Descartes: A Biography

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ALawyer’s Education 

least when seen from the perspective of his subsequent research – was the

insecurity of the foundations on which all the sciences were built.

Mathematics seemed to provide a paradigm of a reliable science, but,

according to Descartes, even this discipline was compromised by the prac-

tical applications to which it was put. ‘Above all else, I was interested in

mathematics because of the certainty and self-evidence of the way it rea-

sons; but I had not yet noticed its real use and, since I thought it was use-

ful only for mathematical applications, I was surprised that nothing more

noteworthy had been built on such solid and firm foundations’ (vi.).

The failure of mathematicians to develop its theory, and their distraction

bythe benefits of applied mathematics, both supported the promise of

afoundational science and highlighted the extent to which philosophy,

insofar as it offered such a foundation, failed to meet expectations.

I shall say nothing about philosophy, except that it has been practised by the best minds

that have appeared over many centuries, and yet it still contains nothing that is not

disputed and consequently doubtful; therefore I was not so presumptuous as to hope to

succeed better in it than others. And when I considered how many different opinions

there may be about the same thing which are defended by the learned, even though

no more than one of them can ever be true, I regarded almost as false everything that

was merely probable. Thus, as regards the other sciences, in so far as they borrow their

principles from philosophy, I judged that it was impossible that anything solid could

have been built on foundations that were so weak.... (vi.–)

It is impossible to avoid the impression that Descartes is retrospectively

constructing a coherent development of his own career, seen from the

perspective of twenty years of travel and (for much of that time) living

outside France, and that he is offering as the fundamental motivation for

acrucial choice in his life his estimation of the validity or certainty of the

subjects that were taught as sciences in the universities. His logical next

step, then, was to seek the truth elsewhere. Since he had manifestly failed

to discover it in books and now understood why it was not likely to be

found there, he decided to redirect his search for truth externally toward

nature and, internally, within himself.

The immediate context inof these reflections on his school days

was Descartes’ attempt to avoid the debilitating impact of widespread

scepticism in France and to launch his own intellectual project with a novel

and reliable foundation. That explains the references to the uncertainty of

what he learned at school and the inadequacy of his education. However,

when he graduated from Poitiers University, he was still undecided about