Doubting Descartes
'The Robespierre of the scientific revolution'
Excerpted from A Whirld of Words: A Reader's Commonplace Dictionary. Find the LINK to the Introduction and WORKS CITED below.
Descartes
during the night of 10 November 1619, René Descartes (then twenty-three years old) had a dream in which the Spirit of Truth descended upon him to give him the mission to philosophize. Not until 1632 was he ready to publish; the condemnation of Galileo induced him to withhold his work, and thus nearly two decades passed before he 'made himself known,' as the contemporary French phrase had it, with the Discours de la méthode and the three Essais of 1637
(Sebba and Watson 1987) p. 5
I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God. Descartes is useless and uncertain
(Pascal 1990) p. 186
to the Stoical opinion Descartes much inclines; he affirms that the soul or mind is united specially to a certain part of the brain called the pineal gland, which the mind by the mere exercise of the will is able to move in different ways, and by whose help the mind perceives all the movements which are excited in the body and external objects
(Spinoza 1990) p. 685
the Robespierre of the scientific revolution
(Koestler 1959) p. 501
Descartes was certainly a great man, but only as a pioneer; in the whole of his dogmas there is not a word of truth. In 1820 Descartes' skull was sold by auction in Stockholm
(Schopenhauer 1966) p. 238, 265
Descartes, the father of rationalism (hence grandfather of the Revolution) was superficial
(Nietzsche 1955) p. 99
Pascal against Descartes asserted that we might also say, 'I walk, therefore I am'
(Steiner 1964) p. 32
Descartes takes as a motto from Ovid, 'Who lives well hidden, lives well' which the Rosicrucians also professed. According to Descartes's autobiography, it all came to a climax for him in a room heated by a porcelain stove somewhere in Poland or Germany. There on the night of 10 November 1619, he had his three famous dreams. Not only did Descartes sleep in the nude, Frédéric Pagès argues most persuasively that he also smoked pot
(Watson 2002) p. 108, 109, 176
aether
for roughly three hundred years, one irrational theory dominated the thinking of rational people trying to explain the universe. It was a theory that sprang from ancient superstitions, and for which there was no measurable evidence, but it was so useful in its simplicity that it became an article of faith to which generations of researchers remained committed even into the twentieth century. It was the idea of ‘the aether’, an absolute stillness in the universe against which movement – like that of light – can be measured. Plato and Aristotle got it started by referring to a ‘fifth element’ (quinta essentia) that sat in some way above the Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The philosophers each theorized that this quintessence made up everything beyond our sky. And while most ancient Greek ideas about it were soon dismissed – that it moved in a circular pattern, for instance, while the other elements somehow traveled along linear paths – the idea stuck around that there was a ‘pure’ element in the universe, a clear and untainted medium through which things move. Early medieval alchemists were fixated on the idea that all things had a quintessence – a purest form – and that through the proper chemical processes they could distill it from various substances and use it as a curative. But the idea of a pure essence lived on, and in the seventeenth century René Descartes began to formalize it in the realm of physics. He was trying to move beyond what he considered outdated medieval theories when he used the term ‘aether’ to describe a great ocean in which everything swims: in his view, the aether was a theoretical medium across which distant objects were still physically connected, and through which something like magnetism ‘moves’. This notion helped to create a mechanical explanation for the behavior of light, and physicists continued to depend on and refine it. While Descartes considered the aether to have a static property, Robert Hooke theorized that it vibrated, Christiaan Huygens theorized that it consisted of spinning particles, and then Isaac Newton wiped them both out with his suggestion, delivered in the same memorandum to the Royal Society in which he explained gravity, that ‘all space is occupied by an elastic medium, or aether, which is capable of propagating vibrations in the same way that air propagates the vibrations of sound, but with far greater velocity’. In Newton’s view, small, rapidly moving corpuscles made up the aether. His theory stood for at least a century. By the nineteenth century, the existence of an aether was not only assumed to be a fact, it