Descartes' method consists of four main steps. The first step is to "reject all of [one's] opinions," which means to suspend judgment on all of the beliefs that one has acquired up until that point. This includes even the most basic and seemingly self-evident beliefs, such as the existence of the external world and the reliability of one's senses. The goal of this step is to eliminate any preconceived notions that may be preventing one from arriving at true knowledge.
The second step is to "divide each problem into as many parts as is feasible and necessary for an adequate solution." This means breaking down a problem into its component parts and examining each part individually, in order to fully understand the problem as a whole.
The third step is to "conduct [one's] thoughts in an orderly fashion," which means to proceed step by step, starting with the simplest and most obvious concepts and moving on to more complex ones. This allows for a more thorough and systematic understanding of the problem at hand.
Finally, the fourth step is to "review frequently," which means to continually review and reflect on one's progress and understanding. This helps to ensure that one's knowledge is accurate and complete.
Descartes' method is based on the idea that knowledge should be based on certain and indubitable foundations. He believed that by following these steps, one could arrive at a set of foundational beliefs that could not be doubted, and that all other knowledge could be built upon these foundations.
Descartes' "Discourse on Method" has had a significant impact on the history of philosophy, and his method is still widely studied and debated today. Its emphasis on systematic thinking and the importance of foundational beliefs has influenced many other philosophical and scientific approaches to understanding the world.
Descartes Discourse on Method Flashcards
And I would like them to have demonstrated to them the two chambers or cavities which are in that heart. Examining the functions which such a body would have, I discovered everything that can exist without thinking; everything except that which is contributed by the soul: that part of us distinct from the body whose essence, as we have previously said, is only to think. But I shall endeavor in this discourse to describe the paths I have followed, and to delineate my life as in a picture, in order that each one may also be able to judge of them for himself, and that in the general opinion entertained of them, as gathered from current report, I myself may have a new help towards instruction to be added to those I have been in the habit of employing. The difference is that the primary notions which are presupposed for the demonstration of geometrical truths are readily accepted by anyone, since they accord with the use of our senses. On the contrary, there is no other animal, however perfect and fortunately situated it may be, that can do the same. If they really existed, I could believe that whatever perfection they possessed might be derived from my own nature; if they did not exist, I could believe that they were derived from nothingness, that is, that they were derived from my own defects.
Descartes describes his procedure for deducing causes from effects toward the end of Discourse VI: For I take my reasonings to be so closely interconnected that just as the last are proved by the first, which are their causes, so the first are proved by the last, which are their effects. Of philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been cultivated for many ages by the most distinguished men, and that yet there is not a single matter within its sphere which is not still in dispute, and nothing, therefore, which is above doubt, I did not presume to anticipate that my success would be greater in it than that of others; and further, when I considered the number of conflicting opinions touching a single matter that may be upheld by learned men, while there can be but one true, I reckoned as well-nigh false all that was only probable. Careful observation shows that this difference is more apparent near the heart, and is not so noticeable at points far removed from it. As for me, I am convinced that if I had been taught from my youth all the truths which I have found since my demonstrations and if I had had no trouble in learning them, I would perhaps have never known any others. From my childhood, I have been familiar with letters; and as I was given to believe that by their help a clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life might be acquired, I was ardently desirous of instruction. 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.
In water, it would seem that the speed of the ball is reduced as it penetrates further into the medium. Those ideas that are the product of clear and distinct mental perceptions are true. Perceiving further, that in order to understand these relations I should sometimes have to consider them one by one and sometimes only to bear them in mind, or embrace them in the aggregate, I thought that, in order the better to consider them individually, I should view them as subsisting between straight lines, than which I could find no objects more simple, or capable of being more distinctly represented to my imagination and senses; and on the other hand, that in order to retain them in the memory or embrace an aggregate of many, I should express them by certain characters the briefest possible. He recounts his formal education from one of the finer schools in Europe, and indicates how he finds each element wanting: Languages, Fables, Books, Oratory, Poetry, Math, Morals, Jurisprudence and science. In saying this, perhaps I will not appear too vain if you consider that, since there is only one truth for each thing, whoever finds it knows as much as one can know about it and that, for example, a child instructed in arithmetic, having made an addition following the rules, can be confident of having found, so far as the sum he is examining is concerned, everything that the human mind can find out. In this it strikes me they are similar to a blind man who, in order to fight on equal terms against someone who can see, makes him come into the bottom of some really obscure cave.
