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The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy for Modern

Philosophy of Science

Gerd Buchdahl

The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 1 / Issue 03 / June 1963, pp 227 - 249
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087400001485, Published online: 05 January 2009

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Gerd Buchdahl (1963). The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy for Modern Philosophy of
Science. The British Journal for the History of Science, 1, pp 227-249 doi:10.1017/
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THE RELEVANCE OF DESCARTES'S PHILOSOPHY
FOR MODERN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
By GERD BUCHDAHL
SUMMARY
I. Reputed shortcomings of Descartes as philosopher of science.
II 'Knowledge' in mathematics and in physics.
The 'ontologicaF postulates of Descartes's philosophy and philosophy of physics.
III. The 'foundations of dynamics': 'Newton's First Law of Motion' and its status.
IV. Descartes's conception of 'hypothesis': the competing claims of the ideal of the
a priori in physics and the conception of retroductive inference. (The status of
the mechanistic world picture.)
V. Descartes's notion of 'analysis'. The distinction between 'procedure' and
'inference'. The notion of 'induction' and 'understanding through models':
'Snell's Law of Refraction'.
I
HISTORIANS of Science often refer to Descartes as one of the two 'prophets'
of modern science, Bacon being the other. They mean that he was the first
great philosophical figure of the scientific revolution that gave shape to the
principles of scientific thinking. Yet at the same time, they frequently, too,
pass some harsh criticisms on his work. They accuse him of having followed
a too one-sided approach. Their critical objections, right or wrong, may
perhaps be listed under the following by no means exhaustive headings:
(1) Descartes's approach to science was too 'rationalistic', too
deductive. Instead of patiently moving from observations classified and
processed into laws towards more comprehensive theories, he was too
inclined to start with a few all-embracing principles, thereafter trying to
reason downwards, fondly hoping that experience would bear him out; or
worse, ignoring and repressing the verdict of experience.
(2) Moreover, he is accused of attributing to his general starting-
principles a peculiar epistemological status: namely that of being 'self-
evident' ; deliverances of what was in the seventeenth century called 'the
light of reason' (or 'natural light'). Thus, for instances, in the Discourse,
Part v, he writes:
I have always adhered to my resolution not to accept any principles . . . as
true that did not appear clearer and more certain than the demonstrations of the
geometers formerly did. (Adam and Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, 1956, vi,
p. 41.)
And of course, his famous 'first rule' in the Discourse will also here
be quoted:
To accept nothing as true which I did not evidently know to be such (A.T.,
vi, p. 18).
(3) This reference to the Geometers reminds us of a third accusation:
Descartes was deeply impressed by what appeared to him a demand of the
seventeenth century scientist sine qua non: a demand expressed poetically
by Galileo, when in his Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems
THE BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE VOL. i NO. 3 (1963)
228 GERD BUCHDAHL
(Third Day, trans. Stillman Drake, 1953, p. 406) he criticizes Gilbert for
an insufficient attention to or employment of mathematics, which—so he
complains—has made it impossible for Gilbert's conclusions to be 'necessary
and eternal'. Now Descartes, so we are told, misunderstood this; instead of
treating mathematics as a tool, he treated it as an object;1 he imagined that
scientific knowledge could take on the character of mathematical know-
ledge ; that such an idea at least could make sense. And with this, of course,
he confused the realm of the synthetic, or a posteriori, with that of the
analytic, or a priori.
(4) Connected with all these points there are also a number of minor
and more specific criticisms.
(a) Descartes's views concerning the nature of 'matter', themselves
generated by a delusive rationalism, had the consequence of seemingly
offering the promise that all phenomena of nature could be explained
on the basis of a mechanistic scheme: viz. matter in motion. But this is
plainly impossible. As Descartes himself occasionally admits, this is far
too general a starting point.
(b) Descartes's deductivism prevented him from having any clear ideas
concerning the place of 'hypothesis' in science.
(c) Connected with this, he had no inkling of a proper falsification
procedure; his natural phenomena, when he considers them at all, are
selected so as to illustrate, at most back up, his general principles; they
are not intended to function 'retroductively' as genuine tests for them.
(d) Indeed, the criticism goes so far as to suggest that Descartes, in much
of what he wrote on cosmology, meteorology, magnetism, geology,
etc., was doing no more than composing 'un beau roman'—as the son
of one of Descartes's closest friends, Christian Huygens, was later to
remark.
(e) Again, and finally, connected with the peculiar epistemological status
of his starting point, Descartes in applying his views to science proper,
is accused of yet another queer error. When we read the 5th rule of the
Regulae, we shall find that as an important aspect of his method he
advocates breaking down complex data into simpler ones, until we
reach the simplest. And the idea seems to be that when we have done
this, we shall be able to perform a peculiar feat, which Descartes
describes as 'intuition'. And once again the critics tell us that the
postulation of such a faculty of intuition is entirely gratuitous—at
least when considered as a logical feature—as an answer to the require-
ment that we should not accept as true anything but what we have first
intuited.

Now of course, it is not likely that we shall have ready at hand answers
to all these reproaches. Some are certainly justified: but even when they
1
For this, see C. C. Gillispie, Tht Edge oj Objectivity, 1960, Ch. 3, especially p. 93.
 The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy 229
are, often a little understanding of the context in which Descartes postulated
these features; a preliminary grasp of the sort ofexamples which served him
to formulate his doctrines; a realization that much of what he has to say is
as yet in a state of philosophical flux, and is only misleadingly interpreted in
terms of the harsh, as well as hard-and-fast, distinctions which later ages
were to import into it; all this may go a considerable way towards depriving
some of the controversial aspects of Descartes's theories of their look of the
apparently bizarre.
But I want to go further: I want to say that in some cases where these
earlier criticisms seemed very plausible, we may now find that we were
wrong to insist on working with terminological distinctions that we take to
be hard and fast, when Descartes does not consider them thus; if only
because we have more recently found ourselves how difficult it is to make
these distinctions clear when they are looked at more carefully; consider
for instance the distinction between the analytic and the synthetic.
Moreover, I want to say that we may frequently even misrepresent the
spirit of Descartes's enterprise, simply through misunderstanding his
philosophical language by reading it with the preconceptions of a later age.
Whereas if we modify his language to bring it into line with modern jargon,
we may find that his views still deserve to be treated with considerable
respect. This point I shall try to illustrate through an example from his
theory of dynamics.
And furthermore: often it is not that Descartes disagrees with us; it is
just that he has not realized the problems surrounding some of the more
common and universal conceptions with which without any doubt he has
been operating; and which have become suppressed in his writings, or
under-emphasized, simply because he was preoccupied with other tasks.
Later commentators may then easily lull themselves into the belief that
these conceptions are entirely absent, with fatal consequences for their
understanding of Descartes's positive doctrines. This I shall try to illustrate
by means of his doctrine of hypothesis, sometimes discussed by him involving
the explicit use of this term, sometimes through the alternative notion of
'analysis'.2
And again: when we closely study Descartes's groping attempts to
formulate, not a logic, but a method for the discovery of hypothesis3—
however mistaken this conception may be if looked at in the rough—we
shall at least find that often his ideals misrepresent to himself his own
doctrines and his own achievements, simply because he argues in terms of
certain paradigm situations, or certain methodological examples. The
philosophical principles which he draws from a study of these examples are
frequently no more than very vague or fluid appraisals of the main features
2
For details on this, see my 'Descartes's Anticipation of a Logic of Scientific Discovery', in
A. C. Crombie (ed.), Scientific Change, London, 1963.
3 For this distinction, see also my 'The Philosophical Basis of Physics', in Contemporary Physics,
3, 1962, 282-394, section 1.
230 GERD BUCHDAHL
they themselves exhibit; often no more than paradoxical summaries of
them. In this way, a key-term like 'intuition', for example, may come to
embrace a richer meaning, and find a 'concrete' foundation, giving it an
'empirical sense', where previously we had no more than a demand for
justification.4 Here, as elsewhere in philosophy, the counters with which
Descartes was operating were all-important. After all, a philosopher does
not make scientific discoveries. He reflects on his thinking; and in doing
so, the first crude thing he often does is to employ certain paradigm-
situations, which guide and direct him in his enquiry. All this I shall try to
illustrate from yet another aspect of Descartes's scientific work, his
achievements in the theory of optics. And in connection with that we shall
discover—surprising though this may be—that the notion of 'intuition'
receives in the hands of Descartes—perhaps unawares—the novel and
interesting interpretation of 'reasoning round models'. A fact which will
illustrate further my remarks about misreading the 'language' in which a
philosopher discusses his philosophical points.

