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Part I
OVERVIEW AND SYNOPSIS
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1
DESCARTESâ PROJECT
In 1641, at the age of 45, Descartes published the Meditations on First Philosophy. First philosophy is another name for metaphysics, the study of the basic principles of everything there is. Descartes understood metaphysics to ground knowledge of the self, of God, and of the natural world; and he intended his Meditations to enable its readers to discover the one true metaphysics for themselves. It was a very ambitious work.
The Meditations describes itself as a work on âGod and the soulâ (7:1). And indeed it argues that God exists and that the soul or mind is distinct from the body. In preparation, it raises and overturns skeptical challenges to the possibility of knowledge. On the surface, it appears to be a work about the possibility of knowledge concerning theological topics.
Looking more closely, Descartesâ aims were far from traditional. In letters to his friend Marin Mersenne, he secretly confided (3:298) that this work contained âall the principlesâ of his physics (3:233). His talk of God and the soul was interlaced with metaphysical foundations for a revolutionary new physics or natural philosophy. His aim was to overturn the prevailing theory of the natural world, which put humankind at the center of things, and replace it with a radically new vision of nature as a grand but impersonal machine. Because he wanted his revolutionary intentions to remain hidden from first-time readers, no part of his book is labeled âprinciples of physicsâ or âtheory of the natural world.â We shall have to uncover his radical agenda for ourselves â an agenda that had tremendous influence on the subsequent history of philosophy and science.
To understand what Descartes wanted to do in the Meditations, we need to place that work in the context of his life and times and other writings. His intellectual career did not begin with aspirations to found a new metaphysics, but with specific questions in mathematics and natural philosophy. This chapter reviews Descartesâ context and career, and the next considers the structure of the Meditations as a philosophical text. Part I I examines the six Meditations, one by one. Part III surveys his revolution in science as supported by the Meditations and sums up his philosophical legacy for us today.
DESCARTESâ WORLD
Descartesâ childhood and youth occurred during a time of relative peace and stability in France. The French Wars of Religion (1562â98), pitting Catholics against Calvinist Protestant Huguenots, formally ended in 1598 when Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes, offering Huguenots religious toleration (but forbidding them from worshiping publicly in Paris). Henry had converted from Huguenot to Catholic. Despite his assassination by a deranged man in 1610, France largely enjoyed internal peace, save for a Huguenot uprising in 1626 over eroding toleration.
With the defeat of the Spanish Armada by England in 1588, a long-standing French foe was weakened. During the 1570s, the United Provinces (Protestant) in the northern Netherlands, where Descartes settled for much of his adult life, had broken from the remaining Spanish (Catholic) provinces. By 1590, Spain effectively acknowledged this loss, although both sides kept armies on the border between the Spanish and Dutch Netherlands. France offered intermittent support to the latter, consonant with its long hostility toward Spain.
As Descartes reached maturity, in 1618 the Thirty Yearsâ War erupted in the (mainly Catholic) Holy Roman Empire (largely, the German-speaking lands). After Henry IVâs death, Louis XIII became king, with his mother, Marie de Medici, as regent. She arranged for Louis to marry a Spanish princess so as to improve relations with Spain. Even after her regency ended in 1617, France was initially favorable to Catholic forces supporting the Empire (Spain and the Empire were ruled by separate Habsburg dynasties). In 1631, with Marie long neutralized and Cardinal Richelieu as minister, France allied itself with Protestant Sweden, against the Habsburgs. King Gustavus Adolphus had invaded Germany in 1630. Swedish might initially prevailed, but by 1635 France felt the need to declare war on both the Habsburg Empire and Habsburg Spain. The Dutch provided funds and some troops, but their territory was removed from battle. Catholic France and Protestant Sweden together secured victory, and the shape of modern Europe was laid down in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which formally recognized the Dutch Netherlands.
In Descartesâ school years and after, the intellectual world was in turmoil. In the later Middle Ages, church doctrine had become bound up with the philosophy of Aristotle. On the one hand, there was a vibrant and ongoing development of this philosophy in the universities, from the thirteenth century onwards, which included testing and adjusting Aristotelian philosophy in relation to the newly accessible (in the fifteenth century) Platonic and other ancient works, as well as in relation to new criticisms â all the while reconciling it with the faith. There was a role for philosophy in religion, and indeed a session of the Fifth Lateran Council (1513) made it an article of faith that the existence of God and the immortality of the soul could be proved by reason alone (in addition to being accepted through faith). On the other hand, the subsequent Council of Trent (1545â63) condemned Protestantism as heresy and stringently banned innovative philosophical doctrines. Philosophy was allowed, but it was required to reach results considered to be orthodox. This orthodoxy embraced mainstays of Aristotelian thinking, including accounts of sensory qualities; of natural processes of change, both organic and inorganic, as depending on the operation of an active principle, or form, in each type of body; of the natural position of the Earth at the center of the universe; and the doctrine of four causes, according to which purpose pervades nature.
