body are relative substances, independent of each other but dependent on the Absolute Substance — God.
Needless to say, this division creates all sorts of problem. How can two substances so essentially different from each other even interact in human beings? I can go on with the list of textbook opposition to this, but too much has been said about Descartes and the Cartesian system, for me to add anything worthwhile to it. For me personally, the destructive part of his philosophy is very original and exciting, but the constructive part is much less interesting because he ends up accepting the same maxims of scholastic philosophy which were already resonant in the likes of Plato, St.
Augustine, Aquinas, etc. But in spite of all this, like Anthony Kenny mentioned, the reason we tend to think of mind and matter as the two great mutually exclusive and exhaustive divisions of the universe we inhabit, that is because of Descartes.
We have moved a long way since the time of Descartes both philosophically and scientifically, but he still remains the Father of Philosophy, although mostly in a Freudian sense now. May 27, Andrew rated it really liked it Shelves: sig , classics , c-philosophy , i-dont-own.
This was a bit of a sludge to read through. Descartes, or the translation, is very boring; and he keeps going back to the whole "God: That He Exists" topic, a bit too often. It seems to me that Descartes was bending over backwards for the Church in order to not be labeled a rebel. He defined God in such a way that God must exist - its a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it.
But, why call this substance 'God'? With our current terminologies concerning existence would probably This was a bit of a sludge to read through. With our current terminologies concerning existence would probably call it 'Nature' or 'Physical law'.
It's an interesting process from Descartes's Skepticism to his acceptance of reality as truth. I've read elsewhere that the progress from skepticism to every-day rationalism how we normally function would only be accomplished by faith, and not reason alone as Descartes claims here. Fortunately, both parties agree that Descartes's Skepticism is not obtainable, as our minds could never fully doubt reality it would always cling to something.
This book brings a lot of questions to my mind, many of which I'm still trying to answer - some that I'm still trying to formulate. And that's why this is a 5-star book. It unearths many important issues.
This relationship would prompt Descartes to make public his thoughts on natural philosophy science. In Descartes left Paris. At this time he seems to have been working on the Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii Rules for the Direction of the Mind , a work that he would abandon, some speculating around the time of the move from Paris. It is worth noting that relatively recently a copy of the Rules was discovered in a library at Cambridge University.
Scholars are unsure how it got there. Currently, based on what it includes, it is thought that this manuscript represents the work as it stood when Descartes had abandoned it in The later Amsterdam printing and a copy that Leibniz acquired from Clerselier c.
So, it appears that Descartes picked up the work again. The meeting took place in The Hague. Perhaps the copy was made during the visit and brought back to Cambridge. In any event, this is a new and interesting development in Descartes scholarship. In Descartes moved to Amsterdam. There he worked on drafts of the Dioptrique the Optics and the Meteors the Meteorology , which were very likely intended to be a part of a larger work, Le Monde The World.
In he moved again, this time to Deventer, to apparently teach Henry Reneri — his physics. In a letter to Mersenne, dated November , Descartes expresses his fear that were he to publish The World , the same fate that befell Galileo would befall him. The World appears to have been constituted of several smaller, but related, works: a treatise on physics, a treatise on mechanics machines , a treatise on animals, and a treatise on man.
Although much of The World has been lost, some of it seems to have survived in the form of essays attached to the Discourse which, as was mentioned earlier, would be published four years later, in And, some of it was published posthumously. Also during this year, a domestic servant by the name of Helene gave birth to a baby girl, Francine. However, Gaukroger claims that the baptismal date was 7 August Gaukroger, p.
In Reneri acquired an official chair in Philosophy at the University of Utrecht, and continued to build a following of students interested in Cartesian science. Around March of , at the age of forty, Descartes moved to Leiden to work out the publishing of the Discourse. And, in it is published. With the Discourse out and a following of students building in Utrecht, Descartes seems to have turned his attention from career to family.
Gaukroger suggests that despite this apparent denial of paternity, Descartes not only corresponds with Francine, but in brings her and Helene to his new home at Santpoort or Egmond-Binnen Gaukroger, pp.
The Discourse is important for many reasons. For instance, it tells us what Descartes himself seems to have thought of his early education, and in particular, his early exposure to mathematics. Roger Ariew suggests that these reflections are not so much those of the historical Descartes, as much as they are those of a persona Descartes adopts in telling the story of the Discourse Ariew, pp.
Uncontested, however, is the view that the Discourse sketches out the metaphysical underpinnings of the Cartesian system. And, as a bonus, it has three works that are attached to it that are apparently added so as to exemplify the method of inquiry it develops though admittedly it is unclear how the method is applied in these essays. As was suggested earlier, the Optics and Meteorology were very likely versions of works originally intended for The World.
It should be stressed that the three attached essays are important independent of the Discourse , for they contain much worth studying. It is in this work that Descartes shows how certain geometrical problems can be solved by way of algebraic equations.
The significance of the sort of connection that Descartes made between geometry and algebra was great indeed, for without it the mathematization of the physics and the development of the calculus might not have happened when they did—a generation later via Sir Isaac Newton — and Gottfried Leibniz — And so, the claim that Descartes is the originator of analytic geometry, at least as we understand it today, overstates the case.
