Saturday, April 29, 2023

Another side of Descartes

 What I’d forgotten about Descartes: How zany he was.

For example, here he is wrapping up Meditation No. 4, in which he outlined a method of correcting one’s judgment:

 

And in as much as it in this the greatest and principal perfection of man consists, it seems to me that I have not gained little by this day’s Meditation, since I have discovered the source of falsity and error.

 

Perhaps tomorrow he will invent calculus or do some such thing, but enough for today.

The 17th century must have been wonderful. Can you imagine that sentence appearing in a book today?

• Source: René Descartes, A Discourse on Method and Other Works; New York, Washington Square Press, 1965, p. 51.

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

War and the prerequisites

 Before Japan and the United States began fighting in 1941, Americans thought Japanese technology was so primitive that the Japanese simply ...

  • When Willa Cather's life began
     Willa Cather had a maxim: “Life began for me when I ceased to admire and began to remember.” She liked what the Greeks called  anamnesis , ...
  • The things you hear
      Some days you go into the woods and see all kinds of things. Some days you don’t. And then there are days when you don’t see but   hear . ...
  • Alice Oswald's poem on battle
     An appropriate read for Memorial Day? How about Alice Oswald’s long poem  Memorial , which recounts how soldiers in the  Iliad  met their e...