DescartesĂąâŹâą Method (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
And this inability does not come about from a lack of organs For we see that magpies and parrots can emit words, as we can, but nonetheless cannot talk like us, that is to say, giving evidence that they are thinking about what they are uttering; whereas, men who are born deaf and dumb are deprived of organs which other people use to speakâjust as much as or more than the animalsâbut they have a habit of inventing on their own some signs by which they can make themselves understood to those who, being usually with them, have the spare time to learn their language. I was told that it had indeed been published but that all the copies had immediately been burnt at Rome, and that Galileo had been convicted and punished. The left ventricle has two similar tubes at least as large as those just described: the arteria venosa, likewise misnamed since it is purely a vein, coming from the lungs, where it is divided into a number of branches interlaced with those of the vena arteriosa and those of the windpipe, through which enters the air we breathe; and the aorta, which, starting from the heart, sends its branches everywhere throughout the body. I was so shocked by this that I almost decided to burn all my papers or at least to let no one see them. So also there are two at the entrance to the arteria venosa, which permit the blood to pass from the lungs to the left ventricle and prevent its return, and three at the entrance to the aorta, permitting the blood to leave the heart but not to return. Interestingly, the second experiment in particular also raises new problems, problems Descartes could not have been familiar with prior to the experiment, but which do enable him to more concretely define the series of problems he needs to solve in order to determine the cause of the rainbow see Garber 2001: 101â104 and Buchwald 2008.
. 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. In addition, I felt, as I applied it, that my mind was accustoming itself gradually to think more clearly and distinctly about its objects, and because I had not restricted this method to one matter in particular, I was hopeful that I could apply it just as usefully to difficulties in the other sciences as I had applied it to those in algebra. Nevertheless, as far as the opinions which I had been receiving since my birth were concerned, I could not do better than to reject them completely for once in my lifetime, and to resume them afterwards, or perhaps accept better ones in their place, when I had determined how they fitted into a rational scheme. I noticed also that there was nothing at all in them to assure me of the existence of their object; it was clear, for example, that if we posit a triangle, its three angles must be equal to two right angles, but there was nothing in that to assure me that there was a single triangle in the world. In this way I may learn from the opinions of those who read it, and thus add another to the methods of progress which I am accustomed to use. Second, it is not possible for us ever to understand anything beyond those simple natures and a certain mixture or compounding of one with another.
Thus it is quite certain that the condition of the true religion, whose rules were laid down by God alone, must be incomparably superior to all others. One part of the explanation might be that he hopedââa hope he expressed in later correspondenceââthat his philosophical system would be adopted by Jesuit schools in France, and saw it necessary to set down where he stood on the matter of Copernicanism, as elem- ents of it were presupposed in his new physics. And, in point of fact, the accurate observance of these few precepts gave me, I take the liberty of saying, such ease in unraveling all the questions embraced in these two sciences, that in the two or three months I devoted to their examination, not only did I reach solutions of questions I had formerly deemed exceedingly difficult but even as regards questions of the solution of which I continued ignorant, I was enabled, as it appeared to me, to determine the means whereby, and the extent to which a solution was possible; results attributable to the circumstance that I commenced with the simplest and most general truths, and that thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones Nor in this perhaps shall I appear too vain, if it be considered that, as the truth on any particular point is one whoever apprehends the truth, knows all that on that point can be known. Since I have never looked at anything except in an orderly way, it is certain that what remains for me to discover is inherently more difficult and more hidden than what I have been able to find, and they would have much less pleasure in learning that from me than from themselves. But immediately afterwards I noticed that, while I wished in this way to think everything was false, it was necessary that Iâwho was doing the thinkingâhad to be something.
