Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

conceived as three sets of twelve rules.Thus, toward the conclusion of

Rule,atapoint where Descartes thought he had expounded general

principles that applied equally to the solution of all problems, he wrote:

‘A sregards questions, some may be understood perfectly, even if we do not

know their solutions, and we discuss those alone in the next twelve rules.

There are others, finally, that are not perfectly understood, and we defer

them to the final twelve rules’ (x.). Unfortunately, the project lapsed

about halfway through the second set of rules, and Rulestoare given

only in summary form without any detailed explanation. It is difficult to

avoid the conclusion that Descartes originally hoped to construct general

rules that would apply, with appropriate modifications, to all disciplines

and that he acknowledged eventually that such an ambitious project was

impossible to realize.

The almost utopian or, at least, na ̈ıve hope of finding a single method

bywhich all sciences could be guided was not a novel suggestion on

Descartes’ part. Aristotle had begun this tradition, with hisOrganon, and

generations of Aristotelian commentators and critics had continued to

search for a single method for acquiring reliable knowledge of everything

possible. Even Galileo, during the early part of his career, drafted such

a general method in scholastic language, though for the most part he

later abandoned it.Apart from inducements in Lull or Agrippa, which

may also have influenced Descartes, there was a more obvious contempo-

rary exemplar in Francis Bacon. Bacon had notoriously composed aNew

Organonin.Itwas written in Latin rather than in English, to make

it accessible to schools across Europe, and was conceived as underpinning

the great restauration of the sciences toward which he worked. Descartes

was aware of Bacon’s efforts; he acknowledged his death in, and he

can be seen as attempting to construct in theRulesa method that could

compete in novelty and generality with Bacon’s ambitions in theNew

Organon.

The most startling implication of any of these methodological efforts,

including theRules, was the hope of discovering a single method by which

the truth about any issue could be discovered. Descartes discussed the

widely assumed analogy between method and the arts in Rule.Hecon-

ceded that the skills required for farming are not necessarily helpful for

playing music and, in general, that practical skills are not transferable from

oneart to another. Some might think that the same lack of transferibility

applies in the case of the sciences but, according to theRules, ‘they are