por Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, whose most notable contributions are the development of geometry, a new scientific methodology, the Cartesian Law or his contribution to modern philosophy.
Although he was a soldier and studied law, Descartes’ true passions were oriented towards understanding the problems of mathematics and those concerning the field of philosophy. These concerns were so deep that after devoting his entire life to this field, his analysis made him the father of modern philosophy.
His contributions were diverse, as well as transcendental for many disciplines, so much so that to this day they continue to be significant, such as his philosophical essayswhich contemplate the analysis of four sections.
In these sections you can study his dissertations on geometry, optics, geometry, meteors, and finally -in addition to his greatest contribution-, the Method Discourse.
His writings contemplate more investigations, also of great importance, such as his well-known Metaphysical Meditations.
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Biography
birth and childhood
Descartes was born in La Haye in Touraine, France, on March 31, 1596. When he was one year old, his mother Jeanne Brochard died trying to give birth to another child who also died. He was then left in the care of his father, his maternal grandmother and a wet nurse.
In 1607, somewhat late due to failing health, he entered the Royal Henry-Le-Grand Jesuit College at La Flèche, where he learned mathematics and physics, including the work of Galileo.
After graduating in 1614, he studied two years (1615-16) at the University of Poitiers, earning a Bachelor’s and Licentiate in Canon and Civil Law, in accordance with his father’s wishes that he become a lawyer. He later he moved to Paris.
Youth and beginning of his philosophical ideas
Due to his ambition to be a military man, in 1618 he joined the Protestant Army of the Dutch States in Breda, under the command of Maurice of Nassau, as a mercenary, where he studied military engineering.
Together with Isaac Beeckman, a philosopher who profoundly influenced him, he worked on free fall, catenary, conic section, and fluid statics, developing the belief that it was necessary to create a method that would thoroughly relate mathematics and physics.
From 1620 to 1628 he traveled through Europe, spending time in Bohemia (1620), Hungary (1621), Germany, the Netherlands, and France (1622-23). He also spent some time in Paris (1623), where he came into contact with Marin Mersenne, an important contact that kept him connected with the scientific world for many years.
From Paris he traveled through Switzerland to Italy, where he spent time in Venice and Rome. He later he returned to France again (1625).
He renewed his friendship with Mersenne and Mydorge, and met Girard Desargues. His Paris home became a meeting place for philosophers and mathematicians.
Residence in the Netherlands
In 1628, tired of the bustle of Paris, his house full of people and the life of a traveler, he decided to settle where he could work in solitude. He thought a lot about choosing a country suitable to his nature and he chose Holland.
He longed to be in a quiet place where he could work away from the distractions of a city like Paris, but still have access to the facilities of a city. It was a good decision that he seems not to have regretted.
Shortly after settling in the Netherlands, he began work on his first major treatise on physics, Le Monde or Traité de la Lumiere. He wrote to Mersenne in October 1629:
[Los fundamentos de la física] it is the subject I have studied more than any other and on which, thank God, I have not wasted my time entirely. At least I think that I have found how to prove metaphysical truths in a more evident way than the proofs of geometry, in my opinion, that is to say: I don’t know if I will be able to convince others of it. During my first nine months in this country I did not work in anything else.
In 1633, this work was almost finished when the news that Galileo was sentenced to house arrest reached him. He decided not to risk publishing the work and ultimately chose to do so only in part, after his death.
Method Discourse
Descartes was pressured by his friends to publish his ideas and, although he was adamant not to publish the worldwrote a treatise on science under the title Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences (Method Discourse).
Three appendages to this work were La Dioptrique, Les Météores, and La Géométrie. The treatise was published in Leiden in 1637 and Descartes wrote to Mersenne saying:
The work Discourse on Method (1637) it describes what Descartes considers a more satisfactory means of acquiring knowledge than that of Aristotle’s logic. Only mathematics, according to Descartes, is true, so everything must be based on mathematics.
In the three essays that accompany the Discourse, he illustrated his method for using reason in the search for truth in the sciences.
metaphysical meditations
In 1641 Descartes published metaphysical meditations in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated.
This work is characterized by the use of methodical doubt, a systematic procedure of rejecting as false all kinds of beliefs in which you have ever been or could have been deceived.
