Quotes About Descartes

Barrow, who evidently had never seen an atlas, felt superior to Descartes, Rembrandt, and Beethoven.

THE DIFFICULTIES AND INDEED PERPLEXITIES which beset us the moment we try to make philosophic sense out of the findings of quantum theory are caused, not just by the complexity and subtlety of the microworld, but first and foremost by an adhesion to certain false metaphysical premises, which have occupied a position of intellectual dominance since the time of René Descartes.

Descartes himself, as one will recall, experienced great difficulty in overcoming his celebrated doubts, and was able to do so only by way of a tortuous argument which few today would find convincing. Is it not strange that tough-minded scientists should have so readily, and for so long, espoused a rationalist doctrine which calls in question the very possibility of empirical knowledge?

Descartes concludes that the only certain basis for knowledge is the principle, cogito ergo sum, and he treats the existence and nature of a mind-independent world as an inference from a prior awareness of his own consciousness and its contents. Moreover, he holds that our most certain ideas are abstract and innate, whereas ideas based on perception are subject to doubt and uncertainty.

Passions of the soul are potentially valuable. Unlike the Stoics, Descartes thinks they should not be suppressed, but put to good use.

Laplace would have found it child's-play to fix a ratio of progression in mathematical science between Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton and himself

In his mature works from Ideas I, notably the Cartesian Meditations (1931), Husserl presented his approach as a radicalization of Descartes' project that sought to return knowledge to a foundation in the certainty of subjective experience (cogito ergo sum).

Death is, and must be, deeply emotional. To intentionally cause death is to engender a form of intimacy, one that we're not used to thinking about. To kill without emotion and without respect, or to ignore the intimacy inherent in the act, is to rob it of its dignity, and to rob the life that you are ending of its significance. By robbing death and life of significance we reduce ourselves to the machines Descartes dreamed about. And we deny our own significance.

I no longer see Descartes' statement as arbitrary. It is representative of our culture's narcissism. This narcissism leads to a disturbing disrespect for direct experience and a negation of the body.

it is not my design to teach the method that everyone must follow in order to use his reason properly, but only to show the way in which I have tried to use my own.

During the investigation, Galileo lived in a Vatican palace with a servant, his food and wine provided by the Tuscan ambassador. He was never in prison and was neither tortured nor in fear of torture. The tribunal of cardinals read and voted on the report of the two officials who dealt with the accused; three refused to vote, and the pope never confirmed the verdict. As Descartes remarked, the action taken against Galileo was merely the disciplinary action of a committee.

Thought about the world is prior to thought about how to change the world. Accordingly, knowing-that is prior to knowing-how. Descartes was right and Ryle was wrong. Why, after all these years, does one still have to say these things?

We must inevitably conclude, therefore, that the main influences over Spinoza's thought during his formative years were not those philosophers, such as Descartes, to whom he later devoted his attention, but the Jewish and Muslim writers of earlier centuries, whose thoughts provided the main arguments of contemporary Judaism.

Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes.' I sprawled, not a cogito or a sum to my name.

People believe only in fame and do not understand that there might be among them some Napoleon, who has never commanded a single company of chasseurs, or another Descartes, who has not published a single line in the Moscow Telegraph. However, our respect for fame may well come from vanity: our own voice, too, goes into the making of fame.

En torno a cada individuo, así en lo más alto como en lo más bajo de la escala social, se agrupa constantemente un mundo entero de intereses, con sus torbellinos y sus átomos, como los mundos de Descartes.

Cartesian,adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo sum- 'I think I think, therefore I think that I am'; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum—whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum— I think that I think, therefore I think that I am; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

Thoughts matter and they become matter. We can't separate them like Descartes did. Our thoughts influence physical phenomena; they interact with all the matter in the universe. In truth, our personal reality is just a reflection of our personality.

Essentially, Descartes started a belief system that imposed a duality between the concepts of mind and matter. For centuries, that division stood as the accepted understanding of the nature of reality.

Descartes's grandiose ambitions even extended to "a system of medicine founded on infallible demonstrations." He once said that the preservation of health had always been "the principal end of my studies,

Descartes had somehow managed to use skepticism in service of orthodoxy; he preserved crucial shards of church doctrine—the immortal soul, for starters—while buying intellectual space for the physical sciences to continue the march toward knowledge.

Philosophy couldn't emancipate the mind, but technology just might. Google has set out to succeed where Descartes failed, except that it has jettisoned all the philosophical questions that rattled around in his head. Where Descartes emphasized skepticism and doubt, Google is never plagued by second-guessing. It has turned the liberation of the brain into an engineering challenge—an exercise that often fails to ask basic questions about the human implications of the project.

Descartes defendía que el mejor método consistía en comenzar aceptando como verdaderas únicamente aquellas ideas que quedaban con claridad fuera de dudas. Ni la autoridad, ni tan siquiera nuestros propios sentidos deben hacernos aceptar una supuesta verdad. Solo son ciertas las cosas de las que podemos estar seguros. Y el primer principio de este método es «pienso, luego existo».