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Discourse On Method
''Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences'' () is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation ''"Je pense, donc je suis"'' (" I think, therefore I am", or "I am thinking, therefore I exist"), which occurs in Part IV of the work. A similar argument, without this precise wording, is found in '' Meditations on First Philosophy'' (1641), and a Latin version of the same statement ''Cogito, ergo sum'' is found in '' Principles of Philosophy'' (1644). ''Discourse on the Method'' is one of the most influential works in the history of modern philosophy, and important to the development of natural sciences. In this work, Descartes tackles the problem of skepticism, which had previously been studied by other philosophers. While addressing some of his predecessors and contemporaries, Descartes modified their approach to account for a truth he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
René Descartes
René Descartes ( , ; ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and Modern science, science. Mathematics was paramount to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, and later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Dutch Reformed Church, Protestant state and was later counted as a Deism, deist by critics, Descartes was Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic. Many elements of Descartes's philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the Neostoicism, revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine of Hippo, Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the Scholasticism, schools on two major point ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leiden
Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 127,046 (31 January 2023), but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration with its suburbs Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten and Zoeterwoude with 215,602 inhabitants. The Statistics Netherlands, Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) further includes Katwijk in the agglomeration which makes the total population of the Leiden urban agglomeration 282,207 and in the larger Leiden urban area also Teylingen, Noordwijk, and Noordwijkerhout are included with in total 365,913 inhabitants. Leiden is located on the Oude Rijn (Utrecht and South Holland), Oude Rijn, at a distance of some from The Hague to its south and some from Amsterdam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Divide-and-conquer Algorithm
In computer science, divide and conquer is an algorithm design paradigm. A divide-and-conquer algorithm recursively breaks down a problem into two or more sub-problems of the same or related type, until these become simple enough to be solved directly. The solutions to the sub-problems are then combined to give a solution to the original problem. The divide-and-conquer technique is the basis of efficient algorithms for many problems, such as sorting (e.g., quicksort, merge sort), multiplying large numbers (e.g., the Karatsuba algorithm), finding the closest pair of points, syntactic analysis (e.g., top-down parsers), and computing the discrete Fourier transform ( FFT). Designing efficient divide-and-conquer algorithms can be difficult. As in mathematical induction, it is often necessary to generalize the problem to make it amenable to a recursive solution. The correctness of a divide-and-conquer algorithm is usually proved by mathematical induction, and its computational cos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartesian Doubt
Cartesian doubt is a form of methodological skepticism associated with the writings and methodology of René Descartes (March 31, 1596February 11, 1650). Cartesian doubt is also known as Cartesian skepticism, methodic doubt, methodological skepticism, universal doubt, systematic doubt, or hyperbolic doubt. Cartesian doubt is a systematic process of being skeptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs, which has become a characteristic method in philosophy. Additionally, Descartes' method has been seen by many as the root of the modern scientific method. This method of doubt was largely popularized in Western philosophy by René Descartes, who sought to doubt the truth of all beliefs in order to determine which he could be certain were true. It is the basis for Descartes' statement, "''Cogito ergo sum''" (I think, therefore I am). A fuller version of his phrase: "''dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum''" translates to "I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I exist." ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neurath's Boat
Neurath's boat (or Neurath's ship) is a simile used in anti-foundational accounts of knowledge, especially in the philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, .... It was first formulated by Otto Neurath. It is based in part on the Ship of Theseus which, however, is standardly used to illustrate other philosophical questions, to do with problems of identity (philosophy), identity. It was popularised by Willard Van Orman Quine in ''Word and Object'' (1960). Neurath used the simile in several occasions, first in "Problems in War Economics" (1913). In "Anti-Spengler" (1921), he wrote: Neurath's non-foundational analogy of reconstructing piecemeal a ship at sea contrasts with Descartes' much earlier foundationalist analogy—in ''Discourse on the Method'' (16 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from battle, famine, or disease, while parts of Germany reported population declines of over 50%. Related conflicts include the Eighty Years' War, the War of the Mantuan Succession, the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659), Franco-Spanish War, the Torstenson War, the Dutch-Portuguese War, and the Portuguese Restoration War. The war had its origins in the 16th-century Reformation, which led to religious conflict within the Holy Roman Empire. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg attempted to resolve this by dividing the Empire into Catholic and Lutheran states, but the settlement was destabilised by the subsequent expansion of Protestantism beyond these boundaries. Combined with differences over the limits of imperial authority, religion was thus an important factor in star ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Library Walk 28
A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location, a virtual space, or both. A library's collection normally includes printed materials which may be borrowed, and usually also includes a reference section of publications which may only be utilized inside the premises. Resources such as commercial releases of films, television programmes, other video recordings, radio, music and audio recordings may be available in many formats. These include DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, cassettes, or other applicable formats such as microform. They may also provide access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases. In addition, some libraries offer creation stations for makers which offer access to a 3D printing station with a 3D scanner. Libraries can vary widely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartesianism
Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge. Aristotle and St. Augustine's work influenced Descartes's cogito argument. Additionally, there is similarity between Descartes's work and that of Scottish philosopher George Campbell's 1776 publication, titled ''Philosophy of Rhetoric''. In his ''Meditations on First Philosophy'' he writes, " t what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, onceives affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels." Cartesians view the mind as being wholly separate from the corporeal body. Sensation and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rules For The Direction Of The Mind
''Regulae ad directionem ingenii'', or ''Rules for the Direction of the Mind'' is an unfinished treatise regarding the proper method for scientific and philosophical thinking by René Descartes. Descartes started writing the work in 1628, and it was eventually published in 1701 after Descartes' death. This treatise outlined the basis for his later work on complex problems of mathematics, geometry, science, and philosophy. The work is estimated to have been written over approximately 10 years, and as such Descartes shifted in his utilization and definition of these rules. ''Rules for the Direction of the Mind'' is described as a precursor and 'scrapbook' for his other workings and methods. 36 rules were planned in total. Rules 1-12 deal with the definition of science, the principal operations of the scientific method (intuition, deduction, and enumeration), and what Descartes terms "simple propositions", which "occur to us spontaneously" and which are objects of certain and evide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartesian Coordinate System
In geometry, a Cartesian coordinate system (, ) in a plane (geometry), plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point (geometry), point uniquely by a pair of real numbers called ''coordinates'', which are the positive and negative numbers, signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, called ''coordinate lines'', ''coordinate axes'' or just ''axes'' (plural of ''axis'') of the system. The point where the axes meet is called the ''Origin (mathematics), origin'' and has as coordinates. The axes direction (geometry), directions represent an orthogonal basis. The combination of origin and basis forms a coordinate frame called the Cartesian frame. Similarly, the position of any point in three-dimensional space can be specified by three ''Cartesian coordinates'', which are the signed distances from the point to three mutually perpendicular planes. More generally, Cartesian coordinates specify the point in an -dimensional Euclidean space for any di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
