Introduction
The work Discourse on the Method appeared in 1637. The first move that Descartes makes is to undermine the doctrine of the four elements by carrying out a reduction. By this project, Descartes aimed to stipulate norms and principles of science and its main functions which help a researcher to create new knowledge. The material sets out rules of method which go beyond specifically mathematical concerns, and it draws on areas as diverse as rhetoric, psychology, and dialectic. The material from the third stage is above all concerned with the mechanistic construal of cognition, although the final, incomplete, Rules return to more directly methodological concerns and appear to describe, in a general way, mathematical procedures that are set out much more fully in the Geometry.
Main body
Having established the unity of knowledge Descartes sets out why we need a method if we are to succeed in our inquiries, holding up the mathematical sciences as models in virtue of the certainty of their results. Rules then set out the two operations that the method relies upon, namely intuition and deduction. The central topics here are the doctrines of intuition) and deduction, and it is in these that the novelty of Descartes’ account resides. By this project, Descartes hopes to create a new understating of science and scientific research based on logic and doubt.
It seems impossible to reconstruct the world view in one day (as Descartes claims) and create a new vision of reality. The Discourse on Method was based on Aristotle’s understanding of the method and scientific process. In the seventeenth century, there occurred a series of scientific discoveries that challenged and eventually destroyed the medieval conception of the universe — a conception that had endured for nearly two thousand years. According to this conception, which was rooted in the physics of Aristotle) and the astronomy of Ptolemy, the universe is a sphere with the earth at its center. By his doubt, then, Descartes does not mean to reject permanently all of his former beliefs. Some of them may well be true. But if they are, then Descartes wants to rediscover them, in the sense of showing that they follow logically from basic, indubitable propositions. The main purpose of the doubt is to find these indubitable propositions so that Descartes can use them as “foundations” upon which to rebuild his knowledge. The doubt is a way of rethinking everything from the beginning, to achieve the certainty that Descartes is seeking. One standard interpretation of Descartes’s notion of clarity and distinctness sees it as being inspired by mathematics. Descartes, in any case, took it as obvious that thoughts are properties, rather than substances. The truth of the substance theory is based on the correctness of a particular application of it. It has become apparent, then, that despite Descartes’s wish to doubt everything that is not certain. Descartes tries to give content to his conception of a purely thinking substance by reminding us of what “thinking” covers – namely, all conscious states6. These include doubting, understanding, asserting, denying, willing, refusing, imagining, and seeming to perceive.
Second, Descartes tries to show that the conception of a physical object, though it initially seems easier to grasp than the conception of a pure mind, is, in fact, just as abstract. As one recent writer insightfully notes, this is the purpose (or, rather, one of the purposes) of the passage about the wax. Having carefully prepared us for a comparison of his novel conception of the self (which can be neither perceived by the senses nor pictured by imagination) with the seemingly easier conception of an ordinary physical object. Descartes arrives at his answer by a process of elimination. First eliminated are the wax’s observable properties – its shape, size, texture, color, smell, and so on. These do not constitute our conception of the wax, because even if they all change, the remains. The advantage of this solution is that the sub argument would then not rely on the flawed method of justifying just criticized. On the other hand, the argument would now rely on four basic premises (i.e., premises that are not themselves supported by arguments. The scholastic method relies upon syllogistic logic. It even makes idiots of those who are not stupid by nature. If they happen to be a minister, teacher, or professor, it is worse. They enjoy authority and are constantly praised. As a result, they become malicious. From a Cartesian point of view, this plea for disputations is hardly understandable. Descartes loathed them. His conception of the method as the orderly arrangement of self-evident truths does not allow for Heereboord’s essentially social and historical conception of philosophy.
Conclusion
In sum, Descartes’ misunderstanding of both the policy of his friends and the philosophy of his disciples was unavoidable. His method aims not only at the truth but also, and perhaps more so, at certainty, the ultimate foundation of which is the cogito. This implies that any one of Descartes’ followers who refused to avail himself of his metaphysics was liable to the charge of being untrue to the master. Moreover, Descartes seems to have thought that it is impossible to know the truth without acting on it.
Bibliography
Descartes, R. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Hackett Pub Co Inc; 1999.
Cottingham John. Descartes. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Copleston Frederick. A History of Philosophy. Book 2, vol. 4. New York: Doubleday, 1985.
Grene Marjorie. Descartes. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.