Descartes’ certainty program reduced nature to quantifiable primary qualities

Evidence

For Descartes, unlike Mersenne and Gassendi, clear and distinct ideas were the basis for ascertaining the essence or true nature of things behind the appearances and their necessary connections. Because clear and distinct ideas could be formed in the mind, essences could be inferred to exist and to have quantifiable properties. The relations between quantities could be described by mathematics, acquiring the status of true physical laws. Descartes’ rationalist answer to the problem of certainty led to a science of mechanics based on quantitative properties (or primary qualities), such as the amount of matter in a body and its motion. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 795

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the primary/secondary qualities distinction that the course’s mechanistic-viewpoint strand depends on.
• XREF: connects to: Conflating consciousness with reason lets Descartes deny animal sensation — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 427; Descartes relocated the Platonic devaluation of nature from virtue into consciousness — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 423; Descartes grounded certainty in thought, establishing mind as primary over matter. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2069 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Descartes grounded certainty in thought, establishing mind as primary over matter. #expands (0.85) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2069
• Even Descartes conceded context tangle defeats his own reductive method #contradicts (0.85) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 863
• Cartesian mechanism evicted all spirits and occult qualities from nature #corroborates (0.85) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 798
• Descartes’ indubitable ‘I’ redirected philosophy inward toward certainty of the self. #exemplifies (0.80)
• Mathematical certainty led philosophers to suppose thought is superior to sense #expands (0.80) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 203
• Physicalism reduces scientific theories to formal systems of signs for application #expands (0.78) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 60
• Vitalists collapsed Cartesian mind-matter dualism into a monistic union #responds-to (0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 932