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Descartes

How Descartes Inspired Science

Kanan Purkayastha has both general and special theories about how the master rationalist inspired modern empirical science.

René Descartes (1596-1650) is one of the great thinkers in the history of humanity. Most of his work focused on philosophy, mathematics, and science, but he also dedicated many of his writings to physiology, and adopted a ‘mechanical’ vision of the world.

Descartes’ Discourse on Method (1637) is a good starting place for any discussion about how scientific thinking and methods developed. In this book, Descartes tells us how reason goes about its successful pursuit of truth in any area accessible to human mind. He states that “these long chains of reasoning, quite simple and easy, which geometers are accustomed to using to teach their most difficult demonstrations, had given me cause to imagine that everything which can be encompassed by man’s knowledge is linked in the same way” (p.

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