Descartes’ Legacy: Mathematization, Reason, and Modernity
Mathematization and Scientific-Technological Development
The Discourse on the Method proposes a method and a criterion, believing we are heirs to mathematics. Descartes thought that thus all sciences would achieve similar certainty. Certainty is a characteristic that mathematization possesses, having permeated all fields of Western science. From Cartesian axes to the design of particle accelerators, the same parameters are followed:
The Real is That Which Can Be Mathematized
Knowledge of things is obtained by quantifying them, i.e., reducing them to quantity, and then finding the relations between these quantities. Discoveries in science and their technical applications have been such that faith in religion has been replaced by faith in science; salvation is sought in science. Descartes believed he had laid the groundwork for this scientific development, in which he himself participated. Proof of this faith is that all governments insist on the need to invest in the development of scientific research.
The rise of Social and Human Sciences (SHS) can also be explained as a result of the new vision of man that came with Cartesianism. Even these fields, if they wanted to be called sciences, could not escape mathematization, which became a necessary tool in their investigations. The mathematical model is considered scientific. Informatics continues to be the ultimate expression of the Cartesian fact. Currently, there is talk of the digital world project, a world expressed only with zeros and ones. In a computer, there are no contradictions that are not derived from established principles. Deduction is always perfect. The need to mathematize continues to dominate.
Autonomy of Reason from Faith
Mathematization alone would not have caused scientific development if it had not been accompanied by reason independent of faith. Only reason independent of religion can reach the truth. Descartes thus becomes a basic reference for the process of secularization. Once reason has separated from faith, science can discover laws without needing them to be tested by any authority other than scientific experience. Development and secularization are, at least in the West, parallel processes. Nonetheless, pressure continues to keep faith as a criterion of truth, as seen, for example, in the Vatican’s criticisms against genetic research.
Modernity and Individualism
The separation of reason and faith has not only brought about the development and mathematization of science but has also contributed to the appearance of atheistic and agnostic positions. Descartes was neither one nor the other, although these ideas were present in his project. Reason, according to Descartes, achieves certainty. Modernity, however, has lost God, but also rationalist optimism: contemporary man no longer thinks he has a reason powerful enough to affirm the existence of God clearly and distinctly. Optimistic rationalism led to agnostic rationalism.
The second part of the Discourse makes it clear that the thinking subject imposes itself as the criterion for truth:
It is true what my reason decides is true.
Probably few statements so strong and with such consequences have echoed in the history of thought. Now, Descartes defends a realistic rationalist subjectivism: reason is the same in all men. It is here where the roots of the individualism, so criticized in modern society, lie.