Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

CHAPTER 5
Descartes: methodology
Stephen Gaukroger
INTRODUCTION
The seventeenth century is often referred to as the century of the Scientific
Revolution, a time of fundamental scientific change in which traditional theories
were either replaced by new ones or radically transformed. Descartes made
contributions to virtually every scientific area of his day. He was one of the
founders of algebra, he discovered fundamental laws in geometrical optics, his
natural philosophy was the natural philosophy in the seventeenth century before
the appearance of Newton’s Principia (Newton himself was a Cartesian before
he developed his own natural philosophy) and his work in biology and
physiology resulted, amongst other things, in the discovery of reflex action. 1
Descartes’s earliest interests were scientific, and he seems to have thought his
scientific work of greater importance than his metaphysical writings throughout
his career. In a conversation with Burman, recorded in 1648, he remarked:
A point to note is that you should not devote so much effort to the
Meditations and to metaphysical questions, or give them elaborate
treatment in commentaries and the like. Still less should one do what some
try to do, and dig more deeply into these questions than the author did: he
has dealt with them all quite deeply enough. It is sufficient to have grasped
them once in a general way, and then to remember the conclusion.
Otherwise they draw the mind too far away from physical and observable
things, and make it unfit to study them. Yet it is just these physical studies
that it is most desirable for men to pursue, since they would yield abundant
benefits for life. 2
Despite this, Descartes has often been considered a metaphysician in natural
philosophy, deriving physical truths from metaphysical first principles. Indeed,
there is still a widespread view that the ‘method’ Descartes espoused is the a
priori one of deduction from first principles, where these first principles are
truths of reason. This view has two principal sources: an image of Descartes as
the de facto founder of a philosophical school—‘rationalism’—in which