Agree with much of the sentiment here but from a philosophy standpoint, its unusual to associate the scientific method, or modern views about science, with Descartes. As noted below, it has long been understood that... "The fact that Descartes offered mechanistic explanations for many features of nature does not mean that his explanation…
Agree with much of the sentiment here but from a philosophy standpoint, its unusual to associate the scientific method, or modern views about science, with Descartes. As noted below, it has long been understood that... "The fact that Descartes offered mechanistic explanations for many features of nature does not mean that his explanations were successful."
Much of what the article delves into actually involves concepts of mankind and its relation to the world, as addressed by philosophers from Aristotle to Neitzche to Sartre and the existentialists.
The modern scientific method is usually associated with the methods and achievements of Galileo rather than Descartes. Descartes is only mentioned as an "Also see...." in the (7 chapters long) entry on the "Scientific Method" in Stamford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The way in which Descartes' views failed to hold sway in the era that succeeded him is explained further in the Descartes section of the Encyclopedia:
"The fact that Descartes offered mechanistic explanations for many features of nature does not mean that his explanations were successful. Indeed, his followers and detractors debated the success of his various proposals for nearly a century after his death. His accounts of magnetism and gravity were challenged. Leibniz challenged the coherence of Descartes' laws of motion and impact. Newton offered his own laws of motion and an inverse square law of gravitational attraction. His account of orbital planetary motions replaced Descartes' vortexes. Others struggled to make Descartes' physiology work. There were also deeper challenges. Some wondered whether Descartes could actually explain how his infinitely divisible matter could coalesce into solid bodies. Why shouldn't collections of particles act like whiffs of smoke, that separate upon contact with large particles? Indeed, how do particles themselves cohere?
Such problems were real, and Descartes' physics was abandoned over the course of the eighteenth century."
Agree with much of the sentiment here but from a philosophy standpoint, its unusual to associate the scientific method, or modern views about science, with Descartes. As noted below, it has long been understood that... "The fact that Descartes offered mechanistic explanations for many features of nature does not mean that his explanations were successful."
Much of what the article delves into actually involves concepts of mankind and its relation to the world, as addressed by philosophers from Aristotle to Neitzche to Sartre and the existentialists.
The modern scientific method is usually associated with the methods and achievements of Galileo rather than Descartes. Descartes is only mentioned as an "Also see...." in the (7 chapters long) entry on the "Scientific Method" in Stamford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The way in which Descartes' views failed to hold sway in the era that succeeded him is explained further in the Descartes section of the Encyclopedia:
"The fact that Descartes offered mechanistic explanations for many features of nature does not mean that his explanations were successful. Indeed, his followers and detractors debated the success of his various proposals for nearly a century after his death. His accounts of magnetism and gravity were challenged. Leibniz challenged the coherence of Descartes' laws of motion and impact. Newton offered his own laws of motion and an inverse square law of gravitational attraction. His account of orbital planetary motions replaced Descartes' vortexes. Others struggled to make Descartes' physiology work. There were also deeper challenges. Some wondered whether Descartes could actually explain how his infinitely divisible matter could coalesce into solid bodies. Why shouldn't collections of particles act like whiffs of smoke, that separate upon contact with large particles? Indeed, how do particles themselves cohere?
Such problems were real, and Descartes' physics was abandoned over the course of the eighteenth century."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/