RENEE DESCARTES (1596-1650)
In this discussion I will only address certain themes from
Descartes' work. I suggest you explore the brief section on Descartes life. One
reason why it is appropriate to consider Descartes here is that while he
recognised that Galileo had pioneered a geometrical approach to physics he had
not done so with sufficient rigour, 'He has built without a foundation'.
Descartes saw his task as one of supplying the firm foundations for the pursuit
of knowledge.
DESCARTES AND METHOD
The theme of method will run through this particular
presentation of Descartes's work. In his Discourse on Method Descartes set out
to establish a single method that would supersede the complicated separate
methods of logic, algebra and geometry. We should remember that Descartes's
pursuit of such a scientific method flew in the face of scholastic thought
established in the medieval world. Scholastic thought took the principles of
Aristotle reworked to fit in with the Roman Catholic faith as beyond reproach.
To challenge Aristotle was to challenge the Church and Descartes as a
contemporary of Galileo was in no mind to face the horrors of the Inquisition.
Descartes did not see himself as a total sceptic,
i.e. a thinker who tried to cast doubt on all knowledge. But he did feel the
individual thinker should try to "rebuild his house" by which he meant
they should only believe that which could be accepted with certainty. For
Descartes a method had to involve a small number of general principles and rules
which could be applied under all circumstances. If you think about research
methods today you will find this principle in force. A statement of a null
hypothesis is one example. The selection of an appropriate statistical test
depending on the type of data at hand is another. If you have category or
nominal data you might apply chi square whether your data came from the fields
of health, education, or an inquiry into a group's religious beliefs. To apply a
parametric test with such data would be wrong because the data does not have a
ratio. This is an example of the use of rules to establish certainty in
scientific thought which really we owe to Descartes and other mathematicians of
his period.
There are a number of precepts to the method and
they are given in different parts of the Discourse
on Method. They are also located in Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Regulae). For our purposes they have the following characteristics:
method rather than curiosity should guide an
inquiry.
Complicated and obscure propositions should be
reduced to simpler ones
Starting from an intuition of the simplest
propositions the researcher should try to ascend through the same steps to reach
the starting point which is now secured by method.
INTERPRETING DESCARTES ON METHOD
What does Descartes mean by simpler propositions?
Within the examples he worked with himself we find that he argued that problems
of optics go beyond the power of light to the notion of a natural power.
In the Regulae he writes:
I call 'absolute' whatever has within it the pure
and simple nature in question; that is, what is viewed as being independent, a
cause, simple, universal, single, equal, similar, straight, and other qualities
of that sort.