The Birth of Modern Scientific Methods – 4

Descartes was a great thinker; but having said this, we have almost exhausted the praise we could bestow upon him as a man.

Continuing The Birth of Modern Scientific Methods,
our selection from George Henry Lewes. The selection is presented in five easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in The Birth of Modern Scientific Methods.

Time: c 1620

He accepted it and arrived in Stockholm in 1649. His reception was most gratifying, and the Queen was so pleased with him as earnestly to beg him to remain with her and give his assistance toward the establishment of an academy of sciences. But the delicate frame of Descartes was ill fitted for the severity of the climate, and a cold, caught in one of his morning visits to Christina, produced inflammation of the lungs, which carried him off.

Christina wept for him, had him interred in the cemetery for foreigners, and placed a long eulogium upon his tomb. His remains were subsequently (1666) carried from Sweden into France, and buried with great ceremony in Ste. Geneviève du Mont.

Descartes was a great thinker; but having said this, we have almost exhausted the praise we could bestow upon him as a man. In disposition he was timid to servility. When promulgating his proofs of the existence of the Deity, he was in evident alarm lest the Church should see something objectionable in them. He had also written an astronomical treatise; but hearing of the fate of Galileo, he refrained from publishing, and always used some chicane in speaking of the world’s movement. He was not a brave man, nor was he an affectionate man. But he was even-tempered, placid, and studious not to give offence.

It has already been indicated that the great work performed by Descartes was, like that of Bacon, the promulgation of a new method. This was rendered necessary by their separation from the ancient philosophy and their exclusion of authority. If inquiry is to be independent, if reason is to walk alone, in what direction must she walk? Having relinquished the aid of the Church, there were but two courses open: the one to tread once more in the path of the ancients, and to endeavor by the ancient methods to attain the truth; or else to open a new path, to invent a new method. The former was barely possible. The spirit of the age was deeply imbued with a feeling of opposition against the ancient methods; and Descartes himself had been painfully perplexed by the universal anarchy and uncertainty which prevailed. The second course was therefore chosen.

Uncertainty was the disease of the epoch. Scepticism was widespread, and even the most confident dogmatism could offer no criterion of certitude. This want of criterion we saw leading, in Greece, to scepticism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, the New Academy, and finally leading the Alexandrians into the province of faith, to escape from the dilemma. The question of a criterion had long been the vital question of philosophy. Descartes could get no answer to it from the doctors of his day. Unable to find firm ground on any of the prevalent systems, distracted by doubts, mistrusting the conclusions of his own understanding, mistrusting the evidences of his senses, he determined to make a tabula rasa, and reconstruct his knowledge. He resolved to examine the premises of every conclusion, and to believe nothing but upon the clearest evidence of reason; evidence so convincing that he could not by any effort refuse to assent to it.

He has given us the detailed history of his doubts. He has told us how he found that he could plausibly enough doubt of everything except of his own existence. He pushed his scepticism to the verge of self-annihilation. There he stopped; there in self, in his consciousness, he found at last an irresistible fact, an irreversible certainty.

Firm ground was discovered. He could doubt the existence of the external world, and treat it as a phantasm; he could doubt the existence of a God, and treat the belief as a superstition; but of the existing of his thinking, doubting mind no sort of doubt was possible. He, the doubter, existed if nothing else existed. The existence that was revealed in his own consciousness was the primary fact, the first indubitable certainty. Hence his famous “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”).

It is somewhat curious, and, as an illustration of the frivolous verbal disputes of philosophers, not a little instructive, that this celebrated “Cogito, ergo sum,” should have been frequently attacked for its logical imperfection. It has been objected, from Gassendi downward, that to say, “I think, therefore I am,” is a begging of the question; since existence has to be proved identical with thought. Certainly, if Descartes had intended to prove his own existence by reasoning, he would have been guilty of the petitio principii Gassendi attributes to him, viz., that the major premise, “that which thinks exists,” is assumed, not proved. But he did not intend this. What was his object? He has told us that it was to find a starting-point from which to reason — to find an irreversible certainty. And where did he find this? In his own consciousness. Doubt as I may, I cannot doubt of my own existence, because my very doubt reveals to me a something which doubts. You may call this an assumption, if you will: I will point out the fact as one above and beyond all logic; which logic can neither prove nor disprove; but which must always remain an irreversible certainty, and as such a fitting basis of philosophy.

I exist. No doubt can darken such a truth; no sophism can confute this clear principle. This is a certainty, if there be none other. This is the basis of all science. It is in vain to ask for a proof of that which is self-evident and irresistible. I exist. The consciousness of my existence is to me the assurance of my existence.

Continued.

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