Sorry to say that I have this pathological aversion towards Descartes (of-course because of Max). Although he was wrong, I do realize now that it not right to hate someone especially when that someone was born during very different times, 400 years ago.
This review of new biography of Descartes - The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes by Steven Nadler has subdued me and planning to read this book soon.
While he is remembered today as the philosopher who said, “I think, therefore I am,” Descartes’ work extended much further. He was a brilliant mathematician and he wrote extensively on biology, optics, and cosmology. In science, his grand project was to replace the abstractions of Aristotelianism with a mechanistic picture of the universe that could be explained solely in terms of matter, motion, and impact. In philosophy his quest was for a point of absolute certainty, the solid foundation upon which he could build a new system of thought. The cliché about Descartes is that he asked the right questions (What can we know for sure, and by what method can we find it out?) but gave the wrong answers. That might not sound like much, but when they were first published Descartes’ ideas landed like an explosion. Today we’re still feeling the ripples.
In his epic intellectual history, The Sources of the Self, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor identifies Descartes as “a founder of modern individualism, because his theory throws the individual thinker back on his own responsibility, requires him to build an order of thought for himself, in the first person singular.” As Descartes writes in his preface to the reader, “I would not encourage anyone to read these pages unless they are willing and able to meditate with me seriously …” By daring us to think for ourselves, Descartes became one of the fathers of the Enlightenment and, in turn, one of the architects of our everyday assumptions and habits of thought, even today. (To take one tiny example, when Nate Silver writes, in the introduction to The Signal and the Noise, “My preference is for topics where you can check out the results for yourself rather than having to take my word for it.”— he is thinking in a way that echoes Taylor’s insight about Descartes.)
This review of new biography of Descartes - The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes by Steven Nadler has subdued me and planning to read this book soon.
While he is remembered today as the philosopher who said, “I think, therefore I am,” Descartes’ work extended much further. He was a brilliant mathematician and he wrote extensively on biology, optics, and cosmology. In science, his grand project was to replace the abstractions of Aristotelianism with a mechanistic picture of the universe that could be explained solely in terms of matter, motion, and impact. In philosophy his quest was for a point of absolute certainty, the solid foundation upon which he could build a new system of thought. The cliché about Descartes is that he asked the right questions (What can we know for sure, and by what method can we find it out?) but gave the wrong answers. That might not sound like much, but when they were first published Descartes’ ideas landed like an explosion. Today we’re still feeling the ripples.
In his epic intellectual history, The Sources of the Self, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor identifies Descartes as “a founder of modern individualism, because his theory throws the individual thinker back on his own responsibility, requires him to build an order of thought for himself, in the first person singular.” As Descartes writes in his preface to the reader, “I would not encourage anyone to read these pages unless they are willing and able to meditate with me seriously …” By daring us to think for ourselves, Descartes became one of the fathers of the Enlightenment and, in turn, one of the architects of our everyday assumptions and habits of thought, even today. (To take one tiny example, when Nate Silver writes, in the introduction to The Signal and the Noise, “My preference is for topics where you can check out the results for yourself rather than having to take my word for it.”— he is thinking in a way that echoes Taylor’s insight about Descartes.)
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