II
Before discussing the examples that I have mentioned, I should,
however, perhaps make a cursory reference to some at least of the general
criticisms that I have mentioned as having been passed on Descartes's
philosophical standpoint. First then, as to the confusion or unification of
mathematics and physics, and the more general contention that one can
build a universe from a unitary starting-point; an approach formulated by
the later Descartes through his celebrated 'Cogito'.
In a sense, the confusion is not so much a confusion as a demand,
raised already on the part of the Descartes of the Regulae: we are not to
speak of'knowledge', unless it be mathematical or logical in nature. Thus,
to grasp properly the difference between a yellow and a green patch, you
need to translate that difference into something geometrical; and he offers
us the model of the horizontal and the diagonal lines (cp. Regulae, 12, A.T.,
x, 414). More generally, physical enquiry proceeds by comparison of things
with one another; and these are grasped in all their clarity and distinctness
only when reduced to ratios that 'can be formed to hold between two or
more extensions'—remembering here also the close relation between
extension and number! (Cp. Regulae, 14, A.T., x, 447.)
In other words, we may admit that Descartes speaks as though he
were saying that the world is mathematical; but we may also insist that
this meant perhaps no more than that as a scientist he insists that no more
is to be counted as scientific knowledge than can be pressed into a mathemat-
ical framework. It is in this way, perhaps, that we should interpret the
4 For a case-study of the relations between technical exemplification as against thejustification-
use of fundamental philosophical terms, see my Aristotle, Induction and Necessity, Pamphlet of the
Aquinas Society, 1963.
 The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy 231
celebrated doctrine that matter = extension; that—as he writes in Le
Monde (ch. 6, A.T., xi, 36)—'matter differs no more from its substance
than does number from things numbered'; this from a passage which is
meant to lead up to his demonstration of certain laws of mechanics. To this
we shall return.
Let us compare for a moment such a view with Locke's conception of
mathematical knowledge in Bk. 4 of the Essay Concerning Human Understand-
ing. Mathematical knowledge is real knowledge, Locke tells us, because
when we apply mathematics to the world,
real things are no farther concerned . . . than as things really agreeing to
those archetypes in the mind. Is it true of the idea of the triangle, that its three
angles are equal to two right ones? It is true also of a triangle, wherever it really
exists. Whatever other figure exists, that is not exactly answerable to that idea of
a triangle in his mind, is not at all concerned in that proposition (iv, 4, 6).
'But', so you will perhaps object, 'despite such procrustean tendencies
on the part of Locke, you must at least admit that his idea of'knowledge' in
the sense of awareness of relations between our ideas, i.e. as of purely formal
relationships of logic and mathematics, is with him something more
sophisticated or technical; and that moreover Locke did at least extend to
what he calls 'sensitive' (i.e. sensory) knowledge this honorific epithet (of
knowledge); even if he says that it is much narrower and precarious than
the former.' To this I reply that though all this be true, Locke is clearly still
making the distinction between the two kinds of knowledge ostensibly a
matter of degree rather than one of difference in kind. Secondly, and
perhaps more important because so often ignored, Descartes, too, allows a
place to empirical knowledge. And it is by no means obvious that he has
(any more than Locke) grasped that this is a knowledge of a different kind;
for with him, too, these epistemological matters are still all in a state of
flux.5 In other words, at least to a certain extent, the difference between
Locke and Descartes (described by the more conventionalist histories as
one between 'empiricism' and 'rationalism') is often no more than a
difference of tone, emphasis, rather than substance. For instance, for both
Descartes and Locke, secondary qualities are in some definite sense not
qualities inhering in bodies. But only Descartes (and not Locke) describes our
knowledge of such qualities as something that he only 'learns from nature',
something that is part of the 'teaching of nature' and which he, more
sharply than Locke, contrasts with what can be grasped 'by the mind
alone' (cp. Med., 6). And only Descartes (as mentioned in footnote 5)
5 For a discussion by Descartes of the nature of sensory knowledge, see Meditations, 6, A.T.,
ix, 57fF., noting especially his doctrine of the 'teaching of nature', his calling 'sensings . . . con-
fused modes of thinking'; and his contention that 'sensuous apprehensions have been given me
by nature only as testifying to my mind what things are beneficial or harmful'—a doctrine
reminiscent of Hume's subsequent doctrine. It is only when it is pointed out (rightly or wrongly)
that sense is not confused thought (cp. Kant, Crit. of Pure Reason, B57; Prolegomena, §13, Note III),
that we realize that there it a distinction in kind; a distinction which has of course become a
commonplace since the 18th century, though questioned once again in more recent times, by such
writers as Quine, Waismann, and Wittgenstein.
232 GERD BUCHDAHL
says that 'sensory apprehensions' can be said to be knowledge in no more
than a purely pragmatic sense; they have been 'given me by nature only as
testifying to my mind what things are beneficial or harmful . . . ' (ibid.);
although as we know Locke and to some extent Hume also held similar
views with regard to our knowledge at least of universal propositions.
Indeed Locke's view of synthetic or empirical knowledge of the properties
of bodies studied by science is that it is something 'conventional', or at least
thatit lacks the character of'knowledge'-—is pure 'opinion' or 'convenience'.
In other words, both the 'rationalists' and the 'empiricists' are, at this
stage, not very clear as to the distinction between mathematical or logical,
and physical knowledge. Sometimes they make it only a difference of
degree; at others they share the opinion that physical knowledge falls short
of the stringent requirements of the other kind, whilst failing to see that
this is perhaps not so much a deficiency as the presence of a difference in
kind. Now, that there is such a distinction in kind is itself a philosophical
point of view. Descartes's position (as well as that of his contemporaries)
might be viewed therefore as one of a number of possible responses to the
strains and stresses arising out of a complex situation produced by reflection
on the interaction between mathematics and science. Even Descartes's
'errors' (if errors they be) would then take on a new look and become a
matter of philosophical importance, particularly when considered in the
light of the sort of considerations and paradigm-situations which formed
the background of his intellectual activities.
Most of the time, then, these things are differences of tone, rather than
of substance. How indeed could they be anything else ? To suppose the
contrary would imply a peculiar notion of philosophy, or at least of
metaphysics. And the difference in tone, the attachment of greater
pragmatic importance to certain ideals, say that of mathematical, or of
'clear and distinct' knowledge on the part of Descartes, shows that he is
tempted to supplement the narrowed realm of what is left by certain
additional, as it were 'opaque' conceptions; such as when he tells us that
though sensory apprehensions are not knowledge, yet they are not nothing,
since 'God is no deceiver'! Which is to say that though empii ical, non-
mathematical propositions (the 'teaching of nature') do not come up
intrinsically to the standard of mathematical knowledge, yet they are
none the less perfectly dependable. Alter knowledge to 'knowledge' (in
quotation marks), and we almost see before ourselves the figure of Hume! 6
6
Compare: We 'know' that the sun will rise tomorrow because our inference from past
occasions of this sort is dependable in the light of the 'uniformity of nature'. And compare also
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. 107: 'By diligent observation of the phenomena
within our view, we may discover the general laws of nature, and from them deduce the other
phenomena, I do not say demonstrate; for all deductions of that kind depend on a supposition
that the Author of nature always operates uniformly, and in a constant observance of those rules
we take for principle: which we cannot evidently know.' Berkeley is usually called a 'British
Empiricist'! (On this, see also my 'Inductive Process and Inductive Inference', Ausl. J. Phil., 34,
1956, 164-181, especially sect. i).
 The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy 233
We cannot pursue this track here further; it is only a sketch of an
answer to some of the charges of a vicious 'rationalism' referred to in my
initial remarks. Much more would certainly have to be said concerning
Descartes's later attempt to found his ideal of knowledge on the 'Cogito',
and the famous alleged circularities that inhere in this attempt. But even
here it is often forgotten that Descartes's world is not built on the possession
of an ideated content alone, nor on the 'inference' that the 'content' of the
conception of thinking entails the 'act'—if that were a permissible inference!
(Which is perhaps a possible meaning of the 'cogito, ergo sum'.) Rather,
when in Discourse, 5 (A.T., vi, p. 43), he says that he has built his science on
'no other principle . . . except the infinite perfection of God', though he
forgets to mention a few minor premisses, he means what he says: he has
indeed built it at least on that in addition to the Cogito. Which—if you study
carefully the passage relating to his conception of the perfection of God—
has built into it some very important additions and admissions, additions
which will help me to to bring out the significance of Descartes's attempt to
supply metaphysical foundations for science, the essential ones being as
follows. At least twice Descartes provides a putative 'ontological' supple-
ment to his 'ideas'. First, when he attempts to prove that some among these
ideas derive their source from a ground other than the self, e.g. external
things or God, where he has of course to assume a version of the causal
principle7 (e.g. Med., 3, 6). This amounts to saying that (at least in certain
cases) if there is representationally perceived to be more in the world than
myself, then there is also more, in a sense of 'being', which exceeds that
derived from the mere 'teaching of nature'. 8 Secondly, and more important
for the purpose of my later discussion, Descartes has a general argument
that if two ideas are conceived or apprehended as distinct, then they must
be considered (at least virtually) as distinct (Med., 6, A.T., ix, p. 62). Now
in certain cases this is not fatal; e.g. though 7, 5, 12 are distinct, I can yet
intuit the relation of 7 + 5 to 12 to be a necessary one (Cp. Reg., 12, A.T.,
x, 421). But sometimes I cannot do this; thus, I must consider body
distinct from mind. But now if I consider the existence, say of that table—or,
to take Descartes's example, of myself—divided into innumerable distinctly
apprehended moments, again it does not look as though from the existence
of one moment, I could derive or conclude that of another; one—says
Descartes—'does not follow' from the other (A.T., ix, 39). The Latin text
has 'non sequitur'. This reminds us at once that they do not necessitate one
another because they do not come up to the ideal of clarity of connection
set up by Descartes. But, says Descartes, on the other hand clearly we do—
or at least putatively do—continue as existing substances. From this fact—

