‘Descartes: A Very Short Introduction’ by Tom Sorell is a short introduction to and a commentary on philosophy, thought and life of Descartes for beginners.
Contents of each chapters are below.
1. The fruits of Descartes’s philosophy and thought in many fields, for example physics, mathematics, optics, meteorology, physiology and philosophy especially metaphysics. Descartes bring methods of geometry and physics into metaphysics, and his metaphysics base on austere method by scientific view point and method. The statement ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ is the most enduring and profound intellectual achievement, and is established the modern philosophy continued on Spinoza, Kant and Hegel.
2. Descartes biography of young days. His family background, school days, journey through Europe and coming across with Isaac Beeckman. Meeting with a savant Beeckman realized him his profession is ‘philosophy’ (includes today’s natural philosophy and total science).
3. Descartes’s philosophical method is the unity under mathematics. He planed a master method of scientific discovery by logic, algebra and geometry. And the sciences all dependent on philosophy.
4. Descartes’s consideration to scientific rule by unity and simplicity on ‘Rules for the Direction of the Mind’. The natural power is ‘simplest’ and ‘absolute’. And he applied common rules or ‘common natures’ to each sciences and human knowledge. And the problem of Descartes is, for example, he applied the matter of physics to human mind mechanically.
5. Descartes’s roaming about in Europe is to discover sure principle in philosophy. The aim of his roaming is to remove his prejudices and to rebuild his new rule of phislophy from logic to medicines and morals. But his investigation is not ideal described on ‘Discourse on the Method’, he struggled to get his method in the roaming.
6. End of his journey, he stayed Paris. And the days, he brushed up and built his theory by debates and arguing with Marin Mersenne and other intellectuals, and prepare for serous work.
7. Moved to Holland, Descartes wrote a book of modern physics ’The World or Treatise on Light’, but he didn’t publish it. The only doctrine of the Church was the scholastics from Aristotle at that time.
8. ‘The Dioptics’ ‘The Meteors’ and ‘the Geometry’ are specimens of Descartes’s method. In these books, Descartes reformed and established mathematical method.
9. ‘Discourse on the Method’ is a scholarly autobiography and a simple notice or announcement of the method that would be found by Descartes. In which Descartes demonstrated ‘new logic’. In contrast with the Aristotelian logic, he tied the incontrovertibility of a piece of reasoning not to relations between the forms of premisses and conclusion.
10. Descartes inspected his idea of supremely benevolent God, his geometrical method and the Method of Doubt are adaptable to his metaphysics.
11. In the Meditation, Descartes found out it would be folly to doubt the existence of material objects and the reality of the simple nature. While material object may not be in reality as they appear to the sense, their mathematical properties are clear, distinct and beyond doubt.
12. Descartes’s scepticism in the Meditation caused widespread dispute. But to criticize sense-based beliefs made us capable of modern physical science, is also called rationalism.
13. The controversy aroused to Descartes’s idea of God by Theologians. Descartes’s God is the metaphysical perfect existence laid the foundation for human perceptions his physics and philosophy, and is not opposed to God of Christianity.
14. Descartes’s concept of idea(s) is only things that exist in the mind and represent other things.
15. According to Cartesian Dualism, the mind is one sort of substance, and body another, because it is possible to from a conception of the mind and a conception of body by way of totally separate sets of clearly and distinctly perceivable attributes.
16. A body persists through change in its sensible form. It’s spatially extended, flexible and changeable.
17. ‘The Principles of Philosophy’ was published, part one of the book is the first summarized the main point of Descartes’s metaphysics and part two, three and four were his physics first opened to the public.
18. Descartes’s the tree of philosophy, the roots of which are metaphysics, the branches of which are medicine, mechanics and morals. Morals to Descartes was the study of the passion, strategies for controlling them, and ways of directing the will towards good and evil.
19. Descartes’s published philosophy and physics caused disputes among scholars and intellectuals, and were prohibited in Universities by Churches. Descartes was invited by Queen Christina of Sweden, to take her lessons. But the Swedish severe winter made him ill and he died on 11 February 1650.
20. The Cartesian theory inherited by Gottfried Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. Also reaction to the Cartesian epistemology brought about British empiricism by John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. And philosophers nowadays need accept to lay Descartes’s ghost. The criticism would not have endured if philosophers were not still captivated by Descartes’s task.
This book is a introduction to Descartes’s philosophy that is described along with Descartes’s biography and process of founding his philosophy and scientific practise with thought chronologically. And this book comments many topics of Descartes’s life, philosophy, thought and science. He was not only a philosopher of today’s mean, but also a total scientist from metaphysics and logic to moral, through physics, music and medicine. The Cartesian philosophy brought about the continental rationalism and become a root of the idealism. But he was not only a idealist philosopher like Kant or Hegel. (But Kant had been also a total scientist.)
Sorell explains the basis of Descartes’s philosophy mainly relations to methods, theories and forming processes of his physics especially meteorology, astronomy, mechanics and optics, and mathematics especially geometry and algebra. Descartes’s practise and study of physics and mathematics produced his philosophical method especially metaphysics. Author give many pages to consideration on Descartes’s scientific practises, studies, thoughts and methods, and relations them to his philosophy and morals. For example author deal with Descartes’s geometrical method apply to logic, notion of mind and body, and the problem matching of his science and philosophy with the God he thinks. Descartes was the one of founders of the modern philosophy and science. But they gave rise to problem of mind and body, mechanical thinking to nature, environment and mind.
Author takes a balanced approach of agreement and critic to philosophy and methods of Descartes. So this book is helpful to rethink of and critic to (the thought and principle of) the modern philosophy and the modern science. And also you can read it as a kind of history of science. So I recommend it to widespread readers and students includes students of specializing in science, philosophy of science, analytic philosophy and sociology. But in a philosophical view this book is not much technical and detailed on philosophy especially concerning ‘the Meditation’. This book entirely write about background, basis, process and method of philosophy and science by Descartes to read his text. Then it’s a good preparation to read original texts of Descartes.
Descartes (Very Short Introductions)
Tom Sorell
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 12 Oct 2000
128 pages £6.99 $9.95
ISBN: 978-0192854094
Contents:
Texts and Translations
List of illustrations
1. Matter and Metaphysics
2. The Discovery of a Vocation
3. One Science, One Method
4. ‘Abusolutes’, Simple Natures, and Problems
5. Roaming about in the World
6. Paris
7. The Suppressed Physics
8. The Specimens of a Method
9. A New ‘Logic’
10. The Need for Metaphysics
11. The Meditations
12. Doubt without Scepticism
13. The Theologians and the God of Physics
14. Ideas
15. The Mind
16. Body
17. The Physics made Public
18. The ‘Other Science’
19. Last Days
20. Descartes’s Ghost
Further Reading
Index
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