5 Lessons from Descartes

By: Oswald Sobrino

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 1 hr and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

René Descartes (1596-1650) has been commonly known as the "father of modern philosophy" who was also a mathematician and a scientist as the Scientific Revolution was breaking out in Europe. Descartes--a lifelong Roman Catholic educated by the Jesuit order, which in 1548 began its prestigious educational mission in Europe (well before the founding of the Protestant seminary known as Harvard)--nevertheless sought to overturn the traditional Aristotelian science taught by the Jesuits and other Catholic educators. With an obsessive focus on pursuing knowledge marked by certainty, Descartes, a polymath, worked on various scientific projects throughout his life in optics, geometry, meteorology, physics, biology, and psychology. He pursued philosophy, especially metaphysics as the study of fundamental reality, to provide a foundation for certainty in his scientific work. He was indeed a world historical figure marked by a zealous calling to make sense of the world in all its dimensions through scientific study and to propose a grand theory of all reality. Although many of his scientific theories were replaced by those of Newton, Descartes, as scholars have noted, bequeathed a legacy of philosophical themes and topics that are still subjects of debate among philosophers today; and, in addition, Descartes still retains some lasting scientific and mathematical achievements to his credit in the development of optics, algebra, and geometry. He is a seminal figure in the human quest for knowledge who cannot be ignored. This book considers five topics relevant to Descartes's most famous work, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641). The topics include: Descartes's early education, his scientific obsession, certain knowledge, the existence of God, mind and body.