7 But note what is said below, p. 236 about Descartes's versions of the causal principle.
8 See also Kemp Smith, New Studies in the Philosophy of Descartes, 1952, p. 301: 'The centre of
gravity of Descartes' philosophy thus shifts away from the self to that which in thought is disclosed
to the self, as other than the self, and as preconditioning the self, etc. This is a comment on the
passage in the Meditations, iii, but it has also quite general significance.
234 GERD BUCHDAHL
really: putative 'fact'—together with the lack of any 'sequitur', he concludes
that God creates everything every moment, or—which is the same thing—
conserves it.
If this is a confusion, it is of a similar kind to that whereby we try to
justify induction by reference to a synthetic a priori principle, e.g. like that
of the 'Uniformity of Nature'. What the argument really amounts to is that
I cannot 'know' that any reality will continue to exist as a substance—and
this complaint is not (epistemologically speaking) absolutely unlike the
complaint that we cannot know whether the sun will rise tomorrow.
Descartes seems to be feeling that the connection is not like a mathematical
one; nor, on the other hand, is it like an empirical contingency; and so he
offers us an 'ontological basis'. But that basis, God's conserving activity is
as yet, and so far, 'idling'; it still needs to be given a sense. Now the important
sense that Descartes elsewhere chooses to give it is this: God preserves
certain things, or certain things in a certain state, exactly as they are; he
conserves certain important 'candidates for conservation'. We may call
this an empirical tightening of an ontological basis. When this is done, we
get something like a 'regulative principle': e.g. that certain dynamical
entities are candidates for conservation. Now this is a result which we shall
presently employ in turning to the question of the 'foundations of dynamics'.
For the moment, we note the many-sided ingredients that have gone into
what Descartes sometimes calls the 'metaphysical basis of science'. True,
the physicist of our own day will not normally consider these aspects
matters of great importance to his more technical preoccupation; he has
long since handed them to the philosopher of science. None the less, these
aspects cannot ultimately be ignored: the question of the relation of
physics to mathematics; of the foundation of induction; of the importance
of regulative principles for the stage of 'consolidation' of our primary
hypotheses.

Ill
Let us turn, then, to dynamics. Here belongs the charge offalsely trying
to base science on rational principles. Let us see what it amounts to. There
are 'certain laws', writes Descartes at the beginning of the fifth section of
the Discourse,
which God has so established in nature, and of which He has impressed such
notions in our souls, that once we have reflected sufficiently upon them, we can no
longer doubt their being accurately observed in all that exists or happens in the
world. (A.T., vi, 41.)
For examples, of course, we must study the works to which Descartes
refers us in this place; above all Le Traite du Monde, or the more mature
version of this work, the second and later parts of the Principles of Philosophy.
My concern will be only with one of these laws; the law bearing a striking
 The Relevance ofDescartes's Philosophy 235
similarity to what is now known as Newton's First Law of Motion, which
in Descartes's formulation in the Principles, ii, 37, 39. reads:
A moving body, so far as it can, goes on moving, [and that] . . . not in any
oblique path, but only in straight lines (A.T., ix, 84-85).
It should be remembered that this is the first printed elucidation of the
law, more than 40 years before the publication of Newton's Principia: it
corrects the false principle of Galileo, according to which bodies continue
to move when not subject to forces, round a common centre, i.e. in a circle! The
remarkable thing is how Descartes elucidates the principle, though we do
not know, of course, anything about his way of discovering it. He brings to
bear two sorts of considerations: (a) observation, together with a considera-
tion of interfering factors; (b) 'rational argument'.
Among the former, he mentions 'our everyday observation of
projectiles' which 'completely confirms this rule'. It is only air, or some
'other fluid in which they are moving' which causes their motion to be
gradually retarded. In illustration, he mentions an analogous phenomenon,
viz. the resistance experienced when we try to beat the air with a fan.
We might describe Descartes's method here as one of'abstraction', the
removal of interfering factors. But this would be an insufficient character-
ization, both on logical as well as historical grounds. For in order to pro-
ceed to the step of abstraction, and indeed, in order to have the intellec-
tual courage to do so (no small matter in our example) it is necessary to
presuppose first a positive norm, something one might call a 'regulative
starting point'. This was provided, of course, for Descartes by his conception
of matter ultimately as isotropic infinite space, distinguished by purely
'passive' metrical properties. Correspondingly, Descartes's 'picture' of the
world was different from that of his predecessors, e.g. the Aristotelians, or
«ven that of Galileo. For Galileo, the ultimate account still includes a
reference to 'centres of gravity' round which the bodies of the universe move
perpetually. To be sure, this is what in fact they do, given the existence of
Newtonian bodies with gravitational properties. But for Galileo the
elimination of the latter was no more than a limiting case, to be used in a
special argumentation. Thus when in the Two New Sciences (cp. Fourth
Day, Dover ed., p. 251-252), he once discusses this possibility through the
case where 'we consider ourselves located at an infinite distance from the
centre . . . ', he adds merely that we must make 'corrections' where the
applied varies from pure theory. But this is a fleeting remark, whereas
Descartes does not consider this case as a limit, but as a 'norm'. In practice,
of course, the two ways of looking at the matter may come to the same
thing, but not when we occupy ourselves with the problem of 'creating
foundations'. It is just because of his inability to treat this case as the
'normal case' that Galileo failed to enunciate the law according to which
bodies in 'empty space' continue to move, not only with uniform speed
236 GERD BUCHDAHL

