Essay On Modern Rationalism

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MODERN RATIONALISM In epistemology, rationalism is the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge, or according to Lacey, A.R. (1996), Rationalism is any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification. The history of Modern Rationalism is very interesting to study, it was first introduced by Rene Descartes, Descartes was a very good mathematician, can be considered as expert mathematician because he is the founder of analytical geometry, a mathematic theory which synthesize Algebra and Geometry, He is also a physicist, as well as a philosopher. Born at 1596, about 50 years after the publication of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Later He lived right at the beginning of the scientific revolution, as the medieval world view…show more content…
Rotten to its very foundations. Then, Descartes start to think that the only way to fix it was to wipe it out completely, and start building again from the beginning. For an analogy, suppose your flash disk has been contaminated by a virus, and that caused you to delete many important document which have been contaminated by it virus. Since it spread among your file and document and you don’t know which one of the files has been contaminated, then you can’t really trust any of them. The only thing to do is to erase all the file and document from the entire flash disk completely. But how did Descartes “erase all his data from the entire flash disk”? He actually used what is known as “Method of Doubt”. He tried, as hard as possible, to empty his mind from all kind of beliefs in order to suspend judgment about everything. Of course this is quite difficult, as we does not simply choose what we must believe, we cannot help believing that things are basically as they seem to

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