So Rene Descartes walks into a bar. Some guy walks up to him, says, “Hey, aren’t you one of those skeptics we keep hearing about on the news?” Rene, indignant, replies, “I think not!” — and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
All right, you now understand why so-called philosophical humor only appeals to people who have spent way too much time reading academic journals. But if all you know about Descartes is the famous “I think, therefore I am,” stick tight for a second, because I want to talk about why the thought process that led to that declaration is still so important today.
Descartes was a scientist and a mathematician as well as a philosopher, and he was tremendously concerned by the skeptics. They’re the people who go around challenging all claims to knowledge for one reason or another, saying there was no reason to be certain about anything. If you couldn’t be certain that the discoveries of science were true, was there still a point in the endeavor? And if you couldn’t be sure about the life you were living at the moment, how could you be sure about what happen in the next one? Skeptics challenged the authority of both scientists and the Church, and this was something Descartes desperately wanted to avoid. Read the remainder of this entry »