(Galileo's view), but also in a straight line (a possibility expressly rejected

by him in his earlier Two Chief World Systems (cp. Stillman Drake ed., First
Day, p. i8f). 9
As a result of Descartes's general metaphysical standpoint, then, as
well as of his theory of matter and motion (elucidated in his Principles of
Philosophy, ii, 4-36), he offers us a positive, 'rational', argument in favour of
his law.
To this end, he breaks up the concept of motion into what we now call
its 'scalar' and 'vector' components, i.e. velocity is divided into 'speed' and
'direction', pronouncements concerning the first and the second giving him
his 'first law' and 'second natural law' respectively (cp. Principles, ii, 37-39).
The first law has a 'pure' and an 'applied' version. The pure version
runs as follows:
Every reality, in so far as it is simple and undivided, always remains in the
same condition so far10as it can, and never changes except through external
causes. (A.T., ix, 84.)
This 'law', Descartes tells us, follows 'from God's immutability'—the
French text has: 'from the fact that God is not subject to change, and that
he always acts in the same way.' Note, that the statement has two compon-
ents, one concerning the fact that everything 'en particulier' always has a
tendency to remain in the same condition; the other, that every change is
due to the action of an external cause. (This is still the form in which Kant
—in the Metaphysical Principles of Science, iii, Theorem 3—will 'prove'
Newton's first law!) This is of course a form of the principle of causation as
traditionally understood. But it is necessary here to distinguish carefully
between 'action' with reference to 'external causes', and God's 'action'
which is said always to go on in the same way and which, we must
remember, was invoked by Descartes in order to supply a foundation for the
continued existence of the self. Thus whilst the principle of action in the
latter form guarantees continued existence of anything in a given state, the
earlier form is about an action as producing a 'change of state'. Descartes
does not perhaps always clearly distinguish these; and the precise relation
between them is still an open question. (Cp. Meyerson, Identity and Reality,
Ch. 1, 'Law and Cause'; and Descartes's own formulation in Med., 3,
A.T., ix, 32: 'Something cannot proceed from nothing.' Both authors seem
to argue in favour of some connection between them, at any rate.)
Descartes, after having noted that the shape of a body does not change
9x For all this, cp. A. Koyr£, Etudes Galil^enes, iii, GaliUe et la loi d'inertie, ch. 3 and App. B.
° This is a fairly close version of the original Latin text, of 1644. It was translated into French
by Picot, a friend of Descartes's, and published 3 years later, after having been examined and
corrected by Descartes, who seems to have made frequent alterations and clarifications to the
original. For interest, we therefore add the French version of the law: 'Chaque chose en particulier
continue d'etre en meme £tat autant qu'il se peut, et que jamais elle ne le change que par la
rencontre des autres.' This brings out more clearly dian the Latin that Descartes wants to say that
'every free particle continues in the same state unless . . . ' ; and also that any changes must be due
to impact.
 The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy 237
under the action of an external cause, argues that 'there is no reason to
believe' that motion should not likewise be a candidate for the causal
principle, arriving thus at the 'conclusion': 'A moving body, so far as it
can, goes on moving', this being the 'applied version' of the first law.
The second law is formulated as follows:
Any given piece of matter considered by itself tends to go on moving, not in
any oblique path, but only in straight lines.11
Once again, 'observation confirms this', as may be noted from the
behaviour of stones whirled in a sling. On the other hand, in addition to
experience, there is a 'reason for this rule' also, and this is again 'the
immutability and simplicity of the operation by which God preserves
motion in matter'. Just as God preserves the speed, so He preserves also the
direction which a body has at any particular instant of time." In Le Monde,
Descartes is more explicit, and adds that straight-line motion is the simplest
of all types of motion, being 'the only one whose nature is contained and
realized in an instant'. His reasoning is that we can conceive of the direction
of a body moving in a straight line being determined by considering just
one instant, whereas circular motion, for instance, needs at least two such
instants.
This derivation is remarkable for its elegance. It illustrates what
Descartes meant when he claimed (in Discourse, v, A.T., vi, 43), that as
regards 'the laws of nature',
with no other principle upon which to found my reasonings except the
infinite perfection of God, I endeavoured to demonstrate all those about which
there could be no room for doubt, and to prove that they are such, that even if
God had created more worlds, there could have been none in which these laws
were not observed.
One might think it of course implausible that scientific principles
normally believed to have the status of 'hypotheses' (in the modern
logicians' sense of that term), should be derivable in such an a priori
1x
French version: 'Chaque partie de la matiere, en son particulier, ne tend jamais a continuer
de se12mouvoir suivant des lignes courbes, mais suivant des lignes droites.'
To say that God conserves speed and direction of free particles is to say (I think), negative-
ly, that such conservative tendencies do not follow from the concepts of speed and direction, so that
the resulting statement is not 'analytic' but 'synthetic'. Again, to say that God is immutable, in this
context is Descartes's way of saying that there are conservation laws governing the material
universe, a statement which he would believe to be true though not founded on conclusive
empirical evidence, if evidence at all; we might say it had for him the status of an a priori truth.
Finally, even if there are conservation principles, it does not follow that speed and direction or
momentum (if you add 'mass', a non-Cartesian concept, giving us, via the product of mass and
velocity, the concept of momentum) are the appropriate candidates. This was Leibniz's famous
complaint against the Cartesians; cp. his commentary on the Principles: 'Although the constancy
of God may be supreme, and he may change nothing except in accordance with the laws of the
series already laid down, we must still ask what it is, after all, that he has decreed should be
conserved in the series—whether the quantity of motion [=m v] or something different, such as
the quantity of force.' (Loemker ed., Leibniz's Philosophical Papers and Letters, ii, 42., pp. 648-649, on
Article 36 of the Principles.) Leibniz's reference to 'force' is to what we call vis viva, mv2, the
conservation of which was discovered by Leibniz, partly as an attempt to show that purely
geometrical characteristics were insufficient to exhaust a description of the nature of the universe,
contrary to the opinion of the Cartesians.
238 GERD BUCHDAHL
fashion, whilst still 'true' of the world! Of course, there is no reason why
one should not stumble upon such principles by the use of the deductive
method, but there is always the suspicion that—as Kant once put it—13
the philosopher has so steered reason that by means of a very slight twisting
of the grounds of his argument, aided and abetted by some surreptitious side-
glances at certain observations and experimental results, he arrives just at the
point where his trusting pupil had least suspected, viz. that conclusion which
everyone had known already beforehand to be the object of the proof.
Kant's hint is well taken, for on further investigation we do indeed
find that Descartes has inserted (perhaps unconsciously) additional
definitions and postulates and conceptual formulations which themselves
are either empirical matters, or at least such as are built into the mathe-
matical and conceptual framework of dynamics in general. For instance:
(1) He postulates that motion is a state of the body. (2) Though at Principles,
ii, 27 he tells us that 'translation can have no being outside the moving
body', and is hence a state of the body (like rest), he yet has a relativist
definition of translation (cp. ii, 25), whilst none the less ignoring the possible
dynamical consequences which follow from relativity. For this he need not
be blamed any more than other physicist before Einstein; however, we
clearly have here an additional empirical premiss, coming pretty close to
the very law of inertia he purports to prove!
(3) As regards its scalar component, motion is tacitly assumed to be
definable as 'rate of change of displacement with respect to time'. In this
way, unchanged motion comes to mean uniform speed. As Poincare once
pointed out, uniform motion (the motion with which we couple the
application of the principle of causality), could equally well be defined as
uniform acceleration.14
(4) Descartes, at Principles, ii, 39, remarks that the direction of a body at a
point P of a curved trajectory in which it is moving is given by the tangent
to the curve at P. Now whilst the definition of a tangent to a curve is a
matter for mathematics (and one with which Descartes had concerned
himself for a considerable time previously), it is not self-evident that tangent
defines the direction.
(5) Nor does it follow even then that we have reached an unambiguous
definition of direction of a body moving inertially in empty space, since this
may not be Euclidean.
It cannot therefore be said that Descartes manages to deduce Newton's
First Law of Motion from the Existence and Immutability of God alone,
still less from the Cogito. This does not however necessarily invalidate
13 In Dreams of a Spiritualist, ii, 2, in Works, Hartenstein ed., 1868, ii, p. 366-367.
*4 For Poincare's views on the law of inertia, see his Science and Hypothesis, iii, 6, the section on
The Principle of Inertia; also G. J. Whitrow, 'On the Foundations of Dynamics', in Brit. J. Phil. Sci.,
i> 195°. 92-'°7> on Newton's First Law; and my article on the Second Law, in Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 2,
1951, 217-235, concerning the relations between testing and conceptual formulation of such
fundamental laws.
 The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy 239
Descartes's general point, viz. that the foundations of the First Law are not
to be sought for in a straightforward 'derivation from the phenomena' (as
Newton was later to claim),15 since it can be shown to be extremely difficult
to limit oneself to 'phenomena' alone for the purpose of testing Newton's
Laws without presupposing them. More likely, these laws are rather part
of the conceptual framework of dynamics, making the formulation of
subsidiary laws, and the description of dynamical phenomena, possible.
What I want to say, then, is that Descartes in fact tried to chart out the
conceptual foundations of dynamics. And we can now see that it was no
accident that this matter was treated conceptually rather than empirically;
the status of the first law with respect to Newtonian dynamics is really such
as to make it and the other fundamental laws of that science possess the
status of implicit definitions.16 There is the right air about Descartes's
attempt; it brings out something about the fundamental language of
dynamics that is being defined in formulating the First Law; and he does
this as much by his omissions—for which of course he cannot receive any
credit—as well as his commissions: indicating the close relationship of the
law to our conceptions of causation, of the definition of velocity, of
Euclidean space, etc. If we read his claim to have based his dynamics on
metaphysics in this way, it makes sense; although we should nowadays
demand more conclusive proof of the empirical support of these laws,
through the method of retroductive testing.
Not that Descartes was unaware of this! On the contrary, he claimed
that (alas) he could deduce only too many consequences; and indeed,
experiment for him had mainly the function here of deciding which among
the deductions were in fact unrealizable. It is here that the scientific feel
and the tone are different from that of later science: observational facts are
not the touchstone of truth. At least, we cannot be sure whether if there
had been a conflict, Descartes would have abandoned fact or principles.
Yet, if the former, would even this have been so unmodern ?