had been built into other theories about the sprawling mechanisms of nature. Between April and July 1887, a pair of American physicists, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, conducted experiments on the outskirts of Cleveland at what is now Case Western Reserve University. Michelson had prototyped the interferometer that he’d been using for the work while doing research for the Navy, and spent most of the prior few years laboring so relentlessly toward the goal of detecting aether wind that he’d had a nervous breakdown in 1885. When he and Morley finally settled into their spring and summer together in 1887, safe from interference in the basement of a stone dormitory, they had very high hopes they’d built a device sensitive enough to detect the difference between light traveling with the aether wind, and light traveling against it. And they had. But when their interferometer split light from an oil lamp, sent each beam at perpendicular angles up and down the arms of the device, and then brought them back together again, the beams arrived at the same time. There was none of the delay they’d expected. Suddenly it seemed that the all-important and all-convenient aether was not a thing. It didn’t exist
(Ward 2022) p. 140, 141, 142, 143
atheist
I shall only say in general that all that is said by the atheist against the existence of God, always depends either on the fact that we ascribe to God affections which are human, or that we attribute so much strength and wisdom to our minds that we even have the presumption to desire to determine and understand that which God can and ought to do
(Descartes 1990b) p. 298
authority
a revolutionary genius, René Descartes, made a clean sweep of the principles of authority and tradition
(Dawson 2009) p. 243
cognition
the instruments of thought we have other than the understanding are only two, imagination and sense. These are the three modes of cognition
(Descartes 1990c) p. 235
Western philosophy has suffered its tragic defeat as a consequence of the fondness of its great masters for the problem of cognition. Guided by the assumption that he who knows how to think will know how to live, philosophy has, since the days of Socrates, been primarily a quest of right thinking. Particularly since the time of Descartes, it concentrated its attention on the problem of cognition, becoming less and less aware of the problem of living
(Heschel 1951) p. 179
deduction
by which we understand all necessary inference from other facts that are known with certainty; deduction is left to us as the only means of putting things together so as to be sure of their truth; mankind has no road towards certain knowledge open to it, save those of self-evident intuition and necessary deduction
(Descartes 1990c) p. 226, 245
dialectic
the Dialecticians are unable to devise any syllogism which has a true conclusion, unless they have first secured the material out of which to construct it, i.e. unless they have already ascertained the very truth which is deduced in that syllogism. The ordinary Dialectic is quite valueless for those who desire to investigate the truth of things. It should be transferred from Philosophy to Rhetoric
(Descartes 1990c) p. 239
doubt
to philosophize is to doubt
(Montaigne 1958) p. 251
in the first Meditation, the reasons for which we may, generally speaking, doubt about all things and especially about material things; the utility of a Doubt – it delivers us from every kind of prejudice; a very simple way by which the mind may detach itself from the senses. Nothing conduces more to the obtaining of a secure knowledge of reality than a previous accustoming of ourselves to entertain doubts especially about corporeal things
(Descartes 1990b) p. 298, 345
cogito ergo sum – the residuum left by doubt
Intro. (Vico 1944) p. 30
the reasons for doubting being themselves doubtful
(Bayle 1965) p. 206
to doubt something, all that is required is very often merely to fail to understand it
(Lichtenberg 2012) p. 158
doubt is no more and no less than a thought; I cannot doubt that I doubt
(Ortega y Gasset 1961) p. 143, 145
the outstanding characteristic of Cartesian doubt is its universality, that nothing, no thought and no experience, can escape it
(Arendt 1958) p. 275
essence
so far as I was aware, I knew nothing clearly as belonging to my essence, excepting that I was a thing that thinks, or a thing that has in itself the faculty of thinking. But I shall show hereafter how from the fact that I know no other thing which pertains to my essence, it follows that there is no other thing which really does belong to it
(Descartes 1990b) p.297
facts
there are two ways by which we arrive at the knowledge of facts, viz. by experience and by deduction
