This is a guest blog on René Descartes and some of his works we hold by A-Level student Phoebe Carnell who joined us for her work experience in the IET Library and Archives.

Opera philosophica, 1685. A collection of 3 of his most influential works – Mediations on first philosophy, Principles of philosophy and Discourse on the method. All explore the idea of searching for truth in reality using philosophical inquiry and innate ideas (an a priori approach). His work consists of specific rules, such as ‘accept nothing as true that is not self-evident’ which links to his advocation of the scientific method.

Most famously, Meditations on first philosophy. This work of his is one that I am most intrigued by, as it contains Descartes explaining what is categorised as having certainty in a personal belief; he claimed that to be knowledgeable on an area is to have full certainty- his quote being ‘I think therefore I am’, he used this to give meaning to his hypothesis on religion and the idea of God being at play outside of our minds.

What I find interesting about this source, is that I can see the names of scholars such as Aristotle, Socrates and Plato referenced throughout. This puts into perspective the philosophical argument that stretched over centuries of new discovery and how these concepts have developed. Plato, like Descartes, also had a dualistic view that our souls could transcend our reality to a life of ‘forms’. In recent years, philosophers such as David Hume have explained that this world of forms also includes ideas such as mathematics which are understood in the mind and a metaphysical reality, like God is.

In this text, there are diagrams of the human eye, and demonstrations of how vision works (page 125), this can possibly link to my previous statement about critical observation and the search of empirical evidence within the modern scientific method which can showcase the timelessness of Descartes work. Which again links to the earlier work of scholars such as Plato who reckoned with the idea of vision from light rays (as seen in the diagram), however Descartes brought about the idea of illusion and being deceived, but also what allows us to be able to see the mechanics of our own physical systems. He states that our thought process cannot be doubted, similar to how the average person would claim our eyes can also not be doubted.

Geometria, 1637 (published in this edition in c1660). This was published as an appendix to his earlier work Discourse on the method and was originally written in French but was later translated into Latin. The Latin translation on cubic equations is what influenced Isaac Newton to continue Descartes’ work.

Descartes made contributions to the field of mathematics. He created ‘analytical geometry’, the use of algebraic formulas to describe geometric figures. Descartes is also often acknowledged as ‘the rebirth of geometry’. In the Geometria, Descartes introduced the cartesian coordinate system (that was named after him) familiar to us nowadays as the x,y approach in mathematics (page 52 showcases the use of his x axis), the convention of using x, y etc. in equations as a way of representing the unknowns. Interestingly, Descartes discovered this because he was attempting to describe the path of a fly along his ‘criss- cross’ style beamed ceiling; he was known to have slept for 12 hours every night from midday to midnight, therefore a large majority of his work was completed whilst lying in bed.

René Descartes was a French and Roman Catholic mathematician, philosopher and scientist who lived from 1596-1650. He frequently merged mathematics and philosophy and was known to have likened the factuality of a triangle adding to 180 degrees to the likelihood of God existing. He most famously reckoned with the idea of dualism (mind and matter are separate), and with this, added to the Ontological argument (one of the theodicies, a defence of God) alongside Anselm of Canterbury.  The Dualist idea allows for empirical scientific evidence (on mortality etc).

Descartes is acknowledged as ‘the root of the modern scientific method’, since he famously claimed that we should doubt people’s beliefs until we are sure of their certainty through evidence (ironic as he wrote about God and metaphysics- what may not be truly there), this can be understood as critical observation and judging what is verifiable. He was a key figure of the Scientific revolution during the 17^th century Enlightenment era that valued empiricism and knowledge. He spent a lot of his working life in the Dutch republic and thus became an advocate of scientific and metaphysical development in the ‘Dutch Golden Age’.

By Phoebe Carnell
Work experience student

References

Collection References: SPT/RB/8vo/181 and 182