IV
With these considerations I want to turn, very briefly, to my next
point which concerns Descartes's conception of 'hypothesis'; and the
question of his awareness of this notion in his methodological armory.
Descartes meets the idea in various ways, and is almost forced to press it
into service for a variety of motives. Owing to lack of space I will just
briefly enumerate these motives.
(1) Hypotheses, to start, mean temporary stepping-stones, similar to the
place this notion has in Plato; such 'assumptions', as he explains in a letter
'5 'These principles [sc. laws of motion] are deduced from the phenomena and made general
by induction, which is the highest evidence that a proposition can have in this philosophy.' (From
a letter
16
to Cotes, in H. S. Thayer (ed.), Newton's Philosophy of Nature, 1953, p. 6.)
For this term, see, for instance, Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation, Cambridge, 1952, pp. ^^{.,
1 oof.
240 GERD BUCHDAHL

to Vatier, must be viewed as ultimately derivable, in principle at least, from

the laws of dynamics, and—like these—from metaphysics. Hypotheses, in
this sense, are subsidiary physical propositions.
(2) In connection with biological problems, he makes a similar claim.
(Cp. Discourse v.) But when we study the text there in greater detail we find
he is only claiming that the hypotheses of biology must all ultimately be
''mechanistic' in kind. It is not that they are deducible from mechanical
principles: they are only in conformity with them.17
(3) Sometimes, hypothesis means 'fable'; and then it is used to avoid
theological persecution. (E.g. Principles, iii, 44-45.)
(4) More important, he is quite clear that concerning the minute
corpuscularian constitution of bodies one can only make hypotheses, and
reason backwards, using analogy. (Cp. Principles, iv, 201-204.)
(5) More radically still, he writes in a general vein to Mersenne, that to
'require from me geometrical demonstrations, in a question which concerns
physics is to ask me to do the impossible' (A.T., Correspondence, ii, 142).
(6) But even when discussing 'hypotheses' in the first sense, in which they
are stepping-stones, hoped-for derivables from 'metaphysical first princi-
ples', astonishingly Descartes suddenly shows a perfectly clear grasp of the
modern logic of inverse-deductive reasoning. In the very same Discourse, in
which we find all his various remarks concerning the 'clear and the
distinct' starting points, we read towards the end the following passage:
Some of the things of which I have spoken at the beginning of the Dioptrique18
and the Meteores may seem shocking at first sight, because I call them hypotheses
and do not seem to have tried to prove them. I hope however that the reader will
be satisfied if he has the patience to study the whole book attentively. For it seems
to me that the reasonings are mutually connected in such a way that as the
deductions from the hypotheses are demonstrated by the latter which are their
causes, so the hypotheses themselves are in turn proved by the deductions which
are their effects. Nor should we imagine that thereby I commit the fallacy called
by logicians reasoning in a circle. For since experience renders the majority of
these effects quite certain, the causes from which I deduce them serve not so
much to prove but to explain them; indeed, it is on the contrary the causes that are
proved by the effects19 (A.T., vi, 76; my italics).
J
7 For some evaluations of Descartes' biological approach, see for instance Jean Rostand,
'Descartes et la Biologie' in his L'Atomisme en Biologie, 1956, pp. 152-161, especially 156-157,
emphasizing Descartes's preoccupation with mechanistic models. Also, J. A. Passmore, 'William
Harvey and the Philosophy of Science', Aust.J. Phil., 36, 1958, 85-94, which contrasts Harvey
with 18Descartes.
The passage to which Descartes is here referring is quoted below (p. 245), where I discuss
it in connection with Descartes's notions of analysis and models.
'9 My translation of this important passage slightly varies from that of most of Descartes's
commentators. Cp. also E. Gilson's commentary on the Discourse, pp. 470-474, which cites
correspondence throwing further light on the questions involved, particularly the letter to Vatier,
22.2.1638, in which Descartes explains that he thought it sufficient in the Dioptrique to supply
'a posteriori demonstrations'; that to try to give a priori demonstration of everything would have
involved an exposition of the whole of his physics; but finally, that since he believes himself
capable in principle to deduce these suppositions from the first principles of his metaphysics (as he
will also say in the Discourse presently!), there doesn't seem to be any need to go in for any detailed
a priori physical proofs (literally: " . . . for any other sorts of proofs . . . ' ) . Moreover, he goes on, it
 The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy 241
This is of course as unexceptional a statement of retroductive inference as
anyone could want. But how can it be reconciled with what follows
immediately afterwards ?
I have called them hypotheses in order that it may be known that I believe
myself able to deduce them from those primary truths which I have explained
above (ibid.).
And he goes on to say that he has not supplied the details of this
deduction only so as not to make it too easy for any tyro to use his work
without deep study! The simplest interpretation to put on this would be to
say that Descartes has not grasped the difficulty, the contradiction, that lies
hidden in this attempted combination of retroductive and deductive
inference, with its assumption of a sort of pre-established harmony! For as
we already noted (with our quotation from Kant on p. 238), the idea
that pure reflection on the concepts of science could produce detailed
principles otherwise establishable retroductively on the basis of observation
and experiment is somewhat far-fetched. The most that we might say is
that the concepts in terms of which the results of observation and experiment
are expressed frequently depend in part at least for their meaning on the
higher-level axioms of the theory of which they form a part: there exists a
sort of essential 'complementarity' between 'fact' and 'theory' which was
later to be emphasized byWhewell at great length. (Philosophy ofthe Inductive
Sciences, 1840, vol. 1, I. i. 2.)
Anyway, it is possible that Descartes only claims for his hypotheses a
compatibility with the general principles of mechanics, but not necessarily
deducibility without further assumptions; and that interpretation agrees
also with what we have found him saying about the place of experiment,
which is, to decide which of the many deductions do actually possess
empirical significance (Cp. Principles, iii, 4). The 'mechanical foundation'
would then be a sort of general presupposition, rather than a set of higher-
level axioms. And this makes the more sense, if we realize what Descartes
may actually have meant by a 'metaphysical basis' for his fundamental
principles of mechanics: viz. the supply of a conceptual foundation. This
suggests that we have been too simple-minded in our interpretation of
Descartes's intentions in science—as though in laying conceptual founda-
tions of dynamics he had been as such and at the same time engaged in offering
evidence or quasi-evidence for the empirical truth of its principles. (But as
Kant was perhaps the first to point out: these things can and should be kept
apart!) Or again, as though he were concerned literally with the linear
deduction of empirical truths (established retroductively) from a trans-
just is not true that you always need to have a priori reasons in order to satisfy truth (persuader unc
verit6), witness Thales's theory that the moon receives its light from the sun, which he can surely
have proved only through the consequence of this hypothesis, i.e. its power to explain, e.g. the
various phases of its light.
242 GERD BUCHDAHL

parent Cognito. Whereas what he was really doing, was to offer a basis
for what we may call 'the consolidation of hypotheses'.
(7) There is an even more radical abandonment of the claim to have
deduced the whole of his physics from higher order principles, in the
cosmological parts of his Principles of Philosophy. For there we suddenly find
the introduction of certain significant subsidiary assumptions, added as
opaque matters of fact, as a sort of boundary conditions, to his primary
principles. By reason, he tells us, we have established
that all bodies in the universe consist of one and the same matter; that this
is divisible arbitrarily into parts, and is actually divided into many pieces with
various motions; that their motion is in a way circular, and that the same
quantity of motion is constantly preserved in the universe {Principles, iii, 46;
A.T., ix, 124).
So far so good, except that we should perhaps remember that facts like
those of the motion of matter, and of the conservation of the quantity of
motion have been shown not so much to follow from the mere conception
of matter as extension (something 'clear and distinct' in Descartes's jargon),
but rather from the ontological argument which adds motion, and the
essential conservation property of motion, to the former assumption.
(Perhaps that is why he says: not only is matter divisable, but it is 'actually
divided', and divided via the fact of 'motion', a motion essentially subject
to the conservation principle.) But now Descartes goes on—and this time
the addition is not by way of an ontological postulate, but through
subsidiary physical hypotheses:
We cannot determine by reason how big these pieces of matter are, how
quickly they move, or what circles they describe. God might have arranged these
things in countless different ways; which way he in fact chose rather than the
rest is a thing we must learn from observation. Therefore, we are free to make
any assumption we like about them, so long as all the consequences agree with
experience {ibid.).
In the light of this I conclude that our estimate of Descartes's
methodological ideas needs revision. It is no good, as some writers have
done, to dismiss such passages as 'the breakdown of Descartes's doctrines'.
Rather, it behoves us to re-interpret those earlier so-called 'rational*
doctrines of the clear and distinct, and of the place which he believed it
needful to reserve for the realm of experience.

