Discourse On The Method Of Rightly Conducting The Reason, And Seeking Truth In The Sciences
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Descartes, Rene
extent: 129586
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Wiretap Electronic Text Archive
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: reason.txt
subject: truth
subject: heart
subject: nature
subject: reason
subject: blood
subject: influential
subject: history
subject: descartes
subject: rene
subject: discourse
subject: method
subject: rightly
subject: conducting
subject: seeking
subject: sciences
subject: western
subject: philosophy
type: text
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sort title: Discourse On The Method Of Rightly Conducting The Reason, And Seeking Truth In The Sciences
full text: [pg/etext93/dcart10.txt] This work is one of the most influential in history. The famous phrase, "COGITO ERGO SUM" (I think, therefore I am) is a central theme. Descartes' beliefs on that dual nature of mind and body, and his emphasis on the role of doubt in all inquiry, formed the basis for centuries of science and social thought. This etext was created by Ilana and Greg Newby. They used a Mac IIci and Apple One Flatbed Scanner donated by Apple. Caere text scanning and character recognition software (OmniPage) was used. Greg is a professor in the U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Grad. School of Library and Information Science. Ilana is a reference librarian at the Urbana Free Library. Thanks to Apple and Caere for their donations and to the Computer Service Office of the University of Illinois for their unofficial support. DISCOURSE ON THE METHOD OF RIGHTLY CONDUCTING THE REASON, AND SEEKING TRUTH IN THE SCIENCES by Rene Descartes PREFATORY NOTE BY THE AUTHOR If this Discourse appear too long to be read at once, it may be divided into six Parts: and, in the first, will be found various considerations touching the Sciences; in the second, the principal rules of the Method which the Author has discovered, in the third, certain of the rules of Morals which he has deduced from this Method; in the fourth, the reasonings by which he establishes the existence of God and of the Human Soul, which are the foundations of his Metaphysic; in the fifth, the order of the Physical questions which he has investigated, and, in particular, the explication of the motion of the heart and of some other difficulties pertaining to Medicine, as also the difference between the soul of man and that of the brutes; and, in the last, what the Author believes to be required in order to greater advancement in the investigation of Nature than has yet been made, with the reasons that have induced him to write. PART 1 Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for…