(Descartes 1990c) p. 224
history
history is like foreign travel; it broadens the mind, but it does not deepen it
Descartes (Toulmin 1990) p. 33
I
I noticed that whilst I thus wished to think all things false, it was absolutely essential that the 'I' who thought this should be somewhat, and remarking that this truth 'I think, therefore I am' was so certain and so assured that all the most extravagant suppositions brought forward by the skeptics were incapable of shaking it, I came to the conclusion that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the Philosophy for which I was seeking. I could not conceive that I was not
(Descartes 1990a) p. 275
idea
an idea is the thing thought of itself, in so far as it is objectively in the understanding; idea is a word by which I understand the form of any thought
(Descartes 1990b) p. 334, 356
idealism
material idealism is the theory which declares the existence of objects in space without us to be either doubtful and indemonstrable, or false and impossible. The first is the problematical idealism of Descartes, who admits the undoubted certainty of only one empirical assertion, to wit, 'I am'. The second is the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley, who maintains that space, together with all the objects of which it is the inseparable condition, is a thing which is in itself impossible and that consequently the objects in space are mere products of the imagination
(Kant 1990) p. 88
infinite
my intellect, which is finite, cannot comprehend the infinite; infinite – in which nowhere are limits to be found; the infinite qua infinite is in nowise comprehended, but nevertheless it is understood
(Descartes 1990b) p. 336, 338
intuition
by intuition I understand, not the fluctuating testimony of the senses, nor the misleading judgment that proceeds from the blundering constructions of imagination, but the conception which an unclouded and attentive mind gives us so readily and distinctly that we are wholly freed from doubt about that which we understand. Or, what comes to the same thing, intuition is the doubting conception of an unclouded and attentive mind and springs from the light of reason alone
(Descartes 1990c) p. 226
knowledge
it is much more custom and example that persuade us than any certain knowledge
(Descartes 1990a) p. 270
me
I knew that I was a substance the whole essence or nature of which is to think, and that for its existence there is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that this 'me', that is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from body
(Descartes 1990a) p. 275
mind
that substance in which thought immediately resides, I call Mind
(Descartes 1990b) p. 356
we cannot conceive of body excepting in so far as it is divisible, while the mind cannot be conceived of excepting as indivisible. The extinction of the mind does not follow from the corruption of the body
(Descartes 1990b) p. 299
they [Descartes, Cartesians] feign the human mind to be in a pineal gland, like a spider resting in the middle of its web
(Vico 1988) p. 55
John Locke had gone to the school of Descartes. He reduced the human mind to a species of calculating machine
(Heine 1959) p. 64
modern
since Descartes, two mental regimes are generally contrasted: the one scholastic, founded on Aristotelian logic; the other modern, deriving an art of thinking from mathematics
(Vignaux 1959) p. 97
the founding documents of modern thought – Galileo's Dialogues concerning the Two Principal World Systems and Descartes' Discourse on Method – both from the same decade of the 1630s
(Toulmin 1990) p. 14
the philosophy of the moderns starts from Descartes as its father
(Schopenhauer 1966) p. 4
'modernity' is the historical phase that begins with Galileo's and Descartes' commitment to new, rational methods of inquiry. In philosophy more than elsewhere one can argue that Modernity is over and done with. The critique of Modernity has broadened into a critique of Rationality itself
(Toulmin 1990) p. 8, 11, 12
nature
Descartes applied the principles of mathematical physics to the whole realm of nature, but made an absolute distinction between Extension and Thought (Matter and Spirit)
(Willey 1964) p. 138
philologist
'you boast, philologist, of knowing everything about the furniture and clothes of the Romans, of being more intimate with the streets, tribes and quarters of Rome, than with those of your own city. Why this pride? You know no more than did a potter, a cook, a cobbler, a summoner, an auctioneer in Rome.' (Vico). This is an echo of Descartes' gibe about the fact that historians of Rome can know at best no more than Cicero's servant girl
(Berlin 2000) p. 37
philosophy
