Descartes' Discours de la Méthode: Deuxième Partie
- Created by: CaraPW
- Created on: 18-04-21 13:55
View mindmap
- Descartes DDLM Part 2
- How did the method come about?
- Anecdote of sitting in a room in 1619 in Germany away with the army
- Meditated on developing the method in the heat of the room
- Starts by realising it is better to start from scratch - if he relies on others' methods, he may repeat their mistakes
- The building metaphor
- Wants his method to have same pure coherence as buildings of a unique architecht or as a soceity in which all rules are made by one legislator
- The reasoning of one man of common sense is superior to all collectivist human sciences
- Metaphor of the building - to emancipate oneself from previous prejudice is like reconstructing a town after demolishing it
- Re-uses image of paths of Montaigne and Charron to point out that the clean slate is not appropriate in politics - we'd deprive ourselves of learning from history
- Science and wisdom - Why search for a method?
- Needs truth to drive his life
- Mixes two traditional concepts of philosophy that confront and rotate in history of thought - science and philosophy as a way of living
- Science and wisdom are linked, but ordinary people have neither one nor the other
- two types of people in the world - those that have confidence in themselves but reflect too quickly and those who do not and prefer to follow the first type's opinion
- One man can come up with ideas that elude a whole nation
- Resolves to go as slowly as possible to be thorough
- The rules of the method (EDOV)
- Realises that even the trustworthy sciences like Aristotelian logic and geometry do not suffice to achieve the level of certitude he aspires to
- Aristotelian logic is fallible and algebra tires the brain without developing it - we therefore need a method that combines advantages without repeating their faults
- Starts simply but rigorously rather than making lots of rules like in Aristotelian logic
- 1) rule of evidence - one should not be satisfied with probability or likelihood
- 2) rule of decomposition - division of difficulties into as many parts as possible
- 3) rule of order - conducting thoughts beginning with simplest and working to most complex
- 4) Rule of verification - we must inspect all elements of a long deduction as not to forget any aspect
- Application of the method
- We must start with what is evident and simple and then use mathematical reasoning, whatever the field of knowledge
- Method permits application of reason everywhere because it assumes the unity of human knowledge itself deduced from the unity of common sense
- In putting the method into practise, Descartes made huge progress in only 2-3 months
- wants to keep using method throughout his life to grow and develop in experience, being still so young
- How did the method come about?
Comments
No comments have yet been made