As the seventeenth century opened, new philosophical doctrines were on the rise. At this time, âphilosophyâ included natural philosophy or the theory of the natural world. In astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus had published On the Revolutions in 1543, which argued that the Sun is at (or near) the center of the universe and that the Earth revolves yearly about the Sun and rotates daily on its axis. This claim, if true, would vitiate Aristotelian physics, which held that earthy matter naturally seeks the center of the universe. Copernicusâ doctrine at first caused little stir, but by 1600 it was becoming associated with other novelties, such as Giordano Brunoâs claim that the universe is infinite and includes many stars besides our Sun. Johannes Kepler produced work supporting the Copernican system about this time. The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe offered a compromise in which the Earth is at rest, the Sun revolves yearly, and the other planets revolve about the Sun. Although Copernicus had used extant astronomical observations, Tycho, using special instruments, supplied Kepler with new, more accurate observations that led him to propose that the planetary orbits are ellipses, as opposed to combinations of circular motions as others held. In 1610, Galileo Galilei made telescopic observations of the mountainous surface of the Moon and discovered the moons of Jupiter. These findings went against Aristotelian views that the Moon is a smooth sphere and that all heavenly bodies revolve about the Earth. Descartes would eventually defend the Copernican system, though not without trepidation, especially following Galileoâs condemnation by the Roman Inquisition in 1632 for defending Copernicanism and perhaps also for espousing atomism.
In the early seventeenth century, there was a revival of interest in non-Aristotelian accounts of the structure of matter, including chemical theories and ancient atomism. Descartes accepted atoms in his earliest writings. Atomism held that bodies are composed of indivisible (âatomicâ) bits of matter that move about in an empty space or void. The properties of visible bodies arise from formations of atoms. The ancient atomism of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius was ever more under discussion. Galileoâs Assayer (1623) explained sensory qualities such as color in objects as depending on structures of atomic particles, which cause light to influence the human senses so as to produce a sensation of color that depends on the human mind for its existence.
A new spirit of observation was abroad. Francis Bacon called for the systematic collection of natural histories or observations of nature. Chemical and alchemical investigators created laboratories, physicians undertook human and animal dissections, Galileo measured the time course of balls rolling down inclined planes, William Harvey experimented with blood flow, and William Gilbert collected systematic observations of magnetic phenomena.
This was Descartesâ world. Going forward, this chapter notes his interaction with orthodox and innovative positions, his own anatomical observations, and the fate of some innovators at the hands of the church.
EDUCATION
Descartesâ education in a Jesuit school introduced him to the dominant Aristotelian tradition as interpreted by the scholastic philosophers of the Roman Catholic universities of Europe, against which he subsequently reacted. The Jesuits were excellent teachers of mathematics, and the rigor of that discipline inspired Descartesâ initial thoughts of rebellion in philosophy. Not long after completing his schooling, he discovered some mathematical results for which he is justly famous. But from his schooldays, he held that, as compared with elementary mathematics and its clarity, philosophy badly needed reform, and he came to see himself as the person for the job.
Descartes was born in 1596 in the Touraine region of France, near Tours in the small town of La Haye (now renamed âDescartesâ), where his mother had journeyed from the family home in nearby Châtellerault (in Poitou) to be with her own mother for the birth. His father, the son of a physician, was a member of the landed gentry and a councillor in the parliament at Rennes in distant Brittany. His mother came from a family of land-owning merchants. She died in childbirth thirteen months after Descartesâ birth. The young RenĂŠ lived with his maternal grandmother, with his older brother and sister. As was common for the sons of gentry, he went to boarding school, attending the Jesuit college at La Flèche, in nearby Anjou, from 1607 to 1615. The college was established in 1604 by Henry IV. In 1594, following an assassination attempt by a Jesuit student, Henry had expelled the Jesuits from Paris and closed their colleges across France. After reconciliation in 1603, he donated the palace at La Flèche for a new Jesuit college.
The Jesuits are a Roman Catholic religious order, known formally as the Society of Jesus, founded in Spain in 1539 by Ignatius of Loyola. Their mission was to improve the spiritual character of humankind, with a special emphasis on education. The order founded new colleges and universities and assumed control of many existing schools in France and elsewhere throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century.
