Between Certain Metaphysics and the Senses: Cataloging and Evaluating Cartesian Empiricisms
Between Certain Metaphysics and the Senses: Cataloging and Evaluating Cartesian Empiricisms

Summary/Abstract: Evan R. Ragland, Between Certain Metaphysics and the Senses: Cataloging and Evaluating Cartesian Empiricisms [Mihnea Dobre and Tammy Nyden (eds.), Cartesian Empiricisms, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 33, Dordrecht: Springer, 2013] Descartes insisted on his metaphysics of a human being as a single, immaterial thinking mind united to a body, but sometimes he seems of two minds about the uses of experience in natural philosophy. In his 1637 Discourse on Method, Descartes writes of first considering God alone, then deriving general principles “from certain seeds of truth which are naturally in our souls.” Next, the “first and most ordinary effects” deducible from those principles allowed him to discover the heavens, the earth, water, fire, minerals—the simplest and most common things, and so the easiest to know. But then things become more complicated and more variable.

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