As Boyer rightly points out, however, this does not diminish the importance of the work in the history of mathematics. In Descartes began writing the Meditations. And, in he returned to Leiden to help work out its publication. There is evidence suggesting that he was called away from Leiden around the time of her death, returning soon after. Some have speculated that he left Leiden to be at her side. Rather, it seems to have been in a letter from Mersenne that Descartes first learns of it.
In a follow up letter to Mersenne, dated 3 December , Descartes expresses regret in not having been able to see his father before his death. Mersenne sent the Meditations to philosophers and theologians for criticism. The list of critics includes: Caterus, Hobbes, Arnauld, Gassendi, and Mersenne himself, with several other unnamed readers who raised their objections through Mersenne.
A later edition would include an objection from Bordin. The Meditations opens by developing skeptical questions concerning the possibility of knowledge.
Through a series of several carefully thought out meditations, the reader establishes along with the author the groundwork for the possibility of knowledge scientia. There were two styles of presentation: analytic and synthetic. It is important not to confuse these terms with those, say, used by Kant. For Descartes the analytic style of presentation and inquiry proceeds by beginning with what is commonly taken to be known and discovering what is necessary for such knowledge.
Thus, the inquiry moves from what is commonly known to first principles. By contrast, the synthetic style of presentation begins by asserting first principles and then to determining what follows. Prompted by Mersenne, Descartes sketches out in the Second Replies a synthetic rendering of the Meditations.
In establishing the ground for science, Descartes was at the same time overthrowing a system of natural philosophy that had been established for centuries—a qualitative, Aristotelian physics. But please do not tell people, for that might make it harder for supporters of Aristotle to approve them.
I hope that readers will gradually get used to my principles, and recognize their truth, before they notice that they destroy the principles of Aristotle. Specifically, the Cartesian view denies that physics is grounded in hot, cold, wet, and dry. Rather, the only properties of bodies with which the physicist can concern him or herself are size, shape, motion, position, and so on—those modifications that conceptually or logically entail extension in length, breadth, and depth.
This conception of matter, conjoined with the sort of mathematics found in the Geometry , allies itself with the work of such Italian natural philosophers as Tartaglia, Ubaldo, and Galileo, and helps further the movement of early thinkers in their attempts to establish a mathematical physics.
Though the endorsement of the Learned Men would not have guaranteed that the Meditations would be accepted or used as a textbook, it could certainly be viewed as an important step to getting it accepted. He was, it could be said, a freelancer with no academic or political ties to the university outside of his connection to Mersenne. And, he certainly lacked the credentials and reputation of someone like a Eustachius, whose widely used textbook of the period is of the sort the Meditations was in all likelihood aimed at replacing.
Although the Meditations seems to have been endorsed by the Sorbonne, it was never adopted as a text for the university. In his defense Descartes entered into the debate. The controversy would leave Regius confined to teaching medicine, and his published defense of his conception of Cartesian thought would be officially condemned by Voetius, who in five years time would rise to the position of University rector.
At the end of the debate, which off and on lasted about five years, the situation ultimately became desperate for Descartes. He feared being expelled from the country and of seeing his books burned. In , at the age of forty-seven, Descartes moved to Egmond du Hoef.
With the Voetius controversy seemingly behind him though, as mentioned above, it would again raise its head and climax five years down the road , Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia began to correspond. In this exchange, Princess Elisabeth probed Descartes on the implications of his commitment to mind-body dualism.
During this time, he completed a final draft of a new textbook, which he had begun three years earlier, the Principia Philosophiae Principles of Philosophy , and in it was published. He dedicated it to Princess Elisabeth. The Principles is an important text. The work is divided into four Parts, with five hundred and four articles.
Although it would appear to be a quick run through of the Meditations , there are a number of dissimilarities. The principles introduced in Part Two are based on the metaphysics of Part One. And, the subsequent physics developed in Parts Three and Four is based upon the principles of Part Two.
Although the physics turns out to be unsound, the Principles nevertheless inspired such great thinkers as Robert Boyle — , Edmond Halley — , and Isaac Newton. As an important side note, it must be stressed that even though Descartes had throughout his career put a great deal of emphasis on mathematics, the physics developed in the Principles does not appear to be a mathematical physics. Rather, it is traditionally taken to be a conceptual project with only a hint of empirical overtones—a physics rooted entirely in metaphysics.
Two parts, never completed, were originally intended to deal with plants, animals, and man. In light of this and what Descartes says in a 31 January letter to the mathematician Constantijn Huygens, it is plausible to think that the Principles would have looked something like The World had it been completed as planned. One of the more controversial positions the Principles forwarded, at least according to Newton, was that a vacuum was impossible.
In other words, vacuum, taken as an extended nothing , is a flat contradiction. The corporeal universe is thus a plenum, individual bodies separated only by their surfaces. Newton argued in his De Gravitatione and Principia that the concept of motion becomes problematic if the universe is taken to be a plenum. In line with the ancient atomist Epicurus, they argued that if matter was infinitely divisible, so dividing it would show that there was no bottom—and so, corporeality would not be substantial.
So, if corporeality is substantial, as Descartes himself had claimed, there must be a minimum measure of extension that could not be divided by natural means, anyway. And so, there are atoms. But, this conclusion is something that Descartes explicitly rejects in the Principles. During this year another prominent political figure began to correspond with Descartes, Queen Christina of Sweden.
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