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Rene Descartes
Born: March 31, 1596 La Haye, Touraine, France
Died: February 11, 1650 Stockholm, Sweden
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Famous For:
Along with
Galileo, he provided the foundation for Analytic Geometry. He is
credited with the Cartesian coordinate system used in Geometry as well as
use of X, Y & Z to identify unknowns in equations. He is
also often called the father of modern philosophy. |
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Humanist Ideas:
The philosophical ideas of Descartes
consisted of a method of "Hyperbolic
Doubt" and the idea that he cannot doubt his existence but can
have doubts about anything else. He had doubts
about the authority of the philosophy who came before him and which
he rejected. He also doubted what his own senses told him. His
search for truth and philosophical foundation was in that which was
"clearly and distinctly" doubtless. He sees that he
himself must be able to think but that thinking is separate from what the
body senses. For him it is possible to gain knowledge and
understand the material world through mathematics.
To gain this true and doubtless knowledge
he had a set of methodological rules.
1) Never accept anything as true if preconceptions are present
in the mind.
2) Divide an issue into as many parts as possible in order to
resolve them.
3) Impose an orderly manner of thought that begins with the
simplest and work towards the most complex issues.
4) Completely include all enumerations, and all comprehensive
reviews - "leave nothing out." |
| Hyperbolic Doubt -
a systematic process of doubt which determines if a class of
knowledge can be doubted in anyway to arrive at a list of beliefs
that are true and doubtless. |
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Noted Sayings:
"All that is very clearly and
distinctly conceived is true."
(Meditation III p 142)
"Cogito, ergo sum --- I think, therefore I
am. " (Le Discours de la Methode, pt 4.)
"It is not possible for there to be in us any thought of
which at the moment it is in us, we are not conscious."
(Oeuvres de Descartes Vol. VII p 246)
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