Descartes is Descartes, not France!

-DESCARTES IS DESCARTES, NOT FRANCE!

Descartes is an opportunity, to show:

- the efficiency of the noologique,

- how to teach noologique to children,

- was Descartes a PROSPAMNESIEN?
Minute of silence for lost opportunities:

- to overpass Newton and Leibnitz,

- to discover the bicameralism.

1-Entourage of Young Descarte
2-He became a philosopher
3-Critic of a doubtful doubt
To follow:
4-Church recovers his stake
5-"Method to re-discover"
6-Now review of press
7-"Useful and certain"

On the occasion of the Cartesian centenary, just some broadcasts by Sorboniqueurs, (on ARTE in the middle of the night!). And a way to intellectual peace in public libraries: Glucksmann's "Descartes, c'est la France", (1987), should received 'honours' in public: "Silence would be better about this book, but it has awaken too much curiosity ", (Geneviève Rodis-Lewi).

In enterprises, I regularly met René's littl'Erasure, sometimes in a nice frame .
I nearly asked:
"Who offered you this parchment? what goal? Compliment or allusion to a deficiency"?
Descartes reigned in master on French minds, as a justification of the "D system", ("se Débrouiller, to get along).

To guide me in the workshops, I didn't take Descartes, nor Pasteur, (known in enterprises for his silk-worms), but Claude Bernard, (it is only in finale that you know how you should begin: the good choice was Darwin).

René's glory summarises in a word, " method ". It is the worse mental blockage that I know. When Destivelle arrives to the top of the Aiguille Verte, she holds the method of the Aiguille Verte. She didn't follow it: she has groped continually. But she knows the way she should had followed, the famous " one best way " of Taylor. To what can the "Destivelle method" serve? maybe to help no-mountaineers to climb the Aiguille Verte. To solve a solved problem.
How can the girl improve the mountaineering technique? to imagine a more efficient staple, the heating model easier to plant.

In a nutshell, the Discourse of the Method..., (thirty-and-one, (31) words for the complete title), was only the preface to a thick book, (more than five hundred, (500), pages) containing three thick treaties... In this time, prefaces were a great fashion: Copernicus' Treaty " included two, completely opposite.
Nietzsche declared that the Catholicism had destroyed Pascal. How much truer for Descartes! René is the model of the rationalistic, the "intellectual in room", (not even a book in his Dutch cell!), capable to rebuild the world alone, while "intellectuals" are rationalists in troop and in soft-ghetto, commenting the ideas of others, (and excluding others!).
These two " methods " are the death of all creativeness.
To understand cartesianism better, just try the "Flip-Flop Training".

Descartes prudently explained that his "method", (deducted from researches in physics), was not to be applied to domains such as politics or religion.

/ he sinned against a logical rule,

"To ascend in noo-digmes, use methods deducted of the recent discoveries and abandon them as soon as they are an obstacle to the following progress. .."

/ demonstrated a basic rule of philosophy,

"One doesn't become a philosopher, one stops being one...

/ and renounced to all true philosophy:

"If a single pbranch of the reality escapes to philosophy, there is no "philosophy", (Thank you Renan!)

He was "licked" by satammism, like any scientific leaving his domain, the "complex" for the really complicated soft-world...

I ask therefore for a long minute of silence for two lost opportunities:

/ opportunity to precede Newton and Leibnitz in mathematics,

/ opportunity to discover the bicameralism.

1. Entourage of Young Descarte.

Of relatively better health than Newton, young Descartes, pupil in the College de la Flèche, remains in bed all the morning! Do you have suffered of "long illness"? one get bored.
And what a humiliation in the Jesuit West Point, the seed-bed of machos: a duel was started for an out of place word, (Richelieu, the cardinal-cop stopped this practice, by the axe). The hagiographer of Descartes assigns him a treaty of fencing but no one ever saw it.

The first Cartesian problem was to seduce a small world, a helpful chaplain, sisters, nurses...
Armed of grey slate and virginal chalk, he pencilled "geometry ". Have you opened it? I would call his book "Treaty of Algebra". A small effort and he discovered the calculus and the bicameralism. I don't know if René saw as far as some modern authors!

