INFLUENCES ON DESCARTES

The new science:  (Copernicus (1473–1543), Galileo (1564–1642), Kepler (1571–1630))

"Objectivity": find a view of the world that is independent of the thinking of the observer.

"Spectator" conception of the knower.   Knower is outside the world, observing it.

"Mental" additions to the world are personal ("subjective") and not important.

Sensory qualities—color, texture, odor, taste, etc.—are unreal.

Scientific "law" mathematically formulable.

World is quantitatively definite, thus lacking in vagueness.

Space and time are transformed into uniform geometric order.

Determinism: everything is as it must be. This did not always exclude individual (subjective) choice.

Emphasis on method.

Descartes saw the method as constructing and analyzing conceptual models. 

Aristotle's science, even as misunderstood by the medievals, was observational. Perhaps as a result of this, the moderns tended at first to downplay the role of sense perception.

Separation between ordinary experience and the scientific picture led to belief that only the scientific description was "real."

Structure of Indo-European languages.

Indo-European is the large language group that includes most European languages.

Indo-European makes nouns (names of things) central. For example, verbs and adjectives have to agree with nouns in gender and number.

This leads to the idea that things ("substances") are the ultimate reals, and that events and qualities are dependent on them.

This influence has been present in Western philosophy from the beginning, but is somehow more overstated in the modern philosophers.

 

Saint Augustine ( 354-430).

New interest in Augustine's work appears in the 1500s.

Augustine argued against skepticism that "If I err, I am" (Si fallor, sum).

He compared the human soul to a geometric point, with location but no volume.

 

Capitalism.

Medieval economy was collectively organized, thinking of each person as part of a hierarchically organized system.

Money was used, but there was relatively little in circulation.

This system was inconvenient given the rise of individual craftsmen who worked in cities for the general public, not for some lord or organization.

Money came into more general use, and a tendency arose to think of things as numerically comparable—e. g., worth so much money.