René Descartes Meditations: The Nature Of The Human Body

René Descartes, born on March 31, 1596 in La Haye France, was both an accomplished philosopher as well as a brilliant mathematician. Growing up in a society with influential figures like Galileo and Isaac Newton whom constantly questioned traditional methods and ideologies, Socrates sought to devise a method for reaching absolute truth. His quest for truth led to a publication of a major philosophical work “ A Disclosure on Method, Meditations on First philosophy.” Descartes meditations were based on systematic doubt where “Anything which admits of the slightest doubt I will set aside just as if I had found it to be wholly false; and I will proceed in this way until I recognize something certain, or if nothing else, until I at least recognize that there is no certainty. ”(Meditations on First philosophy) With this method, Descartes, just like the great mathematician Archimedes, demanded to find “just one thing, however slight that is certain and unshakeable.” (Meditations on first philosophy) Descartes meditations have had an enormous impact on the subsequent development of modern western philosophy.