Triumph of Experience

One of the more minor notes about Descartes' text is the avocation of equality among men that he emphasizes in the first few pages. He feels that all men have been created with the same amount of reason and that there is no aristocracy of inherent understanding as had been suggested in the past. This seemed to stray a bit from his thesis about his own reasoning, but was probably added just so he could come off a humble. The heart of his writing was the fact that he feels a formal education leaves the curious mind hungry for more knowledge. He seems to feel that the various subjects and histories he learned in his schooling are irrelevant to his life in his time and separate him from what is going on around him. To soothe this academic hunger he decided to leave his education in favor of traveling the world to gain his knowledge first hand. This represents Descartes' values in the field of knowledge and wisdom. He feels that true knowledge can only be gained through one's own first hand experience and that it is far more valuable than simply knowing facts from civilizations past. This has a number of implications, as it redefines what knowlege is and who is knowledgable. So it is not the Stanford graduate with a 4.0 GPA, but the plumber who has worked all over the United States that is more intelligent by Descartes' definition. And it will typically be the old who are more intelligent than the youth, as they have likely been many more places and done many more things. This is not set in stone, however, as if the old person was a shut in their entire life. Descartes would likely consider them rather stupid. It is an interesting claim Descartes makes and one that is not entirely valid in my view.