Alpha Book

It is in these works that he summed up the faults which the
widening of knowledge in his own day was disclosing in ancient and
medieval thought and set forth the necessity of slow laborious
observation of facts as antecedent to the assumption of any general
principle.
[Sidenote: Descartes]
What of scientific method occurred to Lord Bacon appealed even more to
the intellectual genius of the Frenchman Descartes (1596-1660). A
curious combination of sincere practicing Catholic and of original
daring rationalist was this man, traveling all about Europe, serving as
a soldier in the Netherlands, in Bavaria, in Hungary, living in
Holland, dying in Sweden, with a mind as restless as his body. Now
interested in mathematics, now in philosophy, presently absorbed in
physics or in the proof of man's existence, throughout his whole career
he held fast to the faith that science depends not upon the authority
of books but upon the observation of facts. "Here are my books," he
told a visitor, as he pointed to a basket of rabbits that he was about
to dissect.


Pages:
434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458