Storytime

I believe in the book A Discourse on the Method, Descartes is trying to get across a point. In part one, I believe he is trying to portray and paint a picture of his early childhood. He goes on to say on page 6, “…in this essay, I shall gladly reveal the paths I have followed and paint my life as it were in a picture, so that everyone may come to a judgement about it.” Also, I believe that Descartes is also trying to introduce a new of thinking and teach and or educate people about his positions. After my first quote, he goes on to say, “I shall add a new way of acquiring knowledge to those which I habitually employ.” Also, he goes on to say, “So my aim here is not to teach the method that everyone must follow for the right conduct of his reason, but only to show in what way I have tried to conduct mine.” These quotes I believe just supported my argument on what Descartes is trying to say early on in his book. In part two, I believe he continues telling a story and painting a picture of his life. He starts off part two by telling the story of his hiatus and arrival at Germany for the wars and keeps telling the stories. The way I interpreted was that Descartes was just trying to give some background on his life to set up chapters later in the book.

Descartes

Rene Descartes writes his essay ­A Discourse on the Method on the importance of using your intelligence and making the most of what you are given. He says, “So my aim here is not to teach the method that everyone must follow for the right conduct of his reason, but only to show in what way I have tried to conduct mine,” (6). He wrote the essay with intentions of others using it as a sort of step-stool towards good actions yet not to follow verbatim. He feels everyone has their own mind and should use it to its full potential, and some just need help being guided in the right direction.
Descartes feels there is nothing more discouraging than a great mind that is not used to its full potential. He quotes “it is not enough to possess a good mind, the most important thing is to apply it correctly,” (5). One who possesses a high IQ but chooses to not study or apply themselves Descartes feels is a waste of potential and he feels it is wrong to those who were not blessed with the gift but use what knowledge they do have to the best of their power. Knowledge is an incredible gift and if used right is a gift to more than one. The magic and power can be spread throughout a community and that is exactly what Descartes wanted.

Challenge

Descartes cares about reasoning. He wants people to actively think about what they are doing and have a clear method and steps instead of simply going through the motions that someone else instructed them to perform. He says “…There are those who, believing themselves cleverer than they are, cannot stop themselves jumping to conclusions, and do not have enough patience to govern their thoughts in an orderly way…Second, there are those who…must content themselves with following the opinions of others rather than seeking better ones from themselves,” (15). With this quote Descartes is telling you what he cares about. He wants people to make up their own minds and use their own ideas, but to do it in a way that is logical so other people will be able to understand it. He continues with this when he says “The first was never to accept anything as true that I did not incontrovertibly know to be so…and to include nothing in my judgments other than that which presented itself to my mind so clearly and distinctly, that I would have no occasion to doubt it.
“...The third was to conduct my thoughts in a given order, beginning with the simplest and most easily understood objects, and gradually ascending…to the knowledge of the most complex…” (17). This makes it clear that Descartes cares about thinking for yourself, but documenting your steps in a way that will allow others to go back and follow what you have done and recreate it. Descartes wants people to challenge what they accept as true and try to come up with an alternative, as long as it is well documented.

Rene Descartes states the purpose of his essay right on page six. He states, “So my aim here is not to teach the method that everyone must follow for the right conduct of his reason, but only to show in what way I have tried to conduct mine,” (6). He wants his essay to be a useful guide to people for actions they should imitate, and not follow.

However, I believe Descartes is concerned with how people utilize their minds. He wanted to be very clear that each person is given the same tools for success (good sense and reason). Descartes said, “The diversity of our opinions arises not from the fact that some of us are more reasonable than others, but solely that we have different ways of directing our thoughts, and do not take into account the same things. For it is not enough to possess a good mind, the most important thing is to apply it correctly,” (5).

By telling people his story, he is encouraging them to use their own minds and form their own conclusions. Descartes wants people to gain as much knowledge as they can in their life time and reap all the benefits from it. As Anya said, he wants people to know how to use their intelligence and interpret their learning’s with it.

In his essay, A Discourse on the Method, Descartes is concerned for the common good of the people. He wants people to get as much out of their lives as possible, and live their lives to the fullest extent by learning.

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.

Descartes Skyline

Rene Descartes is a very interesting person to read about. His style of writing portrays a man who is intelligent, but is modest about it and does not brag. While reading the parts one, two and three in his A Discourse on the Method, what he cares about most is the application of one’s mind.

This is what Descartes cares about most because he makes many references to it within those three sections. He even begins his book with a statement about intelligence: “Good sense is the most evenly distributed thing in the world” (Descartes 5). This sets the rest of the book up to hear about intelligence and mind application. Descartes discusses the two types of minds: the ones who are overly confident on their intelligence, and the ones who follow the overly confident ones. This proves that Descartes spends much time deciphering what people think and feel about opinions and how they express that feeling.

Descartes wants each human to use their mind well; not blindly following opinions of others, but searching for our own answers while simultaneously not jumping to our own conclusions. He says that although intelligence is wide spread, not many people know how to use it correctly which, as he points out, can be a problem, especially when it comes to interpretations.