Death
Descartes never married, but he had a daughter, Francine, born in the Netherlands in 1635. He had planned to educate the girl in France, but she died of a fever at age 5.
Descartes lived in the Netherlands for over 20 years but died in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 11, 1650 after suffering a bout of pneumonia at age 53. He had moved there less than a year before, at the request of Queen Christina, to be her philosophy tutor.
Philosophy
Descartes is considered the first thinker of modernity, since thanks to his conceptions rationalism as a doctrine took its first steps.
In the context in which Descartes lived, proposing a new philosophy corresponded to a revolutionary and quite daring action, since putting forward his proposal implied questioning medieval philosophy.
For Descartes, the realism on which the current philosophy of the time was based was somewhat naive, since what was perceived was considered real.
Descartes explains that, when obtaining knowledge about something, we are really obtaining our idea about said knowledge, and that in order to know if said knowledge is real, it is necessary to analyze it and find absolute certainties.
education for all
Part of Descartes’ conception of education was based on the fact that all people had the right to be educated and have access to knowledge. In fact, he believed that there were no greater or lesser intelligences, but rather different ways of approaching knowledge.
The notion of knowledge that is inherited was not compatible with the arguments of Descartes, who considered that what was true was everything that was very clear to reason, and that other knowledge imparted by an authority figure was not necessarily true.
In this same context, he showed himself as a defender of the right that human beings have to think for ourselves and to have freedom in terms of study.
Method to guide reason
Descartes thought that it is necessary for knowledge to be obtained through a specific method, which will favor obtaining the purest possible truth. The steps of this method are as follows:
-Evidence, which refers to elements so accurate that there is no way to doubt them.
-Analysis, which has to do with breaking down each concept into much smaller parts, so that they can be studied and evaluated carefully and in depth.
-Synthesis, point at which one seeks to structure the knowledge in question beginning with the less complex elements.
-Enumeration, which consists of reviewing the work done over and over again, as many times as possible, in order to be sure that no element has been forgotten.
The bases of this method are found in mathematics, which in turn corresponds to the pattern par excellence associated with any scientific reasoning.
doubt-based method
Descartes sought to get closer to the absolute truth of the world and of things through a method based on doubt. This procedure responds to considering false all those elements or arguments that present at least something doubtful in their structures.
This doubt should not be considered as a reflection of skepticism, since it is a doubt of a methodical nature, always with the intention of getting as close as possible to the truth.
According to Descartes, if the certainty about knowledge is not absolute, then doubt arises and said knowledge becomes false, because only true knowledge is free of any doubt.
What elements make you doubt?
Descartes points out that there are three main elements that are likely to raise doubts. The first element is made up of the senses.
According to Descartes, this is because there are many everyday situations in which it is evident that reality shows something and the senses show something different, based on the same element.
At this point, he mentions as examples the fact that some geometric shapes such as circles and squares seem to have some characteristics at a distance and different ones when approaching, or the fact that a stick inserted in the water seems broken when it really is not.
Based on this, Descartes believed that all that knowledge that was obtained through the senses was false.
The second element that generates doubts is the fact of not being able to differentiate between being awake or asleep. That is, how do we know if we are awake or dreaming?
For Descartes, a science that does not arouse doubts is mathematics, although he thought that it is possible that we have been created to make mistakes. Therefore, he introduces the third reason for doubt, which is the existence of a very intelligent and powerful evil being, whose function is to cause mistakes, which I call Demiurge.
Descartes warns that in order to overcome all these dubious reasons it is necessary that the certainty about knowledge is absolute.
first truth
Taking the above into account, Descartes enunciates his popular first truth: «I think, therefore I am», according to which he intends to reflect that the action of thinking constitutes, at the same time, an elimination of doubt.
This is so because doubt itself can be considered thought, and it is not possible to doubt thought.
substances
Descartes establishes that there are truly three types of substances. The first is an infinite and perfect substance, which is God.
The second is what he calls thinking, which corresponds to reason, also called soul. This substance is immaterial and noncorporeal.
The third is the extensive call, which includes material beings or matter. In this section, Descartes recalls that it is not really possible to determine the specific characteristics of this matter, since they are…