Chapter Three

Cartesian Update

"Living without philosophy is like keeping one's eyes shut without ever trying to open them; and the pleasure of seeing all the things which our vision discloses cannot be compared to the satisfaction found through the knowledge that philosophy gives. This study is more necessary for the conduct of our lives than is the use of our eyes in guiding our steps."

René Descartes*

(From: Jack R. Vrooman, René Descartes; A Biography, 1970, G.P. Putman Sons)

The setting is the Netherlands in the years 1637 to 1644. The intellectual environment is the most tolerant in Europe, although rigidity and persecution associated with the Calvinist version of Christianity still presents a hazard to the emergence of modern philosophy: the new lines of thought, these based on observation, skepticism, and reason. Science is in its embryonic form...still incubating, as a revolutionary departure from dogma and medieval authority. Its rules and methods are not yet spelled out coherently, except only recently in a kind of first draft by Francis Bacon in England.

René Descartes (1596-1650) is in his forties and in his intellectual prime. He is a gentleman, financially independent by inheritance. He has joined at least three armies in the past, partly to escape the friends in France who, according to Russell (1945), he complained, regularly interrupted his thinking and solitude. In mathematics he revolutionized geometry with a system by which a point on a plane is defined by numerical coordinates (later in 3-D space). He used these Cartesian coordinates in the application of algebra to geometry to create a new system of analytical geometry. This brilliant contribution to mathematics is the foundation of all modern positioning technology.

Decartes is commonly viewed as the founder of modern philosophy because he breaks with the past in several important ways. First, although he shows himself to be a prodigious intellectual, he carefully cultivates the image of a gentleman/amateur, not that of a professional scholastic or pedant. Almost inadvertently he breathes new democracy into the world of philosophy, clearly demonstrating by achievement, that any thinker with creative, sound ideas might participate in the discovery of knowledge. This is the opposite of the medieval custom of yielding to authority. It is the Renaissance, and Decartes is at the beginning of the period known as the Enlightenment. With an equally cavalier attitude towards authority and tradition, he pointedly seeks to create a philosophic system de novo, from first principles. In this respect he harkens back to the Hellenic Greeks and beyond to a line of thought first promulgated by Euclid and Pythagoras that sought to apply the certitude of logic and mathematical method to human knowledge of the real world. Descartes considered the prevalent philosophy of Europe based on Aristolelian Scholasticism to be a chaotic hodgepodge and boldly sought to systematize all knowledge. When he died in 1650, he was only 54 years old, but within this fairly short life span he made enviable contributions to the state of human intellectual evolution.

The Renaissance was an age when the thought of the early Greek philosophers, including the Skeptics with their emphasis on doubt, was being rediscovered in Europe. In order to arrive at a solid philosophic starting point, Decartes went through a mental process that has come to be known as Cartesian doubt. He literally doubted everything that could be doubted, so that all knowledge and preconception became suspect. He even refused to trust knowledge that came through the senses, arguing that dreams present images that seem quite real but are not. Not surprisingly, all that remained at the end of the process was doubt itself, a state he called "hyperbolic doubt," and this proved to be his breakthrough.

Doubting is thinking, and so by confirming that when he doubts he is thinking, Decartes was able to affirm his thought process and therefore his own existence. The result is the most famous statement of Continental Rationalism, (in Latin), "Cogito ergo sum." "I think, therefore I am." Decarte was finally down to bedrock here. On this point he could be certain...if he was thinking, then he knew that he existed. While all this might seem a bit simplistic and self-evident in modern times, in the context of Europe at that time, the philosophic process of Cartesian doubt leading to the Cartesian cognito was indeed revolutionary.

The Middle Ages of Europe were called the Dark Ages with good reason. For the common man "knowledge" was little more than folklore and superstition. What passed for intellectual activity and innovation amounted to cloistered monks transcribing scripture, plus a few inventions having to do with warfare and the use of draft animals. The majority of the population were not required to think, not expected to think, and in many cases essentially forbidden to think. Knowledge was the prerogative of the church, and what information was made public was prerogative to the king.