"The tremendous discoveries of Descartes that algebra and geometry were not separate sciences, but aspects of the more general analytic geometry, and that a single deductive method would suffice for the achieving of truth in any domain, had provided the model for Classic Rationalism that all knowledge could be derived from a few fundamental and self-evident axioms. The new physic of Kepler and Newton had given further ground for believing that the nature of the world was orderly and that its structure could be penetrated...(Flower and Murphey, "A history of Philosophy in America", 1977, Longman)

2. And suddenly Descartes became a "philosopher"...

The case is not unique, of true scientists turning toward philosophy. Kant is the model of these converts. And Whitehead, Comte, Wittgenstein. But it becomes necessary to define "philosophy "!
Descartes did lose the faith of his childhood, as Montaigne, Rabelais and Pascal, (who will call the cartesianism "useless and uncertain "). What does a believer make when losing his faith? (I can testify: 20 minutes after my " entrance in religion ", I declared, "Necessary to review all that "!)
See the reaction of scientists of the Renaissance: they create an argumentaire, with a Big Architect, a Watchmaker. But can we understand René and Blaise without having believed and lost faith? et even in this case, you need a rare capacity of introspection. I will propose an excellent training, the "Flip-Flop".

The 16th century shook, destroyed everything: the political, religious, spiritual bases of Europe; the certainty of the science and of the faith; the authority of the Bible and of Aristotle; the prestige of the Church and of the State. A heap of wealth and a heap of debris... Montaigne is an example: the man is lost, penetrated by the doubt ... nothing is sure... only mistake is certain... it is a "culture crisis". During the Renaissance, even cardinals were atheists". (But how many bishops today believe in Jesus?)
Descartes was contacted by a certain Bérulle, the cardinal that founded the Oratoriens, (revivalists). It is probable that they spoke of the the old apologetic current, to say that the alliance with Aristotle was a disaster...
The cardinal simply offered the chair of the Aquinas. The young René starts therefore, before Pascal, a long lineage of laïcs, stuffed of money: Bonald, Maistre, Chateaubriand, Albert of Mun, Ozanam, Blois, Daniel-Rops, Mauriac, Guitton, Guillemin, Frossart... Of course, we will dedicate a long chapter to this "baptised philosophy".

List of "advisers" that surrounded Descartes, and cut him from the world:

Mersenne, the "chaplain of scientists",
Picot, the manager of his possessions;
we know his life by a priest, Baillet. How is called a biography written by a priest?

Descartes lives in " retirement " in Holland (1629). For the small needs of a pious laic? a very sacerdotal remedy: to "plant a candle". By "ancillary love ", Descartes had a little Francine: she died very young.

3 Critic of a doubtful doubt.

Descartes starts logically: "The doubt is everywhere? let's start from this doubt!". A true philosopher has the mania to define, and handles noodigmes", (French is better! "il a la manie des définitions et manie les noodigmes"):

1/ "I think", I have a feeling of existence, of autonomy..., on top of my ziggurat), sign of the apparition of the conscience.

2/ "I think that I think..." add the true Greek, (2d noodigme), who knows how to doubt on his reflections, and doubt even his divinities. He doubts his senses and discovers that the sun doesn't turn around the earth.

3 / So, "I think that I think that I think...", Descartes adds, (3rd noodigme). Ergo dubito! The doubt of Montaigne and La Boétie is humanitarian. Descartes has a "mission", to fight the atheism now widespread.
He forgets that any "argument ad hominem", (that starts from the belief of the other), is the mother of sophisms. A nice case of "inverse", starting from the other's doubt instead of the usual belief.

Can we build a theology on a play of words? to prove that Jesus is transubstantialised in divine bread leads to a gibberish of first communicant: "Tria mirabilia Dominus fecit... something of nothing, the man-God, and the free-referee... God's idea is an innate idea, an idea that belongs to the man's nature... "

Opinion of Koyré, (not much prepared to understand): "The Cartesian theology is very long and enough complicated. And, besides without very a great interest... The "I think" implies "I think God". Maine of Biran had smelled the trick. "I think" is "I'm conscious of my conscience", a psychological fact. The following step? there is a trick, more difficult to avoid but clear in the application made by Descartes: " I think God, therefore God exists ". It is a change of intellectual domains, from psychology to philosophism.

At the time of his last visits in Paris, (correct religious term "ad limina"), our laïc monk is received badly by his religious sponsors. Analogy? Saul-Paul, badly received pain Jerusalem, sent to Rome, manu militari. He pretended to understand the sense of the Gospel better that "Brother Jacques".

Therefore, René tried to place his merchandise in Sweden...

4. Descartes cocks a snook to the cardinal:

In the " method ", Descartes turns as affirmative and deductive as in his "Geometry":

"See my scientific results, that's good stuff! Put the same order in your salad, and I bring you that new theology. Is it clear and clean"?

The philosopher of the doubt did doubt nothing!

