Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Happy birthday Rene

Coincidentally, on the day we're scheduled to discuss him,
Today is the birthday of philosopher René Descartes (books by this author), born in La Haye en Touraine, France (1596), called the father of modern philosophy, but he considered himself a mathematician and scientist. He became interested in philosophy when he heard that the church persecuted Galileo for his scientific theories. Descartes realized some of his own theories were also controversial, so he wrote a book called Discourse on Method (1637), about the necessity of doubt in scientific inquiry. He also wrote about beginning to doubt everything about his life, even the fact of his own existence. But in the process of doing so, he realized that he couldn’t doubt the existence of his own thoughts, and he produced his most famous line: “I think, therefore I am.” WA
He's the author of a text that is still required reading for philosophy students around the world, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641).
And he's the man who, in 1637, said, "Cogito ergo sum" — "I think therefore I am." Of course, since he was a Frenchman, he first wrote it as "Je pense donc je suis."
The statement is the sum of an argument in his work Discourse on the Method (1637), written nearly 400 years ago. He realized that some of his ideas about science, like those of his colleague Galileo, were controversial. So he decided to write a book to prove that skepticism about the laws of nature was a necessary step in understanding nature. In it, he described his own experience of methodological skepticism, where he rejected any idea that could be doubted, and then required proof for the idea in order for it to be accepted as knowledge. He doubted everything, even his own existence. But he came to realize that the one thing he could not doubt was the existence of his own thoughts. If he was doubting, he was thinking; if he was thinking, then he existed. Hence his famous conclusion: "I think, therefore I am."
Descartes had been a sickly child, went to Jesuit schools, spent most of his life staying in bed till noon, got a law degree, then settled in the Netherlands, and in his 20 years there, he did most of the writing for which he is famous. When he was in his 50s, Queen Christina of Sweden — age 23 — invited him to Stockholm to be her tutor. It was a job that required him to rise at 5 a.m. every day. He was sleep-deprived, caught a fever, and eventually came down with pneumonia, which killed him.
In the mid-1800s, 72 of Descartes' letters were stolen from the Institut de France. In the 150 years since, France has managed to get back about half of them. Another one was found serendipitously in January of this year by a Dutch scholar named Erik-Jan Bos; he first noticed a citation to the letter while perusing the online archive contents of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, which has an autographed manuscript collection. Haverford had acquired the letter by donation a century ago, unaware that it was stolen. In a New York Times article last month entitled "Descartes Letter Found, Therefore It Is," Patricia Cohen reports that Haverford College's president, who majored in philosophy many years ago, plans to hand-deliver the letter to the Institut de France this June, and that the letter will be published in a collection this year. WA  
More Descartes "trending" on his birthday...






But can we really "doubt all things"? Not all at once, and not to the same degree. Descartes was right to hang a question mark after our most confident certainties, but wrong to think the ultimate result of scientific skepticism would be certainty. Montaigne knew better: a little humility is called for. We're fallible. Admitting our errors, not totally eradicating them, is how we learn and grow.

But I'm grateful to Descartes for giving me the excuse to repeat my favorite bad philosophical pun.



Another silver lining of doing class remotely: I can't hear your groans, or your silence.

3 comments:

  1. The quote from the first tweet really speaks to me. I try my best to divide a problem into smaller problems to help me prioritize what is more important. We need to think like that now more than ever.

    Section #5

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    Replies
    1. That is a great way of looking for a solution to a problem. Set small goals to be achieved in the place of one overarching goal. Rome wasn't built in a day.

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  2. Compartmentalization is a huge part of humanity’s many coping mechanisms. Section 6

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