Essay on Rene Descartes “Discourse on Method”
Rene Descartes influenced substantially western philosophy as well as science. His philosophical views laid the foundation to many modern scientific principles. In such a context, his famous idea “cognito ergo sum” (I think than I am) was one of the main ideas that stimulated and guided the development of science based on critical rationalism. In fact, “Discourse on Method”, being one of the major works by Rene Descartes reveals his views on the method he considered to be essential in regard to scientific knowledge. To put it more precisely, Rene Descartes stood on the ground that it was important to conduct analysis on the principle of deduction and critical evaluation. In such a way, he stood on the rationalist ground and believed that the truth can be found and correct judgments can be made only on the condition of the application of his method, which was based on principles of deduction.
On analyzing the method Descartes developed in his “Discourse on Method”, it should be said that he worded in four major rules which should be applied in terms of his method. He argued that “the first rule was that I would not accept anything as true which I did not clearly know to be true” (Descartes) In such a way, he implies that, at first, it is necessary to critically assess the subject of the analysis, which cannot be taken as true for granted. Moreover, it is necessary to question whether it is true or not and admit the possibility that the subject is false as long as the researcher does not prove the contrary, i.e. that it is true. The latter researcher should know for sure.
The second rule of Descartes’ method was “to divide each difficulty which I examined into as many parts as possible and as might be possible to resolve it better” (Descartes). In fact, this is the basic principle of analysis which is widely applied in the modern science. Obviously, this idea is quite logical since the examination of parts contributes to the better understanding of the whole, especially when these parts are taken as a whole after their examination.
However, at this point, it is important to take into consideration the third rule of Descartes’ method: “to conduct my thoughts in an orderly way, beginning with the simplest objects, the ones easiest to know, so that little by little I could gradually climb right up to the knowledge of the most complex” (Descartes). Hence, he logically assumes that on dividing the subject of analysis into parts, it is necessary to examine them and start constructing the knowledge of the subject at large.
This construction is supposed to be accomplished at the final stage, when Descartes suggested to “make my calculations throughout so complete and my examination so general that I would be confident of not omitting anything” (Descartes). In such a way, Descartes suggests to accomplish analysis in generalization, when all details are taken into consideration. In such a way, he supposed to achieve objective outcomes and true results of the analysis.
Obviously, his deductive method is quite effective since it implies the logical analysis and critical evaluation of the subject of the research. Modern science successfully implements these principles which have already proved their efficiency. At the same time, it is important to remember that such a method is quite complicated to apply because subjects of analysis may vary and they can be extremely complicated, while the risk of error in the process of calculations in terms of Descartes’ method, can lead to erroneous outcomes of the entire research. Nevertheless, being properly applied this method is quite effective.
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