Descartes' philosophy - Cartesianism, carried him into elaborate and erroneous explanations of a number of physical phenomena, which still held value for their substitution of a falsifiable system of mechanical for the vague spiritual concepts.. While Descartes explained animal life as totally mechanistic (Animals abstract not) he believed men's souls controlled their mechanical bodies (Through the pineal gland) which acted by filling the nerves with a part of the blood which he called animal spirits to fill and animate the muscles, and organs. Criticism of Descartes' fanciful theory, starting with responses from Gassendi, would shape future philosophy.

Basically, the problem with Descartes view of biology is that its clear that a soul or animal spirit would be superfluous. At any rate, it would impossible - if spirit can move the pineal gland as he states, it therefore belongs to the realm of matter. If we insist that it remain aether, then by definition it cannot interact with matter.

Like Bacon, Descartes attempted a systematic philosophy but one that went beyond science and could encompass all branches of knowledge. Unlike Bacon the system would be based upon a few undeniable universal principles, and all knowledge would be deduced from them, so that metaphysics, physics, mathematics, morals and politics would all cohere. Knowledge is an organic whole, in which all three fields have the same method. Descartes used the metaphor of a tree; "Thus philosophy as a whole is like a tree whose roots are metaphysics, whose trunk is physics, and whose branches, which issue from this trunk, are all the other sciences (letter)."

Like Bacon the approach is radically different from Aristotle's for whom the different fields of human knowledge have own subject matters and distinct methods. Like Bacon, Descartes believed that the old philosophy had to be rejected in toto; it could not be reformed. What survived for Descartes, from the past, was the systematic, deductive and methodical Euclidean geometry. So, from a few self-evident principles, knowledge of distant and complicated propositions would be generated IF THE RIGHT METHOD was followed. Descartes was not the only person in the history of philosophy to be impressed with mathematics. Galileo and Newton were also convinced that physics (natural philosophy) should follow the geometrical method of analysis and synthesis.

Descartes' project was assisted by his division of the world into mental and physical substances, thinking and corporeal substances. Physics dealt with corporeal. The nature of substance was length, width and height. Thus geometry was able to faithfully represent the essence of physics. Descartes and others made a distinction between the primary and secondary characteristics of matter. Color, smell, heat were all a product of interactions between feeling subjects and corporeal bodies which physics could ignore. Physics was the science of determined, extended bodies in motion--Newton adopted this much at least.

Descartes eventually tried to deliver on the grander promises. In his Principles of Philosophy he deals with God's attributes, freedom of will, prejudice, laws of motion, laws of impact, planetary orbits, comets, rainbows, the moon, mountain formation, tides, minerals, combustion, glass making, gravitation, magnets...much of this he got wrong, but, hey!

However, it is in these later works that Descartes clearly recognizes that guesses, hypotheses and experiments are required and had to enter into his "deductive" method somewhere.

Descartes admired Galileo, particularly his mathematical style, but, disliked his constant "digressions" which indicated (to Descartes) that Galileo has not examined questions fully nor followed them in the proper order.

It is interesting that when Descartes dealt with the problem of free fall, at the heart of physics since Aristotle's time--he repeated the same mistake that dogged the early attempts of Galileo to solve the problem. Everyone knew that bodies went faster when they fell, that they accelerated. However, Descartes assumed that acceleration uniformly increased with the distance traversed rather than with the time elapsed. This mistake was so easy, so seemingly in accord with experience, yet it prevented Discovery of free fall--distance traversed is the square of the time elapsed.

Descartes' most lasting achievement was analytic geometry. Up untill Descartes Euclid reigned. Descartes represented lines by variables, and converted geometry into algebra. Elaborate proofs that took pages of geometric work were reduced to a few clear, easy to follow algebraic steps. The program of mathematizing science was on its way. Intending to extend mathematical method to all areas of human knowledge, Descartes discarded the authoritarian systems of the scholastic philosophers and began with universal doubt. At least one thing cannot be doubted: doubt itself.

PART II: The principal rules of the Method

He decides that mathematics, and its specific rules per se, although excellent, could not form the formal basis of this method because it was restrictive to figures, rule and formula bound, and so many of his considerations layout side the realm of mathematics. Besides, a multitude of rules or laws hampers justice. So, Descartes decides to base his method on fours rules or laws.

1. The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt. (AVOID PREJUDICE AND DOUBT THE "TRUTH")

2. The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution. (DIVIDE THE PROBLEM INTO THE RIGHT NUMBER OF MANAGEABLE PARTS).