Jesuit schools, renowned for their quality, drew students of various backgrounds and aspirations, including prospective clergy, students preparing for law or medicine, and future civil servants, military officers, and merchants. The first six years of study focused on grammar and rhetoric. Students learned Latin and Greek and studied selections from classical authors, especially the ancient Roman orator Cicero, whose works were read as models of style and eloquence but also contained surveys of philosophical positions. Many of Descartesâ fellow students left after the first six years, some entering society and some transferring to university, where after completing the arts curriculum they could continue directly into the higher faculties of law, medicine, or theology. Those who remained at La Flèche, including Descartes, completed the mathematical and philosophical portion of the arts curriculum in their final three years. Descartes was satisfied with his school, later attesting that none offered better philosophical instruction, even for those wanting to transcend traditional philosophy (2:378).
The early modern arts curriculum was not confined to the medieval seven liberal arts. Those seven arts consisted of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic), which except for logic were covered in the first six years (âgrammar schoolâ); and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music), taught at La Flèche in the final three years. These final years included advanced work in the arts, consisting mainly in the branches of philosophy: logic, natural philosophy (also called physics), metaphysics, and morals.
The official Jesuit curriculum required that philosophical instruction follow Aristotle. The study of logic, physics, metaphysics, and morals drew upon Jesuit commentaries on Aristotleâs texts, or on independent treatises (including simplified textbooks) that covered the Aristotelian subject areas. These commentaries and treatises sometimes departed significantly from Aristotle and the major medieval Christian interpreters, such as Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, although most of them contained core areas of agreement. Descartes knew such commentators both from school and from later reading; he explicitly mentioned (3:185) Francisco Toledo, Antonio Rubio, and the Coimbran commentators (who included Peter Fonseca). He also knew the work of Francisco SuĂĄrez (7:235) and admired the philosophy textbook of Eustachius a Santo Paulo (3:232), a member of the Cistercian Order and so not a Jesuit. He studied Aristotelian philosophy intensively during his final three years of college, and up to 1620 (3:185).
Descartesâ studies in philosophy were not limited to the Aristotelian variety. The early study of Cicero introduced him to ancient atomists, Plato and Aristotle, skeptics, and Stoics. The Aristotelian commentaries of Toledo, Rubio, the Coimbrans, and others discussed a variety of positions, including atomistic physics and Platonic theories of knowledge, as well as the various Neoplatonic, Islamic, and Latin commentators on Aristotle. Although rejecting Platonic theories of knowledge, they nonetheless described in some detail the view that knowledge arises from the purely intellectual apprehension of Forms distinct from the sensory world. Descartesâ mature theory of knowledge was closer to this Platonic intellectualism than to Aristotleâs sense-based theory. But, while in school, the conflicts among philosophical positions made them all appear merely probable. Since none achieved the âcertitudeâ and âself-evidenceâ of mathematics (6:7), he treated them all as if false (6:8).
Jesuit school mathematics comprised the abstract branches (geometry and arithmetic) and applied branches, including not only astronomy and music (from the quadrivium), but also optics and perspective, mechanics, and civil or military architecture. The ancient sciences of astronomy and optics were undergoing radical revision. Even at La Flèche, Galileoâs discovery of the moons of Jupiter was celebrated in 1611, and Descartes would have taken part. In mathematical optics, Kepler published works in 1604 and 1611 contradicting ancient theory by showing that the eye forms an image on the retina; Descartes was familiar with these results by the 1620s.
After La Flèche, Descartes studied law at the University of Poitiers, graduating in 1616. His father wanted him to pursue law so that the family could gain a title of nobility (which they finally received in 1668), but Descartes was reluctant, instead enlisting in the army.
GENTLEMAN SOLDIER AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENTIST
In 1618, Descartes joined the forces of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, general of the army of the United Provinces (the Dutch Netherlands), a sometime recipient of French support in his standoff with the Spanish Netherlands. When Descartes joined the army at Breda, the United Provinces were in the ninth year of a 12-year truce with Spain. Breda was just north of the border with the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium) and was the residence of Maurice as well as his mathematicians and engineers. In July, Maurice led part of the army north to Utrecht to intercede for one Calvinist faction against another. As part of the defensive force against the Spanish, Descartes stayed in Breda and did not see military action.
While garrisoned outside Breda, Descartes met the Dutch natural philosopher Isaac Beeckman, an event that changed his life. The two first conversed on 10 November 1618 in front of a placard stating a mathematical problem. Descartes was already interested in applied mathematics and military architecture. Both men were happy to find someone else who spoke Latin and knew mathematics. Beeckman was soon challenging Descartes with problems in mathematics, musicology, kinematics, and hydrostatics, in a program of invest...
