"Rene Descartes - Truth in the Sciences" - читать интересную книгу автора (Descartes Rene)

The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many
parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.

The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with
objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and
little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex;
assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their
own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.

And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews
so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.

The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by means of which
geometers are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most
difficult demonstrations, had led me to imagine that all things,
to the knowledge of which man is competent, are mutually connected
in the same way, and that there is nothing so far removed from us
as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it,
provided only we abstain from accepting the false for the true, and
always preserve in our thoughts the order necessary for the deduction
of one truth from another. And I had little difficulty in determining
the objects with which it was necessary to commence, for I was already
persuaded that it must be with the simplest and easiest to know, and,
considering that of all those who have hitherto sought truth in the sciences,
the mathematicians alone have been able to find any demonstrations, that is,
any certain and evident reasons, I did not doubt but that such must have been
the rule of their investigations. I resolved to commence, therefore, with the
examination of the simplest objects, not anticipating, however, from this any
other advantage than that to be found in accustoming my mind to the love and
nourishment of truth, and to a distaste for all such reasonings as were
unsound. But I had no intention on that account of attempting to master all
the particular sciences commonly denominated mathematics: but observing that,
however different their objects, they all agree in considering only the
various relations or proportions subsisting among those objects, I thought
it best for my purpose to consider these proportions in the most general
form possible, without referring them to any objects in particular, except
such as would most facilitate the knowledge of them, and without by any
means restricting them to these, that afterwards I might thus be the
better able to apply them to every other class of objects to which they
are legitimately applicable. Perceiving further, that in order to
understand these relations I should sometimes have to consider them one by
one and sometimes only to bear them in mind, or embrace them in the
aggregate, I thought that, in order the better to consider them
individually, I should view them as subsisting between straight lines,
than which I could find no objects more simple, or capable of being more
distinctly represented to my imagination and senses; and on the other
hand, that in order to retain them in the memory or embrace an aggregate
of many, I should express them by certain characters the briefest
possible. In this way I believed that I could borrow all that was best