3. The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence. (CONSTRUCT THE SOLUTION IN ASCENDING ORDER OF SIMPLICITY, REORDERING WHERE NECESSARY)

4. And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted. (REVIEW AND REVISE TO ENSURE COMPLETENESS AND PREVENT OMISSION).

There are other ways one might represent these 4 steps:

1. Keep an open mind--doubt. (O)
2. Analyze and classify. (A)
3. Reorder and Synthesis. (S)
4. Review and Revise (looping back to synthesis). (R)

Some will argue that there really is nothing new here. Doubt, is central for example to Bacon's doctrine of the Idols. Analysis, synthesis, classification and revision are hardly novel ideas either. What may be new though is the concept of order. There had to be a right sequence although Descartes never explicitely tells us how this is done--unless, we take "clarity and distinctness" when clear and distinct ideas appear--as their own guarantors of the method. There was a proper path. And that path, although not governed by specific mathematical laws, follows from point to point with mathematical precision.

Descartes is laying out for us a method of "critical thinking" he claims is useful in problem solving. Modern versions of this technique respect six levels of intellectual organization: knowing, interpretation, analysis, application, evaluation, and synthesis. (K,I,A,A,E,S). Descartes' first step is usually assumed.

First, (one part of Descartes' second step) we first make some attempt to know the problem. Knowing means we can reproduce it, paraphrase it, explain it in our own words. But knowing is not understanding.

Second, (necessary to Descartes' second step) we interpret, we begin to read between the lines, to discover the main ideas, separate main points from minor points.

Third, (equivalent to Descartes' second step) we analyze. We classify, categorize, compare, contrast, dissect.

Fourth, (part of Descartes' fourth step), we try to apply our analysis to specific applications. We imagine various scenarios, put ourselves in the situation; we suppose; we assume.

Fifth, (another part of Descartes' fourth step), we evaluate. We rank, order, judge, critique, convince, persuade.

Sixth, we synthesize (Descartes' third step). We begin to blend ideas from our reading with our own thoughts, leading to new ideas, new thought, new structures.

These are presented here as abstractions--but, as method, can be extended to any sort of problem. Indeed, the approach is used (if unconsciously) by physicists in their approach towards complex puzzles in nature and life.

The puzzles of course present themselves as raw observations or partial observations in which not even the questions are readily apparent. In evaluating this as an intellectual model, or even assessing if it is a model, compare this model with whatever model you currently use in responding to any of the following situations or questions:

- my basic philosophy of life is...
- I believe/do not believe in God because...
- I am a student in Liberal Studies because...
- I am facing an important moral choice. I will take action X because____

The question is, with questions like these, is it helpful to have an intellectually satisfying organizational framework? If yes, how does this framework compare with the framework each of us uses now?

Descartes is impressed in reflecting on these rules that the geometers reach difficult demonstrations through chain reasonings provided they too pay attention to the Order in which new truths are deduced from others and provided one never accepts the false as true. Nor, he says, does he have little difficulty via this method in identifying the simple things that become the starting points in the method.

"Now, in conclusion, the method which teaches adherence to the true order, and an exact enumeration of all the conditions of the thing sought includes all that gives certitude to the rules of arithmetic."

"But the chief ground of my satisfaction with thus method, was the assurance I had of thereby exercising my reason in all matters, if not with absolute perfection, at least with the greatest attainable by me: besides, I was conscious that by its use my mind was becoming gradually habituated to clearer and more distinct conceptions of its objects; and I hoped also, from not having restricted this method to any particular matter, to apply it to the difficulties of the other sciences, with not less success than to those of algebra."

Descartes said earlier that the method is not derived from mathematics (too rule bound), but there is no reason that the method cannot be mapped onto a mathematical problem in a way in which the rules of math then become the basic truths used to deduce other truths in the method.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet," speech, delivered Aug. 1943 (published in The Necessary Angel, 1951).

Descartes was one of the most disengenous, intellectually dishonest, and corrupt philosophers since Augustine. That he would take from the fact that that uncertainty exists, that we could be certain that God existed, shows that he was willing to let his fear override his logic!

Descartes was right: When we attempt to undertake a universal skepticism, we do find one thing that we CAN be certain of - that there exists some being who is doing the doubting! But what he should have gone on to say was that this made REASON the most certain phenomena in the universe, and not the soul, or a god. Descartes built up a brilliant defense of reason, and then allowed his fear of death to overwhelm his reason and forfeit truth to the delusion of his time - religion.

PS

In modern logic, there is a valid rule of inference which is called, "existential generalization". The rule is, F(x), therefore, E!x. That is, if anything, x, has property F, then x exists. In short, this is the basis of Descartes argument - his first premise.

Here is a relatively neato site on Descartes and his (sane) mathematical side History of Mathematics