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|Summary='''Rene Descartes''' (1596-1650) was French mathematician and philosopher. Descartes rejected the Aristotelian-scholastic world view accepted for most of the previous two thousand years, and laid down new foundations for knowledge. [[CiteRef::Russell (1945)|p. 524]][[CiteRef::Newman (2014)]][[CiteRef::Garber (1993)]] In mathematics he developed techniques that made possible analytic geometry. In natural philosophy, he was co-framer of the sine law of light refraction, developed a theory of the rainbow, and formulated a precursor of the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system. [[CiteRef::Hatfield (2014)]] Rejecting the Aristotelian world of forms, substances, and teleology, he posited a mechanical world in which matter possessed only spatial extension and interacted only by contact. In his ''Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences'' (''Discourse on Method''), first published in 1637.[[CiteRef::Descartes (2007)]] Descartes posited a scientific methodology whereby a proposition is acceptable only if it can be clearly and distinctly perceived by the intellect beyond all reasonable doubt or follows deductively from such propositions.[[CiteRef::Newman (2014)]] This allowed him to advance a mathematical a priorist approach to scientific knowledge and inquiry.[[CiteRef::Garber (1992)]][[CiteRef::Clarke (1992)]]
|Historical Context=The [[Scientific Mosaic|scientific mosaic]]of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was based primarily on the works of Aristotle and some later Hellenistic natural philosophers, reconciled in various ways with Christian theology by scholars in the High Middle Ages. This '''Aristotelian-scholastic mosaic''' included Christian theology, humoral physiology, astrology, Ptolemaic astronomy, and Christian (Catholic, in many but not all communities contemporaneous with Descartes) theology.[[CiteRef::Haldane (1905)]] Descartes was well educated in this tradition through his attendance at the prestigious Jesuit La Fleche College between the ages of ten and eighteen. He studied a traditional scholastic curriculum of logic, grammar, philosophy, mathematics, and theology. Natural philosophy was taught from the works of Aristotle as interpreted by Christian scholars. He is known to have excelled at math.[[CiteRef::Gaukroger (1995)|pp. 38-61]][[CiteRef::Rodis-Lewis (1992)]]
Descartes’ major writings came in a time of social and intellectual upheaval in Europe. He was a participant in the Thirty Years War before writing his major works and traveled extensively around Europe at a time when the continent was embroiled in both reformation and counter-reformation, both of which were a wellspring of new thought in theology and philosophy. The community of the time was engaged with major challenges to the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition. There were new developments in optics, astronomy, and physiology.[[CiteRef::Cottingham (1992)]] Aristotle's earth-centered cosmology had been challenged by the work of Nicolaus Copernicus(1473-1543), Johannes Kepler(1571-1630), and Galileo Galilei(1564-1642), which Descartes was familiar with.[[CiteRef::Hatfield (2016)]][[CiteRef::Rodis-Lewis (1992)]] Although he was critical of Galileo’s methodology it is clear that he nevertheless had read and was familiar with his work, which was instrumental in weakening the various communities’ confidence in the Aristotelian mosaic.[[CiteRef::Ariew (1986)]]
The '''mechanical natural philosophy''' was a pursued radical alternative to Aristotelian cosmology, embraced by many supporters of Copernican heliocentrism .[[CiteRef::Luthy, Murdoch, and Newman (2001b)]][[CiteRef::Chalmers (2014)]][[CiteRef::Gaukroger (1995)|p. 69-73]] It rejected the Aristotelian fundamentals of form, substance, and teleology, and the idea that matter is continuous. Instead it maintained that the world consisted of invisibly tiny particles of matter and that all the observable properties of the natural world were a consequence of these particles and their interactions with one another. The particles interacted mechanically, by contact, and it was often supposed that they rendered natural phenomena potentially explainable in geometrical and mathematical terms. Unlike Aristotle's physics, it was compatible with a moving planetary Earth. This '''corpuscularism''' derived from the Ancient Greek atomism of Democritus (circa 460-370 BCE) and later Epicurean philosophers. Atomism was reintroduced into European thought in the fifteenth century with the rediscovery of the Roman poet Lucretius's ''De rerum natura''. In the decades before Descartes, it was championed by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), whose empiricist epistemology challenged Aristotelian-scholastic methods,[[CiteRef::Klein (2012)]] and in the speculative cosmology of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600).[[CiteRef::Gatti (2001)]][[CiteRef::Luthy, Murdoch, and Newman (2001b)]]
