Descartes' Method: Four Rules for True Knowledge

The comment text can be made to distinguish the rules of the method, so we can say that for Descartes, the method is the set of "rules certain and easy, thanks to whom that will not ever look exactly the false for real and reach, without spending unnecessarily effort of the mind, but science always gradually increasing, the true knowledge of anything that is capable of." The method should serve to discover new truths, not to prove what has already been found. The four rules of method are:

• Evidence: The Criterion of Truth

  Do not accept anything as true unless we know with evidence that it is. The evidence consists of clarity and distinction. We must avoid two fundamental defects in the search for truth: precipitation and prevention.

  • Precipitation: Taking as true what is not, taken as true a confused idea, no different. It is caused by overconfidence.
  • Prevention: Refusing to accept the truth of what is obvious, what is clear and distinct.

• Analysis: Divide and Conquer

  It consists in dividing each of the difficulties to examine into as many parts as possible and as many as required for its best solution.

• Synthesis: From Simple to Complex

  Following the achievement of 'simple natures', apply the third rule of method, which advises us to conduct orderly thoughts, beginning with the objects simple and easy to learn, to go climbing up to the knowledge of the most complex.

• Enumeration: The Safety Net

  The purpose of this rule is to get safe from mistakes. According to this fourth precept, it is to do lists and reviews so general that we are sure not to miss anything.

Of the six parts that make up the Discourse on Method, only the first, second, and fourth offer real philosophical interest. Descartes says in part that "there are different considerations about science," but in fact, he is laying the foundations for a new theory of knowledge. The second part contains the famous four rules of method, preceded by a critique of classical logic, and particularly the syllogism, which shows the breakdown of Descartes' traditional methodological thought. But in the fourth part, he describes the essential ideas, stating how it was the first truth - I think, therefore I am, how this proposition can be extracted from the criterion of truth, and what is the nature of our soul, to finish with the evidence for the existence of God. The other parts are merely of reflective importance, that is, to the extent that they shed some light on the ideas contained in the parts referred to.

Justification of the Text

The method was inspired by the one followed by surveyors. These start with the simplest things and easy to learn to soar through "long strings of tangled words" to reach the most difficult and complex issues. Mathematics is the only science that fails to reach certain and evident demonstrations. The reaction against Cartesian skepticism coupled with her interest in science in Descartes will mean strengthening the rejection of the error and the search for truth. Both in the first meditation and in the first part of Discourse on Method, Descartes insists repeatedly on the need to reject the error, which is inevitably associated with the search for truth. Unwilling to accept the arguments of skeptics who say the inability to have any real knowledge, Descartes was preparing to investigate to determine anything with certainty, even if that something is you can not have any real knowledge. Descartes believes that what makes true mathematical knowledge is the method used to achieve them. Not that there's in mathematics a structure that makes true knowledge inevitably; it is the mathematical method used which can deliver such impressive results. The idea that we need a method to attain knowledge, Descartes added the clarification that this method has to be prepared in accordance with that mathematicians use in their investigations. And this, because what makes true mathematical knowledge is the method used. It is not that mathematics is a kind of knowledge different than the rest of knowledge. If the ratio is one, knowledge is unique, and must have a single method for gaining wisdom. Descartes dedicated to his work method Discourse on Method and The Rules for the Direction of the Spirit. First, he wrote the rules, which were not published until later, in 1701, after the publication of the Discourse. The shops provide a more detailed study of the issue, but in the speech, he offers a synthesis of the method in four concise rules.