Inferring and Explaining

ChaPter two Skepticism I will suppose then, that everything I see is spurious. I will believe that my mem- ory tells me lies, and that none of the things it reports ever happened. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension and place are chimeras. So what remains true? Perhaps just one fact that nothing is certain. —renÉ Descartes 1 Descartes and the Arena of Reason It’s hard to imagine a thinker more committed to the arena of reason than René Descartes. In addition to being one of the most important philosophers in the entire history of Western philosophy, he was a groundbreaking math- ematician (remember those dreaded “Cartesian coordinates” you hated in high school algebra?), one of the most prominent physicists of his era, and a committed theologian. He counts as one of the true giants of Western thought. He begins his most important work, TeMed- itations on First Philosophy , by sharing a nagging worry. Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my child- hood, and by the doubtful nature of the whole edifce that I had based on them. 2 When he speaks of falsehoods he accepted in his childhood, I don’t think he’s speaking of Santa Claus or the tooth fairy but simply things that he believed uncritically, on the basis of authority and common sense, that eventually turned out to be false.Te problemwasn’t just that he had been misled by the authorities and tricked by common sense but that his life’s missions—philosophy, mathematics, physics, and theology—were all built on them. 9