V
To conclude, I want to turn to the last of the key-ideas in Descartes's
teaching on science and its method; an aspect which again has given rise to
somewhat extreme interpretations of his thought; which, however, when
studied by means of the actual examples he offers us, takes on an entirely
different appearance.
I have already mentioned that in the Regulae Descartes formulates the
 The Relevance ofDescartes''s Philosophy 243
crucial step in scientific method as being that of resolving complex data
into simpler ones until we reach the basic starting-points, from the 'intuition'
of which we may move backwards or upwards in the opposite direction.
(Cp. Rule 5, A.T., x, 379). These two complementary motions he calls the
methods of'analysis' and 'synthesis'.20
Now what he says about the method of analysis relates in a striking
way to some of the views which we have seen him already profess concern-
ing the notion of the 'validation' of hypotheses; which was that you prove
them from their consequences; it is as though you moved from the conse-
quences, from the data, to the hypothesis. This, however, is a logical move;
the move often called, following Charles Peirce, retroductive inference.
Moreover, corresponding to this logical step, Descartes distinguishes also a
methodological, or rather, procedural advance, from data to hypothesis.
In one or two places of his writings (Discourse, Regulae) he in fact claims
this to have been a specific discovery of his. Thus he tells us that hitherto
scientists have only presented their work in the form of axiomatic treatises
(e.g. Euclid); indicating the steps whereby verifiable consequences have
been deduced from the initial hypotheses or assumptions —cp. the form of
Newton's Principia as a later example of this 'synthetic' mode of presenta-
tion. Descartes, himself, on the other hand, advocates a reversal of this
procedure. His scientific writings, so he claims, are meant to illustrate the
unitary method whereby scientists actually derive the causes from the effects.21
This is a strong claim. It is however no more remarkable than more
recent ones, for instance on the part of N. R. Hanson and others, that there
is a specific logic of scientific discovery.22 Hanson defines this logic, indeed,
as that form of a procedure, whereby you move from the data, assumed to
be given, to the hypotheses. I think myself that this is a confusion of two
entirely different things. On the one hand we have retroductive inference
whose formal scheme is: 'q; but if H then q; therefore assume or adopt
putatively H.' On the other hand, we have the formulative (you might
possibly say, the 'retroductive formation') procedure whereby you advance
from the data to the hypothesis in the first place. This amounts to an
unpacking of the steps which enable you to formulate (to 'think up') the
second premiss in your retroductive argument-schema, viz. 'but if H then
q'; it is the process whereby we reach the idea that it is possibly H that
might account for q.
But now, whether this process in turn has a 'logic' is not obvious; to
20 Concerning 'analysis' I have written at greater length in the chapter in Crombie (ed.),
Scientific Change, already referred to. See also E. J . Dijksterhuis, 'La Methode et les Essais de
Descartes', in Descartes et le Cartesianisme Hollandai, 1950, by various writers, pp. 21-44; E. Gilson,
Commentairc, pp. 181-182, 187, 195, 222, 223.
See also Leibniz, On the Elements of Natural Science, Loemker ed., vol. i, sect. 32, pp. 426-447,
•especially p . 439.
21
Cp. Reply to Objections II (A.T., I X , 121-122), where Descartes speaks of'the method of
proof as being 'two-fold, one being analytic, the other synthetic', the former—as we see from this
passage—not reserved just for scientific but also philosophical exposition, e.g. the Meditations.
22 N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, 1958, ch. iv.
244 GERD BUCHDAHL
decide this question, it must be studied through examples from the various
branches of science. For us the interest lies in the fact that Descartes contri-
butes to this enquiry also through a very interesting example, itselfonce again
an original discovery, this time of a law of geometrical optics, the law of
refraction: the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction are constant
and equal to the ratios of the velocities of light in their respective media.23
For the sake of brevity, I shall describe his procedure in my own words; the
primary sources are rules 8 and 9 of the Regulae and the relevant passages
of the Dioptrique. What are the data ? 'Light-rays' striking the interface and
leaving it at various angles; the variable relationships of the different
'values' of such angles are items for qualitative inspection. The problem is
to find a 'colligating concept', i.e. the equation that will connect i and r,
the angles of incidence and refraction.
In Reg. 8, Descartes tells us that we cannot obtain this from observa-
tion, nor from trial and error; rather, we have to study the physical
situation involved. Notice here already a fundamental point: logicians
often say that hypotheses have to be 'guessed' in the light of the data. Now
whilst there is some truth in this, it must at least be admitted that the
guessing is 'inspired', and what is more important, that it is 'informed'.
(Compare the popular meaning of intuition.) This means that it is
carried out in the light of the surrounding information, which in the
present case concerns the physical basis involved in the passage of light
through media. Clearly, we here move from the data to the hypothesis via
the study of the underlying mechanism involved in the problem. This is of
course the reverse of the usual account of scientific method, according to
which we move from data to hypothesis (here the colligating law) and
then to the explanatory mechanism accounting for the hypothesis. What is
true in this account is that the physical theory injected into the situation is
initially only approximate. Frequently being only 'speculative' or qualitative,
its accuracy will have to depend upon the character of the 'laws' which
here we are after all still engaged in 'discovering'! In short, the procedure
is one which employs the method of'leap-frogging'. Descartes describes all
this as 'resolution'; it would be more accurate to say that we try to go
'beneath' the phenomena in order to reach the operative factors of the
situation. For Descartes the problem is: how shall we envisage the passage
of light through the various media ? And perhaps still more fundamental
(as he remarks): granted that light moves, and that it moves with such and
such a speed, what is the physical mechanism corresponding to this motion ?
But how does Descartes go about these problems? As regards the
speed factor, he believes that he has good observational evidence (albeit
somewhat inferential) from lunar eclipses for his contention that it is
2
3 We omit reference here to the fact of the rays lying in the same plane. Also Descartes's
expression for the ratio of the velocities is the inverse of the 'correct' value. The deeper reason for
this is that his is a particle-theory, and not a wave-theory, agreeing thus with the same expressions
reached by Newton and Maupertuis, against those of Huygens and Fermat.
 The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy 245
infinite. This is itself supported by a set of physical assumptions, namely
the very same to which we have already referred: his hypothesis of the
structure of matter, and in particular of the ether-element responsible for
the transmission of light.
This hypothetical qualitative account of the action of the ether as an
agent for the transmission of light is similar (with one important qualifica-
tion) to that adopted only 41 years later by Huygens in his Treatise of Light:
it is the transmission of a longitudinal shock-wave from the luminous body
to the illuminated object. But since the universe is a plenum, and the
ether-particles absolutely hard (the latter of course an assumption aban-
doned by Huygens) the wave must travel with infinite speed. And here
comes the exciting part. For surely we ought now at last to have arrived at
our intuitive starting-point! 'Seeing', for instance, how the mathematics of
shock-waves is necessarily productive of the effects—always granted the
existence of the hypothetical mechanism of the ether: a most important
proviso! But does Descartes offer us such an intuitive starting point ? Yes,
and no. In the old Cartesian technical sense, no. In a broader sense, yes.
And this for the following reason: Descartes himself mentions in Reg. 8
that frequently it is here that we are already stopped, at our very starting
point. Now in such a case you are (he says) to cast around for some power-
ful models, in terms of which to grasp ( = intuit in a popular sense) the
situation. (A.T., x, p. 395). It is similar to the way in which Freud charac-
terized his method in the seventh chapter of the Interpretation of Dreams:
since we cannot literally explain the phenomenon of dream activity, by
reducing it to known psychological laws, we must consider it in the light
of certain models, e.g. compound microscopes, which imitate some of the
properties which we seek, and whose use will suggest (deductively) other
observable data to us. Freud calls this, making the phenomenon 'compre-
hensible to ourselves', for him something different from 'explaining it'.
And it looks as though this had been Descartes's view. He offers us a
series of models, not necessarily mutually consistent as regards their physical
action, founded only on the basic paradigm of the mechanical laws of
matter, and uses them to lead him computationally to the desired
formulae. We might describe this as a procedural tightening of the
qualitative hypothetical situation, which was initially introduced in order
to help us to begin the motion from the data to the colligating formula. He
is indeed perfectly aware of the methodological case of this procedure,
witness his explanation near the beginning of the Dioptrique:
Now, since I shall have to treat of light only in order to explain how its rays
enter into the eye, and how they can be deflected by the various bodies which
they encounter, there is no need for me to undertake to say anything about its
true nature, and I think it will be sufficient if I avail myself of two or three
comparisons, which will help us to understand it in the most convenient manner,
in order to explain all those of its properties that experience allows us to know,
and to deduce thereafter all the others which may not be so easily noticed. In all
246 GERD BUCHDAHL
this I am using the method of the Astronomers who, even though their supposi-
tions be nearly all of them false or uncertain, all the same draw from them many
consequences which are perfectly correct and assured, since they agree with the
diverse observations which they have made. (Ad. and Tan., vi, p. 83.)
Descartes's method is however more revolutionary than that of the
astronomers in that he employs models, and not only hypotheses; a
distinction which though inherent in the practice of some of the earlier
astronomers, was never clearly grasped until Descartes's time.
Descartes employs, as I have already remarked, several models, in
fact three. The first is that of a situation in which a blind man, by means of
a stick, touches and moves a door. We may say that here the model's
'functional behaviour' imitates the theoretical hypothesis, according to
which an impulse travels in a straight line with 'infinite speed'. The
inadequacies of the model are readily seen, (a) The account of the
functioning of the model is confused and faulty; (b) no attempt is made,
indeed there is a deliberate abstention from suggesting that the structure of
the model might itself resemble that of the theoretical situation; (c) there
is insufficient attempt to derive any formal relationships between the
theoretical situation (i.e. the ether structure) and the phenomenon of the
propagation of light. For this last fault, Descartes is not to be blamed; for it
was precisely because he lacked the mathematical machinery with which
to tackle the problem of elastic solids, of even the behaviour of ideal fluids,
etc., that he introduces his models; and the first is really not much more
than an illustrative analogy of the observed or inferentially obtained effect
of the straight-line motion of light with infinite speed.
As to his third model: here he seems to have been forced to relax the
postulate of infinite velocity; and replace it by that of variable finite
velocities, depending on the nature of the media. What then determined
such an assumption ? Partly the fact that only with such a model (it turns
out to be that of the moving projectile, a little like Newton's light corpuscles)
could he apply the mathematics of moving particles with which he was
reasonably familiar.
The deduction of the law of refraction (as well as that of reflection)
whilst a simple matter, is tortuous and full of arbitrary assumptions,
including that of the increased velocity of the particles in the denser
medium. This assumption is forced upon Descartes in order to obtain the
qualitatively observed bending of the light in the denser medium towards
the normal to the interface. (And in turn he tries even to make this, too,
comprehensible by additional illustrative devices.) It is likely therefore that
the law was in part suggested to him by the work of others, or if not that,
by his own work on conical sections.24 Nevertheless, the brilliant move of
24 The following is a geometrical property of the ellipse: If we call i the angle made by a line
parallel to the major axis meeting the ellipse at a point B with the normal to the tangent to the
ellipse at B; and r the angle made by the line BI, where I is a focus of the ellipse, with the same
normal, then sin i: sin r is constant. (Cp. G. Milhaud, Descartes Savant, 1921, Ch. 5, especially
pp. 108-117, and see p. 113 for the diagram illustrating the property of the sines referred to.)
 The Relevance of Descartes''s Philosophy 247
interpreting the refractive index as the ratio of the speeds of light was a
unique achievement; it can be seen to derive from Descartes's demonstra-
tion of the law as follows. He argues that the only circumstances we need to
consider are the component velocities of the particle at the moment of
impact with the interface between the media. Now in such a case the
velocity component parallel to the interface will not be affected but remain
constant. In terms of the geometry of the situation this means that V r sin r
= V ; sin i, which, with V r /V ; = const., gives the desired law.
Here then, we see the working of the method. It is through reasoning
round a model in geometrical fashion and using the laws of the motion of
projectiles which he believes also to apply to the motion of a Shockwave in
the ether, that Descartes manages to derive the law in its present-day
formulation. The logical form of the model is of some interest: there is
putative identity of the physical principles governing the model and the
theoretical structure; but the model is not meant to reproduce the
theoretical structure itself and so is only an analogue.
We are now also in a position to see whether (judging from this
example at least) hypothesis construction (the 'thinking-up of an explana-
tion which would seem to account for the phenomena') has a 'logic'. We
can answer this question by summarizing the way in which Descartes
seems to 'get' from his 'data' to his 'hypotheses'. A diagram may here
indicate the position most clearly.
. Deductive relations from law to data

