CHAPTER III 

 DESCARTES 



With the early Greeks the main purpose of their search for 

 method was cosmological : they tried to find the principles under- 

 lying the universe and to express those principles in terms com- 

 prehensible to man. With Bacon the prime object of his inves- 

 tigations was the organisation of science, and the formulation of 

 a method that would be at once universal in its application and 

 certain in its results. With Descartes (1596-1650) the goal of 

 his thought is the discovery, not of the method of a cosmology, 

 not of a universal scientific procedure, but of the method of 

 personal experience. With the Greeks and with Bacon, Descartes 

 is a realist, but he goes beyond either the Greeks or Bacon in 

 his thoroughgoing analysis of the epistemological process. The 

 former had assumed the possibility of a human explanation of 

 the phenomena of the universe ; the latter had accepted uncriti- 

 cally the validity of such human intellectual organisations of 

 nature as are made by science ; but Descartes took neither of 

 these attitudes as valid per se. He questions the very act of 

 experience itself, which is the most intimate knowledge that we 

 have and which underlies and conditions Greek cosmology and 

 Baconian method alike. How can one be certain of the validity 

 of his interpretation of the universe, how can he be sure of the 

 correctness of his scientific results until he has examined the 

 mind which interprets the universe or which seeks to attain true 

 results? 



All phases of experience have aspects that are misleading, and 

 Descartes; like Bacon in his consideration of the Idola, starts out 

 by resolving to accept nothing on its mere appearance or on the 

 guarantee of tradition. As he says in a letter to Clerselier, " In 

 order to rid one's self of all sorts of prejudices, it is necessary 

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