This is what Descartes cares about because he is trying to end some conflict which seems to be similar to the Galileo/Church conflict. But Descartes is attempting to end to conflict from a different approach, one of trying to lead people to learn to interpret things with an open mind. Maybe we could all learn a little something from Descartes and apply it to our daily lives.

Blog Assn #22: Descartes

Please post on the following by 8 PM Tuesday night.

"Skyline" time again: What does Descartes' ­A Discourse on the Method indicate about what most matters to him?

religion and science

There are definitely conflicts between religion and science. I think that one of the biggest conflicts right now is the dispute between evolution and intelligent design. Many people believe that humans first began existing with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. However, now more recent evidence are starting to convince people that we evolved from apes and came out of Africa. There has been such a big change in views on this issue that now evolution is being taught in schools. I don’t think that we can follow the Bible literally at all times. There are some things that I believe that are just meant to be metaphors. In Galileo’s time people believed that God made the sun to revolve around the earth, but we know now that that is not true. There are also many treatments that are offered to patients that are against their religious views, such as blood transfusions. Religion operates more on faith while science operates more on physical evidence, and I think that is why more people are turning away from religion. People want to be sure of things, so they look for the facts in many situations, and science looks to provide these facts. When these facts don’t go along with what religion says, more people begin to give up their faith. There are definitely many conflicting issues with science and religion.

Mitchell no longer sounds like death!

Galileo makes several interesting points in terms of science and religion in his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. Within the first two paragraphs, Galileo writes that scientists have no right quoting the Bible, especially if they are going to misquote and not-understand the Bible. However, as his arguments progress, he cedes that the Bible may be quoted as long as the user fully understands the meaning of what he or she means to say using the quote. In fact, Galileo uses a quote from the Bible early on in his argument to the Grand Duchess. He says, "...we ought not to believe anything inadvisedly on a dubious point, lest in favor to our error we conceive a prejudice against something that truth hereafter may reveal to be not contrary in any way..." (173). Galileo manages to use a Bible quote correctly to further his logical argument, while the others attempt to just beat him over the head with the Bible. Further into his letter to the Grand Duchess, Galileo’s argument gets more heated. He claims that priests and people of the church would have followers abandon their views just to test to see if they’d follow, even if it is a misinterpretation. Looking at the way his argument is constructed, this is probably not far from the truth. Galileo claims that, “they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our sense in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense” (179). An interesting example of this is the not-so-recent chalkings at Ursinus. I have heard many groups complain that the Leviticus quotes are not so much offensive as they are misquoting the Bible’s true meaning in the phrase. Galileo is making the same argument here as he tries to separate the poor religious arguments from true scientific arguments.

Cassie likes to cough on people and get them sick

In my opinion, I do not think that it is possible to compare both science and religion. Science uses logic, reason and lots of evidence to come up with the answers to people questions. This is a vital part of our life and it is the main bases for our society. However, there are some answers that science has not yet been able to answer, and that is where religion comes in. People hate not knowing answers to questions and they feel like they need an answer. So when the question comes up "What happens when we die?" science can't find an answer with the facts to answer the question. So people turn to religion and religion answers the question, for example if you live a good life you go to heaven and if you live a bad life you go to hell. There are also some questions like "how we were made?" and religion also helps answer this question saying god created us all. Overall I feel that religion and science were to have a conflict it would be that religion has no evidence for their answers and science criticises them for not having evidence, but I think that the main conflict between science and religion is that religion answers the questions that science can't answer.

Religion and Science

My personal views set aside, Galileo seems to find that there is a combination of religion and science. It frustrates him more than ever when people quote Scripture as to support scientific ideas, because no one is qualified enough to really interpret the Bible correctly. It is purposefully left open-ended. The Bible “was designed to persuade men of those articles and propositions which,…could not be made credible by science” (183). The Bible and science are two separate things, though religion and science, he feels, are one in the same. In a sense, God is nature because God is everything and everywhere, so nature would be included. The Christian religion does not have scientific flaws in it because God is without imperfection. The Bible, on the other hand, does not talk about science. It speaks only of “essential matters more directly [relating]… to their salvation and to the benefit of the holy Church” (185). Therefore the Bible cannot be held as a scientific source.

Conflict

There is clearly a conflict between science and religion. When Galileo is talking about how the earth rotates around the sun, those who didn’t agree with him had direct support from the Bible. “…In the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still.” (181). With support like this, there is obviously a conflict. Religious people believe everything the Bible says and takes everything literally, so any contradiction to the Bible is seen as a huge threat. There can be no reconciling science with religion when science directly opposes the Bible. Galileo takes this a step further when he says “It is obvious that such authors, not having penetrated the true senses of Scripture, would impose upon others an obligation to subscribe to conclusions that are repugnant to manifest reason and sense, if they had any authority to do so.” (190). Galileo is creating enemies of all those in positions of power within the Church, for he is saying that they are misinterpreting the Bible. With this Galileo makes it so that his ideas will probably never be accepted by the Church, simply because he called everyone foolish. With this Galileo has deepened the conflict between science and religion, a conflict that still exists today. While the issues are different, it still boils down to the difference between what the Bible says and what research proves to be true. Religion and science will always be in conflict as long as scientists continue to conduct research that the religious disagree with.

