Descartes - Founder of Modern Science

That's a big title.

It starts with a big name.

See, I just started reading my Very Short Introduction book on this philosopher/mathematician/scientist who lived in the 17th century.

You know what? He's really cool.

I've been interested in the sciences for a long time. One might call me a dabbler, or even a dilettante, but the fact is I think it's cool that we can predict things with math. Doing a set of calculations and seeing the same numbers show up on a lab bench is rather gratifying.

Still, I've taken this idea for granted for a long time. Why do I believe that all natural phenomena follow certain laws? Why does math show up everywhere? I personally believe these two principles apply to all of nature, and that God Himself is bound by certain laws. Duh.

But...why?!


I often smugly feel it is a settled matter, but the quest is ages old. In Descartes' day it was most decidedly not a settled matter. His philosophy (if I am to trust my reading of the book) was the first to describe a whole justification for exactly this view, and then move directly into physics with it.

In conceiving of the universe mathematically, Descartes was not the first; as the author says, "Galileo did make that identification but had no real theory to explain why the mathematical approach fitted the physical world so well. cartesian metaphysics supplied the missing theory." As best as I can tell, Descartes believed that our natures, being created by God, suit us to understanding the universe with certainty via mathematics; and God, being benevolent, designed the universe such that we do not fall into error when conceiving it certainly (Location 71, Kindle edition)...come back when you've both chewed and swallowed. ;)

It's enormously gratifying to me that this question has been raised before, and by someone of great stature. I had never attempted to drive the question to its roots.

Descartes' answer drove science forwards. Even in his critiques of Descartes' ideas, Newton essentially embraced the underlying Cartesian ideals. Modern scientists, I think, often use its result without so much as pondering its provenance or justification. Nowadays, the mathematical universe ideal is so ingrained in our culture that such grappling is often low-key and quiet--though being at an LDS university helps revive and illuminate its occurrence.

The shift in thinking that Descartes promulgated changed scientific thinking forever...so, next time you learn a formula in a science class, think of Descartes.

(I would also like to point the reader to the fact that Descartes was very much against using "what his eyes saw" as a tool to analyze the world around him, and went to great pains to differentiate between objective and subjective data. No raw empiricism here.)