Next chapters:

4. The Oratoire recovers his stake.

5. All discovery produces a "method to re-discover the discovery".

9. Now review of press.

10. "Useful and certain" conclusion

Now, the normal question of a "prosopamnesian":

Titles of RENE DESCARTES, (1696-1650)
for a candidature as a "successful prosopamnesian".
His tendency to solitude or spleen being known, (like Newton), let's look for
1/ a great shock during infancy, a feeling of abandon, (death of a parent, the other re-marry);
2/ minimum help: opportunity to develop alone, through practice of manual work;
3/ existence of "Locomotives", (people guiding or admired).

With extracts of following authors:
- Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, DESCARTES, Calmann-Lévy, 1996.
- CCD: "The Cambridge Companion to Descartes"

1/ Great shock, feeling of abandon, (death of a parent, the other re-marry)

Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: Descartes was told and believed he was responsible for the death of her mother. But she died the next year in childbirth of a brother that died three days later... (Newton lost his father).
His father married again, (in 1600? when René was three? like Newton). A half-brother and a half-sister were born... (like Newton) The grand-mother accused the father of causing the death of her daughter, (René's mother)... His grand mother died between 1607 et 1610, (René between 11 or 14).

CCD: "Baillet follows Descartes' accepted story that his birth cost his mother's life a few days after, " from a disease of the lungs caused by her distress ". But in fact, she died in May of the following year after giving birth to a son that died 3 days later. René had a nurse who was to survive to him...

CCD: About the " dream " in nov. 1619, Baillet arranged everything as a good hagiographer, without any respect for the latin original; " His exhausted mind was prey to dreams and visions... "
I ask:
- Is this a crisis similar to the madness of Auguste Comte?
- He made a promise on September 23rd 1620, (a pilgrimage to Lorette, Italy) for his dreams of November 1619, (after 10 months?)

2/ Minimum help, opportunity to develop personally, first manually

Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: He had a private coach to learn how to write and read.

According to Baillet, Descartes could have been a craftsman, since "he had always had a strong inclination for the arts..." Descartes wrote the eulogy to 'technical skills' in Part VI of the Discourse...
Other opinion, " in 1618, Beckmann first interested Descartes in questions of mechanics and hydraulics... But during the later disputes, Descartes was to pour scorn on this "mathematics-physics" (" Mathematica-Physica AT I 164 ).
Among the works now lost, Baillet also mentions a small " treatise of fencing "...
CCD: " Was he put out to board with this nurse, or did he live at his grand mother's? Did he visit or was he visited by his father from time to time... (compare Newton).
Baillet thinks that René lived with his father, who was 'astounded by the questions the philosopher-infant asked to him...' (No proof of any paternal admiration for the "little philosopher").
The father had René enter college in January 1604, (8 years old?). The period could be 1606-1614 or 1607-1615... The teaching system was for a given teacher to keep the same class for the full three year course. For René, it was father Fournet...

3/ "Locomotives"
" In reality, Descartes' youth was coloured by an ideal of what the culture of the time termed " la générosité ", (generosity of spirit ), - an ideal that inspired him long before he succeeded in providing a philosophical foundation for this major virtue...
At all events, the students, (in La Flèche), were taught about the discoveries due to the development of the telescope,. It has been suggested that Descartes may have written the sonnet hailing Galilee's discovery of the moons of Jupiter...(prudently, the sonnet in question speaks of the sun circling the earth!!!)

Remarks on his Travels:
CCD: About his journeys: has he seen the apparatus of Tycho-Brahae?
Page 91, " He visited Florence, and Bonel affirms that he saw Galilee. Baillet corrects this since Descartes wrote: "I will tell you I have never seen Galilee and never had any communication with him... " He visited Florence in 1631. (Since Galilee was condemned in 1633, when did Descartes wrote this souvenir?)...
In my opinion, a good interpretation of his journeys, (limited to Bohemia and Italy), is that he wanted to visit the places where lived the great astronomers...

Remarks on the "hagiographer':

CCD: " The relation of his early years contains many gaps; we owe many points of interest to his biographer Baillet, (he wrote this " biography " in 1691)... As Rodis-Lewis demonstrates, Baillet was sometimes prepared to invent what seemed to him plausible when he found the record incomplete... It is to Adrien Baillet that we are indebted for the preservation of many documents which have subsequently been lost... Generally, he gives details of his sources, and, sometimes treats them in a judiciously critical fashion... Unfortunately, however, when he has no access to the facts he simply invents them without warning... (a good definition for 'hagiographer'?)

Later, as a training in 'analogy', we'll find 'inventors of philosophers": Platon invents Socrates, Dr Augustinus invents Platon... Who was interested in 'inventing' Descartes?

REMark on the science of Descartes: he was the first to define correctly the principle of inertia (?) As Beckman, and also Galilee, he affirms the indefinite continuation of movement in line AND in circle...