philosophy has been cultivated for many centuries by the best minds that have ever lived, and nevertheless no single thing is to be found in it which is not subject of dispute, and in consequence of which is not dubious
(Descartes 1990a) p. 267
it still remains true that despite the fact that philosophy has been practiced well over two millennia by the most outstanding minds, 'there is not one thing in it which is not disputed and which therefore is not doubtful,' as Descartes noted
(Sebba and Watson 1987) p. 59
reading
Descartes was a man of very little reading
(Ortega y Gasset 1961) p. 176
reality
Descartes's division of reality into Extension (matter) and Thought (mind, soul)
(Willey 1953) p. 83
self
the self, which is supposed to be nearest to each of us, and which Descartes seemed to have no trouble positing, appears to Lichtenberg to be perhaps the most elusive object of inquiry
(Lichtenberg 2012) p. 5
Seventeenth Century
modern history begins in the seventeenth century. The seventeenth century centers round Descartes. Cartesianism affirmed the two positive axioms of the supremacy of reason, and the invariability of the laws of nature; and its instrument was a new rigorous analytical method, which was applicable to history as well as to physical knowledge. The axioms had destructive corollaries. The immutability of the processes of nature collided with the theory of an active Providence. The supremacy of reason shook the throne from which authority and tradition had tyrannised over the brains of men. Cartesianism was equivalent to a declaration of the Independence of Man. It was in the atmosphere of the Cartesian spirit that the theory of Progress was to take shape
(Bury 1955) p. 64, 65
sin
the error which is committed in the pursuit of good and evil
(Descartes 1990b) p. 299
soul
Descartes explains that, in his unpublished treatise, he went so far as to describe the ‘rational soul’ (what we think of when we think of the ‘mind’), and to have shown that it could not have arisen ‘from the power of matter’, but rather that it had to be ‘expressly created’, meaning intentionally created, by God. Engaging in this analysis led him into a larger discussion on the nature of the soul. After the error of thinking that there is no God, the second most dangerous mistake is to think that the souls of animals are the same as ours. He has shown that ‘the soul is of a nature entirely independent of the body, and consequently that it is not bound to die’ with the body. Indeed, there are no other observable causes capable of destroying it. It is, therefore, immortal
(Celenza 2021) p. 177
since Descartes all philosophers are assaulting the old concept of soul
(Nietzsche 1955) p. 60
space
as in the General Scholium which concluded the later editions of the Principia, young Newton stressed the real, ubiquitous presence of God in all space, which he (unlike Descartes) believed to be infinite, because God is infinite. Perhaps, he speculated, it is the constant (not only once in the past) volition of God that differentiates certain particles of space so that by us they are discerned as particles of matter – obviously in the composite form of tangible bodies. The constant presence of God may thus be matched by a constant creation of matter
(Hall 1992) p. 75
state
a regeneration of epistemology in general (Bacon). Philosophy frees itself from religion (Descartes). Necessity is understood as causality (Spinoza). Skepticism becomes universal (Bayle). Reason appears as the mistress of religion (the English freethinkers). Applied to the state, this means that it is no longer founded on divine right, but on reason and expediency and a presumed contract
(Burckhardt 1958) p. 211
Thirty Years War
it has been said – rightly I believe – that a whole intellectual world, a whole philosophy, perished in the Thirty Years War. It would be rash to say precisely what destroyed that world: whether it crumbled from within or was shattered from without; whether it foundered in the suicidal wars of religion, or was trampled underfoot by the armies of Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, or whether it dissolved upon contact with the mechanistic Reason of Descartes. But if the artistic embodiment of that philosophy is to be found, as I have suggested, in the art-gallery of Rudolf II, then we may say that the coup de grâce was given to it by that dreadful woman, the Cartesian princess, the crowned termagant and predatory bluestocking of the north, Queen Christina of Sweden
(Trevor-Roper 1976) p. 125
thoughts
thought is a word that covers everything that exists in us in such a way that we are immediately conscious of it. Thus all the operations of will, intellect, imagination, and of the senses are thoughts
(Descartes 1990b) p. 356
Subscription to A Worlde of Wordes is FREE.
