I feel that it does. In Descartes' Discourse, he emphasizes the need for a strict scientific method which can be applied to almost all things. However, when one tries to compare Descartes' arguments to the method laid out in his discourse, there certainly is a conflict, which suggests that either his method or his arguments are flawed.
For example, his first rule of Method is to: "never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt." Yet, there certainly is still doubt surrounding his argument. His statement that God exists is not accepted as common fact, like the law of gravity or the Pythagorean theorem. There is no definitive evidence of God's existence, so Descartes' relies on conjecture instead, violating the first law. Some would argue that faith and scientific method do not go together, but I would disagree, at least in the case of Descartes, since he specifically attempts to prove the existence of god not as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Good point, since it would only take a atheist to come along and disagree entirely with Descartes most basic assumption that God exists. The point of the scientific method is that it should be repeatable, and if you had multiple people engage in this sort of mental exercise, there is a large degree of variance that you can come up with in their answers.
i agree with you, that descartes attempts to prove God as a matter of fact through scientific method and this shows that faith and scientific method could be used together. his proof for the existence of God is quite obviously flawed, but the way he attempts to prove God systematically is praiseworthy, and shows how his method can be used in many areas, but i dont think all areas
Post a Comment