Was he for real? Descartes
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The real question is: Is there anything we
can think of which, by the mere fact that we can think of it, is shown
to exist outside of our thought? If yes is the right answer, there is a
bridge from pure thought to things, if not, not.
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Bertrand Russell, (1872 – 1970)
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to
Dawn
That I am because I think may very well be
the only
instance where it seems possible to assert the existence of something –
me – by merely thinking of it. An assertion that only the thinker
himself
can establish. His wife, tossing the thinker’s smelly socks into the
washer,
will go by different criteria.
This still
leaves the thinker with a problem. Before Rene Descartes (1596 –
1650) came to
announce his "in dubito, in
cogito, ergo sum," he considered the possibility that his
thoughts could be the dream in the mind of a demon. If so, how is one
to tell the difference whether the demon or you are thinking? “Existence” is a tricky subject.
Grammar, logic and syntax know of no difference between a lion and a
unicorn; they only give us the order and interrelation of words.
Whether a unicorn can be as real as a lion, whether such lovely beast
exists at all, cannot be resolved in a syllogism. What is needed is
testimony, whether by witnesses or by some kind of recording device.
Yet witness testimonies are often inconsistent and contradictory.
So, could perhaps mathematics offer an
escape from the imponderability of physical observation? Descartes did
try this, yet to his dismay, he realized that there was nothing at all
in such demonstration which could assure him of the existence of its
object: "For example,
supposing a triangle to be
given, I
distinctly perceived that its three angles were necessarily equal to
two right
angles, but I did not on that account perceive anything which could
assure me
that any triangle existed." This is still a valid
ontological observation. The question is, what we are going to conclude
from it? For instance, would it make any difference for the value of
the number pi – 3.1415926535897… – if the Universe were without curves
and circles or contained nothing at all? I know there are different
epistemological approaches to this question, but to my mind there is a
purely mathematical dimension “out there,” that through all eternity
underpins the things that are possibel to exist. In other words math is
something we discover, not something we invent.
Arcane as this may seem, in the 17th
century, this could get you into serious trouble. It was still an age
of
thumbscrews and auto-da-fés, a time where begging to differ in
matters of
religious doctrine was a sure way of courting death. The runaway friar,
Giordano Bruno (1548 –
1600), stated his
case for an infinite universe with "an infinite number of worlds
like
the Earth, on each a Garden of Eden. In all these Gardens of Eden, half
the
Adams and Eves will not eat the fruit of knowledge, and half will. But
half of
infinity is infinity, so an infinite number of worlds will fall from
grace and
there will be an infinite number of crucifixions" (Giordano
Bruno,
On the Cause, Principle, and Unity, 5th dialogue). On May 22, 1592, Bruno was charged with
blasphemy, with holding
heretic opinions about the trinity and the incarnation of Christ, with
writing
libel against the Catholic clergy and being in error about
transubstantiation
and liturgy, with claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and
their
eternity, with belief in metempsychosis and the transmigration of the
human
soul into brutes and with denying the virginity of Mary. After seven
years on
death row he ran out of renounceable recantations and they burned Bruno
alive when
Descartes was just five years old, a bundle of gargling pain with a gag
in his
mouth, to prevent memorable last words. In 1619, Descartes was serving
in the
army of the Duke Maximilian of Bavaria when the executioner cut out the
tongue
of Lucilio Vanini and strangled him as an atheist. It was the beginning
of the
Thirty-Year-War. Descartes resigned his commission and returned to
France. He witnessed
Richelieu’s campaign against La Rochelle, sold his possessions,
invested wisely
in bonds and sought refuge in the Dutch Republic, while in Rome Galileo was
made to “recant” on his knees for looking through a telescope. Holland was a Protestant country, but
Protestantism was no safe haven either. In Geneva, the “reformer”
Calvin condemned a fellow refugee from the Inquisition, Michael Servetus (1509 –
1553), to burn at the stake.
Servetus was a physician and the first European to describe the
pulmonary circulation. Unfortunately for him, he also published a
treatise rejecting the cornerstone of Christian doctrine, the Holy
Trinity. Most of the ayatollahs of Protestantism, Luther, Melanchthon,
Zwingli and Huss signed up to express their support. Not for the
victim, but for Calvin. And closer to home, at the University of
Utrecht, the Rector cashiered one of the professors, Henri de Roy (1598
– 1679), for teaching the
physics of Descartes.
Descartes felt he had every reason to keep
his head down, especially in theological matters. However, philosophers
of his period were still required to deliver proofs for God’s
existence. So in the very next paragraph following his explanation of
the ontology of triangles, Descartes continued with a lame analogy: "Examining
the idea of a Perfect Being, I found that the existence of such Being
was
comprised in the idea in the same way
as the equality of three angles to two right angles is comprised in the
idea of
a triangle. And now the real slight of hand: Consequently it is at least as certain as
any demonstration of geometry can be, that God, who is this Perfect
Being,
exists."
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It seems Descartes didn't fool the
pundits. He corresponded with some of the finest minds of the period,
men like Mersenne (1588 –
1648), Huygens (1629
– 1695) and Thomas Hobbes
(1588
–
1679); they all looked right through the ruse,
but only the tactless Hobbes would say so, forcing Descartes to make
contorted denials. Descartes died of pneumonia in Stockholm when he
followed an invitation to visit Queen Christina of Sweden. As Roman
Catholic in a Protestant country, he was interred in a graveyard for
un-baptized infants.
©
–
2/28/2009
–
by
michael
sympson,
1,050
words,
all
rights
reserved
