Descartes and Bacon

Descartes was a scientist, a philosopher, and a mathematician. He is famous for the argument "I think therefore I am."
He proposed that the human body obeys the laws of physics, just like everything else, which probably would have caused a little unease in the world, as humans like to think themselves special. However, in the same theory, the theory of dualism, he also said that the mind or the soul is completely independent of the laws of physics, and is unique to human beings based upon some biological assumptions he made.He extended this by saying that animals cannot feel pain, a view which would be extremely contested and highly controversial now, but in his time was probably slightly more welcomed, because it served as more proof that human beings are the most important. He also discovered the law of reflection, and an early version of the law of conservation of momentum, which shows that his scientific works were not all quite as influenced by philosophy and opinion as the first one mentioned.

Sir Francis Bacon's approach to science was far less affected by philosophy. His approach to gaining new knowledge was pretty much identical to the one still used today. According to Bacon, the best way to make scientific laws or facts os to infer something from an observation, make a hypothesis, and test it and analyze evidence to see whether it is true or not. This does not seem at all radical now, as it is how modern scientists go about with their work, though it may have been slightly more controversial. The idea of having to test a theory over and over may have been slightly unsatisfactory to other scientists of Bacon's time, as I am sure they preferred simply having their theories be true because as far as they had noticed, they were.

Descartes, Bacon, and Religion

Rene Descartes was a both a philosopher and a mathematician. He developed the Cartesian coordinate plane that is so crucial to mathematics today. However, Descartes disliked the idea that he had to accept all previous scientific advances and advances in logic as fact. Essentially, what he did was disregard everything that he had learned and accepted so far. From there, he tried to reprove whatever he could, but he found this very difficult. Eventually, he decided that there was absolutely no doubt that he existed. From this came his famous statement, "cogito ergo sum," or, "I think, therefore I am." Descartes' beliefs insisted that people think for themselves which, to some extent, gave people freedom to question beliefs that they had held for their entire lives.

Francis Bacon was a philosopher and a scientist, but he was also involved with the political system. He was a huge advocate for the scientific revolution. Perhaps he is most famous for the Baconian Method, or the scientific method. The Baconian method asserted that scientific investigation must be carefully done, looking for agreement, difference, and variation in order to formulate a clear opinion. This process went against believing something to be true based on inconclusive evidence. It required significant observation for something to be accepted as fact.

Descartes and Bacon's reluctance to believe what is accepted by others as true may have encouraged people to rethink the validity of the Church. If people rely on concrete evidence rather than belief, it becomes increasingly difficult to prove that some sort of divine power exists. Descartes and Bacon may not have intended to counter the Church, but with their ideas, some may have begun to question their religion more carefully.

René Descartes and Francis Bacon

Look up René Descartes and Francis Bacon. WRITE a post on the class blog comparing their approaches and positing a thesis about how their scientific methods might have upended religions doctrine and empowered people in Europe.

René Descartes: René Descartes was a philosopher and mathematician who lived mostly during the 1600s in Europe. As a philosopher, he used a method referred to as "methodical skepticism" which basically means that he did not agree with any ideas that could be doubted. This idea is very powerful because the entire idea of religion is one that could be doubted as a whole. There is no proof for religion. If Descartes had gotten everyone in Europe to think the way he did, he could effectivly get all of Europe to reject religion.

Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon was also a philosopher who lived from the mid- 1500s to the early 1600s. Though he was also a politician, it was his philosophy that he is most remembered for. Bacon proposed that only by experiment could we find out more about the earth and the world around us. He said that we must investigate everything around us. This idea coud have endangered the power of religion because he was asking people to try to investigate everything. if people followed his demands of investigation, then they would have had a hard time trying to explain how biblical events had actually happened.

Both of the methods that Descartes and Bacon respectively put forward could have lead to a religious revololution if followed. Both placed doubt in the events and beliefs having to do with religion. They asked people to think if these things could actually happen, or if they could be proven.

Descartes and Bacon

René Descartes's method involved four steps. The first was to accept only true things, that could be proven with evidence. The second was to break down a problem into two steps. The third was to deduct conclusions. The fourth was to make a more general statement about the subject.

Francis Bacon created four categories of false knowledge, also known as idols. The first was called idols of the tribe, which was what humans perceived. The second, called the idols of the cave, was what individuals interpreted about the world based on themselves. The third was called idols of the market-place, and was a problem of language, and confusing words. The fourth, called idols of the theater, is made up of the wrong theories, based on false evidence.