LINK to the Introduction to A Whirld of Words: A Reader's Commonplace Dictionary.
WORKS CITED
Arendt, Hannah (1958), The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) vi, 333.
Bayle, Pierre (1965), Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill) xliv, 456.
Berlin, Isaiah (2000), Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder (Princeton: Princeton University Press) xiii, 382.
Burckhardt, Jacob (1958), Judgments on History and Historians (Boston: Beacon Press) xxiv, 280.
Bury, J. B. (1955), The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth (New York: Dover) 357.
Celenza, Christopher S. (2021), The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press) xi, 327.
Dawson, Christopher (2009), The Dividing of Christendom (San Francisco: Ignatius Press) 262.
Descartes, René (1990a), Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason (Great Books of the Western World, 28; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica) 265-91.
--- (1990b), Meditations on First Philosophy (Great Books of the Western World, 28; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica) 293-519.
--- (1990c), Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Great Books of the Western World, 28; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica) 221-62.
Hall, A. Rupert (1992), Isaac Newton, Adventurer in Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell) xv, 468.
Heine, Heinrich (1959), Religion and Philosophy in Germany: A Fragment (Boston: Beacon Press) xxiii, 177.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua (1951), Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young) 305.
Kant, Immanuel (1990), Critique of Pure Reason; Metaphysic of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; Metaphysical Elements of Ethics (Great Books of the Western World, 39; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica) xii, 613.
Koestler, Arthur (1959), The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (New York: Macmillan) 624.
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (2012), Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Philosophical Writings, trans. Steven Tester (Albany: State University of New York Press) xvi, 207.
Montaigne, Michel de (1958), Complete Essays, trans. Donald Murdoch Frame (Stanford University Press) xxiii, 883.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1955), Beyond Good and Evil (Chicago: Henry Regnery) xiii, 241.
Ortega y Gasset, José (1961), What is Philosophy? (New York: Norton) 252.
Pascal, Blaise (1990), The Provincial Letters; Pensées (Great Books of the Western World, 30; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica) x, 487.
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1966), The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications) xii, 687.
Sebba, Gregor and Watson, Richard A. (1987), The Dream of Descartes (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press) xiv, 75.
Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) de (1990), Ethics (Great Books of the Western World, 28; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica) 583-697.
Steiner, Rudolf (1964), The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press) xxx, 226.
Toulmin, Stephen (1990), Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free Press) xii, 228.
Trevor-Roper, H. R. (1976), Princes and Artists: Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts, 1517-1633 (London: Thames and Hudson) 176.
Vico, Giambattista (1944), The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press) viii, 1 l., 240.
--- (1988), On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians: Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language: Including the disputation with the Giornale de' letterati d'Italia, trans. L. M. Palmer (Ithaca: Cornell University Press) xi, 198.
Vignaux, Paul (1959), Philosophy in the Middle Ages: An Introduction (New York: Meridian Books) 223.
Ward, Jake (2022), The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back (New York: Hachette Books) ix, 303.
Watson, Richard A. (2002), Cogito Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes (Boston: David R. Godine) viii, 375.
Willey, Basil (1953), The Seventeenth Century Background: Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday) 316.
--- (1964), The English Moralists (London: Chatto and Windus) 318.
Oh I called out POTUS as a political hack, and an extortionist . His autocratic government likes to threaten people. He definitely is in bed so to speak with Putin. That is his buddy. I believe this is real bad for this country. We are not socialist, communist. That is why we vote. President Obama said don’t boo vote. I believe the American 🇺🇸 people will get off their couches and vote 🗳️. This will ensure we don’t have to wait until November, in about 15 or more months. God Bless.
Thank you.