(i) problem task

DATA - > LAW or HYPOTHESIS
(ii) retroductive inference

qualitative hypothesis
t
Huygen's Construction
of refractive relations Newton's theory
Maupertuis, Fermat
Maxwell,
Quantum Mechanics

model simulating partially

both speed assumption
and structure of matter

qualitative specification
of theoretical structure
of light ether existence of mechanical
explanations,
knowledge of 'natural
(dictating powers'
choice of model)

assumptions concerning
additional data, e.g.
speed of light
248 GERD BUCHDAHL

It will be seen from this diagram that it is difficult to give any one
single summary appraisal of the specific sort of logical relation involved, in
the process of the passage from data to law, considered as the 'formative'
aspect of retroduction, i.e. the passage from 'effects to causes', as Descartes
had called it in the passage quoted (see p. 247) from Discourse vi. Certainly,
the process of hypothesis formation, illustrated in our diagram by the
interpolated detail, must be distinguished from the retroductive inference,
represented by the relatively trivial dotted line leading from data directly
to the hypothesis. Still, factual triviality is not equivalent to logical
triviality. There is an important logical significance in Descartes's
insistence in the same passage that 'hypotheses are proved by the
deductions which are their effects', which is tantamount to what we have
called retroductive inference.
On the other hand, the constructive process is certainly not something
very easy or obvious even though it is not a blind sort of guessing. There is
a curious confusion of views due to the shadow which the retroductive
process and the retroductive inference throw on each other. Thus, it has
been said that retroductive inference is impossible on grounds which seem
however to be derived primarily only from the difficulty of 'thinking up'
the interpolated detail, such as in the example above, which is a procedural
matter. (Cp. the complaint: 'Since the invention of hypotheses requires
originality and inventive power, one can never deduce hypotheses; one
can only guess at them'.) On the other hand, some logicians have felt
uneasy at the notion of 'retroductive inference', believing on logical
grounds that only one form of inference is possible, viz. deductive. They
have then expressed this inconsistently by saying that there is 'an unbridg-
able gap' between data and hypotheses, and they have gone on to put this
view in the misleading form that hypotheses can only be 'guessed at' (i.e.
since there is a 'logical gap', one cannot in fact 'deduce them' but only
'guess' at them). Once the confusion is grasped, we see that if a logician
wants to subscribe to the view that there is a 'logical' gap between data and
hypothesis (e.g. that there is no such thing as retroductive inference), he
cannot be refuted by showing that there is a 'logic of scientific enquiry' in
the sense that hypotheses are not just guessed at, but that there is a 'rational
method 'of arriving at them; nor would the absence of such a method argue
for or against the existence of a logical relation. In short, process and in-
ference are two separate things, and must not be confused in order to
score in an argument; views such as those of N. R. Hanson do seem to
me exposed to this attack on the ground of the confusion just referred to.
The further philosophical point that emerges is that it looks as though
the notion of intuition and of the 'simple' starting point manages to
maintain itself only through a subtle re-interpretation in the light of an
actual situation; occasionally forgetting the various assumptions that have
been made. Still, since operative metaphysical notions have as such no
 The Relevance of Descartes's Philosophy 249
meaning and can be said to possess only one in so far as one is given to them,
Descartes is surely entitled to the same liberty of action. The most interest-
ing feature is to observe, however, the fascinating stresses and strains to
which these meanings must be subjected in order to adapt them to
situations transcending the original and relatively narrow starting point,
itself formulated in the light of a certain 'typical' situation.
So the critics of Descartes were right when they pointed to the one-
sidedness of a rationalism interpreted according to some of Descartes's, ahd
certainly according to their own somewhat hardened lights. They were
wrong in thereby suggesting to us an entirely misleading idea of the
function of a metaphysical enterprise, which is to provide a certain unifying
point of view, through paradoxical descriptions in terms of concepts which
must necessarily always be both too narrow and too wide. Yet when we
look at Descartes through the spectacles that I wish to offer, we perhaps
come to see how one may establish contact between certain contemporary
methodological ideas concerning science, and the original philosophical
insights of Descartes's philosophy. And I believe that, in this way, both
sides have much to gain.
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Reproduced by permission of the Cambridge University Library
A Portion of the First Page of Charles Darwin's Manuscript of Pangenesis.