After leaving La Fleche, Descartes became involved in a collaboration with the Dutch Calvinist natural philosopher Isaac Beeckman (1588-1687), who valued him for his mathematical skills. They worked together on several mathematical problems in natural philosophy. [[CiteRef::Gaukroger (1995)|p. 68]] Beeckman was a corpuscularist who attempted to explain macro-geometrical regularities in terms of micro-mechanical models. He is almost certainly the first person in Europe to pursue this approach in detail. [[CiteRef::Gaukroger (1995)|p. 70]] Descartes adopted Beeckman's mathematical corpuscularism and became part of a community of corpuscularist thinkers which besides Beeckman and Descartes included Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), and Walter Charleston (1620-1707). They all knew each other and reacted to each other's work.[[CiteRef::Osler (2001)]]
In terms of his methodology Descartes was largely responding to what he perceived as the dogmatism and marked lack of progress he perceived in the Scholastic tradition within which he was schooled at La Fleche, and his excitement with the new mechanical natural philosophy. His weariness with the largely dialectical scholastic method is what led him to develop the highly systematized epistemology and metaphysics for which he would come to be known.
|Major Contributions=Descartes new methodology and mechanical natural philosophy were of revolutionary importance. They became accepted at Cambridge University in England by 1680, [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 211]] and in France by about 1700, displacing the Aristotelian-medieval system of theories from the [[Scientific Mosaic|scientific mosaic]]. These theories were ultimately fully displaced throughout Europe by Descartes theories and by the later theories of Issac Newton (1642-1726). [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 167]]
===Cartesian Method===
The most notable of Descartes’ contributions was his introduction of a new method for pursuing knowledge in the science that was distinct from the previously accepted method inherited from Aristotle. Descartes had become frustrated with the previous method of the Scholastic European tradition and its dialectical approach to knowledge-seeking, which he charged with plunging him into skeptical doubts whereby he could never be sure what was true and what was not. He writes in ''Discourse on the Method'':[[CiteRef::Descartes (2007)]]
<blockquote>“But no sooner had I completed the whole course of study that normally takes one straight into the ranks of the ‘learned’ than I completely changed my mind about what this education could do for me. For I found myself tangled in so many doubts and errors that I came to think that my attempts to become educated had done me no good except to give me a steadily widening view of my ignorance!”[[CiteRef::Descartes (2007)]]</blockquote>
Descartes concluded that if his goal was to attain certain knowledge about the world then the presently accepted method was insufficient and that a new one would be required to satisfy his aims. Method was a central theme in Descartes’ writing and held a central place in Descartes’ epistemology; in fact, one of Descartes’ criticisms of Galileo was that he failed to produce a fully developed method to justify his discoveries.[[CiteRef::Ariew (1986)]] To that end he embraced his sceptical doubts and devised a method based on methodological scepticism; a method whereby he rejects all knowledge that he cannot be certain of, accepts only those propositions which he can accept as certain, and proceed deductively from those axioms according to reason. By this method Descartes hoped to produce a kind of systematized knowledge that could be universally acceptable. As it happened the sole indubitable proposition upon which he would build the entire rest of his philosophical system was his famous ‘Cogito, Ergo Sum’ (also styled ‘Dubito, Ergo Cogito, Ergo Sum’ or simply as ‘the Cogito’); “I think, therefore I am.” From this foundation Descartes deduced his being a created thing, his requiring a creator, that creator being God, the nature of God, and the reliability of his senses and reason, all of which would form the broader foundation of his systematized scientific worldview.[[CiteRef::Newman (2014)]]