To say the religion and science conflict is an understatement. Each ones stands for what the other dismisses. Religion pushes faith: believing without seeing. Science advocates physical evidence before belief. Some topics bring about more controversy between the two than others. Especially in the matter of less explored practices. Suppose a scientist wanted to prove something wrong that was mutually accepted as true in a religious community. The religious advocates would have, as Galileo puts it, “endeavored to spread the opinion that such propositions in general are contrary to the Bible and are consequently damnable and heretical”(177). It is commonly seen that people damn what they do not understand/believe; A fear of the unknown.

As I was growing up, I went to a catholic school until 8th. Before the time I transferred I can honestly say I was never informed of the theory of evolution. Everything was made in 7 days by God. No questions asked. The teachers seemed to “abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage”(179). I don’t see why it is so hard for them to believe someone could be a Catholic and believe in evolution. Like Galileo points out, even Nicholas Copernicus “was not only a catholic, but a priest and a canon”(178). I think the conflicts are pointless. If something a scientist says doesn’t suite you, then don’t believe in it. People can fight and butt heads all they want, but most scientists aren’t set out to shatter someone’s religious beliefs. They just want to find answers to their questions, just like someone of faith can find answers in God.

I personally believe there are more than one difference between science and religion. The first difference that comes to my mind is abortion. Abortion, according to the Christian religion is strictly prohibited to any of its followers. However, it is quite a popular commodity in modern day science. Another difference that comes to my mind is stem cell research. To people who follow the Christian religion, they believe it is murder as they believe abortion is murder. To scientists and supporters, it is a health survival technique that keeps quality human beings alive and able to keep whatever of their independence is left. Also, in Florida a few years back, there was a woman a few years back by the name of Terry Shivo. Terry Shivo was brain dead, living off a life supporter and had been given no chance of any sort of comeback. All amongst the nation, groups wanted to take her off the life support or opposing groups wanted to keep her on the life support, pleading that it would be murder to take her off of it. This was a difference between science and religion. The science group basically said there was no hope for her and she needed to be taken off the life support while the religious groups said she needs to stay on, citing that it is murder to take her off.
There are more conflicts but these are the two conflicts that are the most popular and are the most modern and contemporary. People fight over these subjects and it has even reached the highest levels of government, being the Supreme Court. Even as time goes on, the fight between religion and science continues.

Collaboration is key

Religion and science are commonly at odds in more respects than one. In a farfetched form of science, there is the science of performing an abortion and the confrontation that religion brings to that science. Religion feels it is wrong to perform such acts, which science feels it is an important stride that is necessary to be made.
However, in terms on Galileo, his confrontation of science and religion is that of the motion of the Earth and sun. While the Bible states that the sun revolves around the Earth, Galileo uncovered the truth that the Earth actually revolves around the sun. He faced much opposition due to the fact that it is said in the bible otherwise, yet he is able to face his challengers in debate. “The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes,” (Galileo 186). Many felt that whatever the Bible said was the absolute truth and should not be refuted, but Galileo knew in his heart that through his research and careful experimentation that the Bible was actually incorrect in regard to the motion of the planets.
Religion and science also butt heads in the area of experimentation. Experimentation on humans or animals alike is frowned upon by religion, however in science it is thought to be the only way for us to grow and learn. The two may never come together, but they must learn to collaborate.

The disciplines of science and religion have always been at odds, as evidenced by Galileo’s letter to Her Grand Duchess Christina, and continue to be at odds today. During Galileo’s time, there were many aspects of the world yet to be understood and explored. For example, the rotation of the Earth and the alignment of the universe were very controversial topics during Galileo’s time, especially taking into consideration the conflict with other texts within the Bible. Here lies some of the initial conflict between science and religion. One of Galileo’s arguments against strict adherents to the Bible is, “I do not feel obligated to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us the knowledge which we can attain by them” (183). Or, rather, why would God give us the faculties to observe and learn, but then provide us with all the answers without giving us the opportunities to utilize those faculties? In present day the debate between science and religion is still obvious. Controversial topics including abortion, stem cell research, and human experimentation all color the ethics argument, and how far science can go without crossing the moral boundaries dictated by religion. And, though progress has been made, the debate between science and religion does not appear to lessen in the future any more than it had in the past.

Science and religion are two completely different concepts that cause conflicts in theories and ideas. However, the conflicts between religious theories and scientific theories do not occur as much as they did in Galileo’s time. In Galileo’s time, the world was extremely religious, and scientific theories were just starting to be proven. Any idea or theory that differed from the Bible was shunned, causing numerous conflicts between religion and science.
This can be seen from a passage in Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. He stated, “The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still. Since the Bible cannot err, it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone takes an erroneous and heretical position who maintains that the sun in inherently motionless and the earth moveable.”
Today, this is no longer a problem. All scientific theories have been proven, and even the Catholic church has admitted that the earth is not the center of the universe. The only conflict that remains is if you choose to believe what science has proven or what the Bible says. It was only a larger conflict back in Galileo’s time because the Bible was the supreme rule, and you were considered un-religious if you strayed from what the Bible stated.