"This is similar to the way in which we know that the last link in a long chain is connected to the first: even if we cannot take in at one glance all the intermediate links on which the connection depends, we can have knowledge of the connection provided we survey the links one after the other, and keep in mind that each link from first to last is attached to its neighbour."
— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Author
Place of Publication
Amsterdam
Publisher
P. and J. Blaeu
Date
w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701
Metaphor
"This is similar to the way in which we know that the last link in a long chain is connected to the first: even if we cannot take in at one glance all the intermediate links on which the connection depends, we can have knowledge of the connection provided we survey the links one after the other, and keep in mind that each link from first to last is attached to its neighbour."
Metaphor in Context
There may be some doubt here about our reason for suggesting another mode of knowing in addition to intuition, viz. deduction, by which we mean the inference of something as following necessarily from some other propositions which are known with certainty. But this distinction had to be made, since very many facts which are not self-evident are known with certainty, provided they are inferred from true and known principles through a continuous and uninterrupted movement of thought in which each individual proposition is clearly intuited. This is similar to the way in which we know that the last link in a long chain is connected to the first: even if we cannot take in at one glance all the intermediate links on which the connection depends, we can have knowledge of the connection provided we survey the links one after the other, and keep in mind that each link from first to last is attached to its neighbour. Hence we are distinguishing mental intuition from certain deduction on the grounds that we are aware of a movement or a sort of sequence in the latter but not in the former, and also because immediate self-evidence is not required for deduction, as it is for intuition; deduction in a sense gets its certainty from memory. It follows that those propositions which are immediately inferred from first principles can be said to be known in one respect through intuition, and in another respect through deduction. But the first principles themselves are known only through intuition, and the remote conclusions only through deduction.
(Rule 3, p. 15)
(Rule 3, p. 15)
Categories
Provenance
Past Masters
Citation
Reading Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothof, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985).
See Opuscula posthuma, physica et mathematica (Amsterdam: P. and J. Blaeu, 1701).
Not published in Descartes' lifetime. Dutch translation in 1684; published in Latin in 1701.
See Opuscula posthuma, physica et mathematica (Amsterdam: P. and J. Blaeu, 1701).
Not published in Descartes' lifetime. Dutch translation in 1684; published in Latin in 1701.
Date of Entry
10/01/2003
Date of Review
01/24/2004