I thought by the same means I could acquire all the true benefits I was capable of obtaining, all the more so since our will tends to follow or to fly away from only those things which our understanding has represented to it as good or bad. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. On the other hand, if I had ceased to think while all the rest of what I had ever imagined remained true, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed; therefore I concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature was only to think, and which, to exist, has no need of space nor of any material thing. Finally, our century seemed to me to abound in as many wise spirits as any preceding one, which led me to suppose that I could judge the experience of others by my own, and to think that there was no such knowledge in the world such as I had been led to hope for. In the same way I thought that the sciences contained in books such of them at least as are made up of probable reasonings, without demonstrations , composed as they are of the opinions of many different individuals massed together, are farther removed from truth than the simple inferences which a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience.
He 1 was the first to show that there are many small passages at the ends of the arteries, by which the blood received from the heart enters into the small branches of the veins, whence it returns again to the heart; so that its path is nothing but a perpetual circulation. His chief concern was with the Church's condemnation of Galileo's Dialogue 1632 , which argued that the Earth revolves around the sun. It is good to know something about the customs of various people, so that we can judge our own more sensibly and do not think everything different from our own ways ridiculous and irrational, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to do. But it was not only my desire for the invention of an infinite number of devices which might enable us to enjoy without effort the fruits of the earth and all the commodities found in it, but mainly also my desire for the preservation of our health, which is, without doubt, the principal benefit and the foundation of all the others in this life. From the description of the inanimate bodies and of plants, I moved onto the bodies of animals and especially the body of man. The ball must, therefore, land somewhere on the line dropped from F, but since it cannot land above the surface, it must land somewhere below CBE. Descartes argues that to seek knowledge, one must begin with skepticism, and question all preconceived ideas about a topic to start with a fresh perspective that is untarnished by the ideas of others.
I also knew the opinions of others about myself, and that I was in no way judged inferior to my fellow students, even though several of them were preparing to become professors. AT 10: 390, CSM 1: 26â27 Here, enumeration is itself a form of deduction: I construct classes in order to deduce a conclusion. Thus the only hypothesis left was that this idea was put in my mind by a nature that was really more perfect than I was, which had all the perfections that I could imagine, and which was, in a word, God. And evidently it is no less repugnant that falsity or imperfection, in itself, should come from God than that utility or truth should come from nothingness. After all that, I have no need to say anything to explain the movement of the heart, other than the following: when its cavities are not full of blood, then necessarily blood flows from the vena cava into the right chamber and from the venous artery into the left, because these two blood vessels are always full and their openings, which are oriented towards the heart, cannot then be blocked. This Discourse on Method is, to some extent, an autobiography of an individual's evolution from the old system to the new.
For these reasons, as soon as my age permitted me to pass from under the control of my instructors, I entirely abandoned the study of letters, and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great book of the world. And people should note that I say of our reason and not of our imagination or of our senses, since even though we see the sun very clearly, we should not for that reason judge that it is only the size which we see, and we can easily imagine distinctly the head of a lion mounted on the body of goat, without having to conclude, because of that, there is a chimera in the world Part Five I would be very pleased to continue and make you see here all the chain of other truths which I deduced from these first ones. For it is not enough to possess a good mind; the most important thing is to apply it correctly. I am now dissecting the heads of various animals, so that I can explain what imagination, memory, etc. There, in the midst of a great and busy people, more interested in their own affairs than curious about those of others, I was able to enjoy all the comforts of life to be found in the most populous cities while living in as solitary and retired a fashion as though in the most remote of deserts. And I know of no qualities other than these which serve to perfect the mind. The very principle which I took as a rule to start with, namely, that all those things which we conceived very clearly and very distinctly are true, is known to be true only because God exists, and because he is a perfect Being, and because everything in us comes from him.
