Descartes' Scientific Method and Cartesian Physics

The Cartesian Scientific Method

The Scientific Method is a strict deductive method, particularly involving the idea of God as the creator and curator of the world and the immutability of certain innate ideas existing in the human mind, hitherto the prescient procedure of experience. It comes in addition to the cause and effect in physics, as it is a long series of deductive chains ordered by the prime causes. The concept of cause becomes substance next to the second key concept of Cartesianism, but that inference has limited contingents arrived at in moments and can no longer be deducted towards their cause; that is when experience intervenes to determine regarding its effects, which are those that are actually performed. Experience is valuable to check the deductive assumptions.

Descartes' Vision of the Universe

Descartes conceives that the universe is composed of a vortex conjunto (set of vortices) subject to touch each other and are of different sizes. Descartes also admits that there are three classes of matter: one characterized by brightness, another by transparency, and another by opacity.

Principles of Mechanism

In Mechanism, everything comes down to matter and motion, but matter is nothing but extension, which leads to several conclusions:

• 1. There are no indivisible particles, since it appears that extension cannot be indivisible.
• 2. There is no vacuum; instead, everything is full of a field.
• 3. It not only denies the objectivity of secondary qualities but also weight, and denies the existence of any intrinsic active nature.

The Laws of God represent the first cause of motion, and He always retains the same momentum in the world. God, therefore, created matter, and motion remains constant between rest and the same amount of matter and motion-rest. From the same divine immutability derive the three laws of nature:

• First law of nature: Everything remains in the state it is in, if nothing changes.
• Second law: Every moving body tends to continue its motion in a straight line.
• Third law: If a moving body is stronger than another, it does not lose anything of its movement; if it finds another that may be weaker than its moving power, it loses as much motion as is passed.