There were differences between the two men. Bacon took the path of the law and politics. For a while, he held a position of high power in the government. Descartes however, worked more with geometry and algebra. In Bacon's approach, he takes things from more specific examples and makes them broader. He looks at specific examples, then makes generalizations, and broadens his thinking. Descartes does the opposite, and makes things broader to more specific. He takes a general topic, and breaks it down into smaller, more detailed pieces.

Although their methods were different, these two philosophers had things in common. To start out, they both rejected what was accepted in science, and demanded more specific and accurate evidence to support theories. They both touched on the fact that what humans perceive is not always accurate. Descartes and Bacon though to break down a problem to it's smallest possible parts, to find out what it's made of. These two men both needed evidence to prove a theory, rather than simply having a belief with no proof, like religion. Both men sparked the idea to believe things that could only be proven with evidence. Once certain people caught on to this way of thinking, they were less of believers to their religions. Bacon and Descartes encouraged experiments, to find proof for theories, sparking the scientific revolution.

Descartes vs. Bacon

The works of Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon were incredibly controversial. They encouraged people to think for themselves and question everything, which could potentially cause uprisings in the Church. Both men acheived high political positions early in their careers, which allowed them to do more scientific and philosophical research while under the protection of their monarchs. They cleverly managed to spread their findings and influence people without suffering an unfortunate fate, like Galileo, for their radical ideas.

One of Descartes' greatest feats was methodological skepticism. This method's purpose was to prove that things can be truly known through doubt, a concept that was novel at the time. The creater of the phrase, "I think, therefore I am," Descartes went on to prove his own existance. He disregarded perception and proclaimed that deduction was the only way to truly know anything. This concept that the human mind can prove its own existance through thinking was totally radical, suggesting that God was not needed for humans to understand their own nature. Bacon challenged religion even more directly with his deduced ethical system. He stated that no universal ethical rules could be made because situations and people differ. This does not comply with the Church's 10 Commandments and could have caused upset from religious officials. Bacon also tried to seperate the ideas of duty to community and duty to God, which were previously one and the same.

The Methods of Bacon and Descartes

Francis Bacon was lawyer, politician, and philosopher. Despite these worthy pursuits, he is best known for his numerous essays which, among other things, declared his ideas on the established sciences and proposed a better scientific method that would help to define the conduct of experimentation and theorizing in the modern world. Bacon's greatest criticism of the old system was that the promoted laws were far too general and not founded on any evidence. For this reason, he attempted to counter this in his own method. He thought of "gradual ascent," an idea where small generalizations were made then proven, leading the experimenter to make larger and larger proven assumptions until a law is formed. He also suggested the process of eliminations where, if one case is contrary to a statement, than the statement is completely false. He described this as "the greater force of the negative instance." For data analysis and collection he used tables where he recorded the specific property or condition of a tested case. The only problem with this part of the method was that he often assumed that any property of the reaction would be obvious, not subtle. Though Bacon's system was a vast improvement on the standing one, he was still wary of making a final statement founded on his evidence - he was afraid that his own laws would become like the old ones, proven by false evidence.

The French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes worked more in both specifics and generalizations. Though he often wrote his own essays in Latin, he did publish a book in French called Discourse on Method such that all of his own country could know and understand his discoveries not through blind acceptance, but through the reasoning that he carefully laid out in writing. This book was divided into three sections, each of which explained his system for arriving at his personal ideas on the law of refraction, the rainbow, and analytical geometry. He also developed further the mathematical work on "representing" (using variables for both known and unknown constants) as well as the use of superscripts and subscripts. The development of these two things helped to simplify or at least clarify algebraic problems. In his book, Descartes also put forth his moral code for science, which Britannica aptly described in the following words: "(1) obey local customs and laws, (2) make decisions on the best evidence and then stick to them firmly as though they were certain, (3) change desires rather than the world, and (4) always seek truth."

Both men were important to the development of a new scientific method, although their approaches were quite different. Bacon seemed to be more concerned with possible ways of collecting and analyzing information, while Descartes cared more about creating general moral ideas for experimentation as well as making calculation easier during the analytical process. Bacon and Descartes were both highly prolific (although Descartes held back from publishing Discourse on Method for fear of the church) and their work was fairly accessible to the people in general.

Thesis: Bacon and Descartes may have hurt the presence of the Church in Europe through their encouragement of the belief that acceptance of an idea should be founded on more than just blind faith. On the other hand, giving the public knowledge of a more developed scientific method allowed the people of Europe to begin looking at the world more scientifically, and gave them the opportunity to better understand and judge evidence given for a statement on the natural laws of the world.