Discourse on the Method Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Discourse on the Method - Essay Example Rene Descartes was a Frenchman who was born to a wealthy family in Touraine in 1596 CITATION Des08 \l 1033 . Faithful to the characteristics of a true Renaissance man, Descartes was knowledgeable and able in the academic fields of mathematics and philosophy, and in the worldly caprices of gambling and adventure. His financial stability afforded him the opportunity to fully concentrate on philosophical meditation and mathematical quest. In 1637, he published â€Å"Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences,† or more concisely known as â€Å"Discourse on the Method,† a philosophical and autobiographical treatise CITATION Des08 \l 1033 . From a first person point of view and providing personal experiences from his own ventures, Rene Descartes provides a self-proclaimed effective method of intellectual development in â€Å"Discourse on the Method.† The lengthy treatise is divided into six parts, each focusing on a particular aspect of Descartes’s philosophical path. In Descartes’s own words, the Discourse is divided as such CITATION Des08 \l 1033 : â€Å"in the first, will be found various considerations touching the Sciences; in the second, the principal rules of the Method which the Author has discovered, in the third, certain of the rules of Morals which he has deduced from this Method; in the fourth, the reasonings by which he establishes the existence of God and of the Human Soul, which are the foundations of his Metaphysic; in the fifth, the order of the Physical questions which he has investigated, and, in particular, the explication of the motion of the heart and of some other difficulties pertaining to Medicine, as also the difference between the soul of man and that of the brutes; and, in the last, what the Author believes to be required in order to greater advancement in the investigation of Nature than has yet been made, with the reasons that have