Discourse on the Method for Reasoning Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences - A Foundational Work on Rational Inquiry, Truth, and the Origins of Modern Science - Softcover

René Descartes

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935238752 ISBN 13: 9781935238751

Publisher: Richer Resources Publications, 2010

Synopsis

Discourse on Method, published in 1637, is one of the most important works in the history of modern science. In this slim book, Descartes ostensibly sets out to inform the reader, in a modest, informal, and very readable style, of his own educational development and pursuit of knowledge. However, by the end he has set down a revolutionary new program for investigating the truth and laid the preliminary groundwork for Western civilization s most important and most influential achievement, modern science. He does this by launching a famous thought experiment, in which he places everything in doubt, rejects all received knowledge, and searches for a single certain truth from which he can begin. This process leads to his famous claim I think; therefore, I am. Once that is established, Descartes then analyzes his criteria for knowledge of the truth, sets down a method, and reviews some of the discoveries this new method has enabled him to make.Descartes method, which radically separates the knowing mind from a soulless natural world operating on mechanical principles, which insists that mathematics is the key to understanding nature, which pleads for more experiments to confirm the validity of hypotheses, and which sets down as the major purpose of the endeavour the desire to make human beings the masters and possessors of nature, so that we can improve human lives (especially through advances in medicine) launches what we call modern science. The book is thus an essential text in the history of ideas.Ian Johnston s new translation is accompanied by a few explanatory footnotes to assist the reader and an introductory essay which discusses in more detail some important features of Descartes argument and its influence.

About this title

About the Authors

René Descartes (1596–1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist whose work helped establish the foundations of modern philosophy and modern scientific reasoning. His method of radical doubt, his emphasis on mathematics as the language of nature, and his famous cogito (“I think; therefore, I am”) reshaped Western intellectual history. His writings remain central to philosophy, mathematics, and the history of ideas.

Ian Johnston, Translator, was born in Valaparaiso, Chile, and educated in Canada and England. He has a BSc from McGill in Geology and Chemistry, a BA from Bristol in English and Greek, and an MA from Toronto in English. For many years he taught as a college and university-college instructor in British Columbia teaching English, Classics and Liberal Studies. He is the author of The Ironies of War: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad. His translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey have recently been published in both book and audiobook form. He is now retired and living in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The most widely shared thing in the world is good sbetween accidental characteristics and not at all between the forms or natures of individuals of the same species.1 ense, for everyone thinks he is so well provided with it that even those who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else do not usually desire to have more good sense than they have. In this matter it is not likely that everyone is mistaken. But this is rather a testimony to the fact that the power of judging well and distinguishing what is true from what is false, which is really what we call good sense or reason, is naturally equal in all men, and thus the diversity of our opinions does not arise because some people are more reasonable than others, but only because we conduct our thoughts by different routes and do not consider the same things. For it is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to apply it well. The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues, and those who proceed only very slowly, if they always stay on the right road, are able to advance a great deal further than those who rush along and wander away from it. As for myself, I have never presumed that my mind was anything more perfect than the ordinary mind. I have often even wished that I could have thoughts as quick, an imagination as clear and distinct, or a memory as ample or as actively involved as some other people. And I know of no qualities other than these which serve to perfect the mind. As far as reason, or sense, is concerned, given that it is the only thing which makes us human and distinguishes us from the animals, I like to believe that it is entirely complete in each person, following in this the common opinion of philosophers, who say that differences of more and less should occur only between accidental characteristics and not at all between the forms or natures of individuals of the same species.

Edition details

• Publisher: Richer Resources Publications
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1935238752
• ISBN 13: 9781935238751
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Illustrator: Ian Crowe
• Number of pages: 64