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Rodin's Thinker, begun in 1880 was originally part of a larger commission celebrating Dante's Divine Comedy, but it just as easily could have been dedicated to René Descartes—he of the second most famous line in all of philosophy: cogito ergo sum or I think, therefore I am. (Know thyself is surely #1, though these rankings are just personal speculations and therefore likely wrong.) 

Descartes' is known as the "father of modern philosophy" due to the first two of his Meditations on First Philosophy in which he laid out his famous methodic doubt—the systematic process he used of being skeptical about the truth of one's beliefs. Though it may sound familiar, this was actually a more nuanced doubt than the radical nihilism of the Skeptics of Ancient Greece. Descartes did not give up the search for truth believing that nothing could ever be known—he instead tried to reject any ideas that could be doubted in the hopes of finding one solid rock upon which knowledge could be built. Initially, Descartes arrived at only a single principle: thought exists. He wrestled deeply with all his doubts until he concluded in the end that if he doubted, then something or someone must be doing the doubting, therefore the very fact that he doubted proved his existence.

The original Skeptics knew, of course, that this line of reasoning was circular and could not be trusted. Even Descartes' doubt and existence could be doubted. The mind, like the senses, can be fallible. Brain tumors can lead to crimes as heinous as pedophilia. We might merely be part of a dream. Or perhaps we are all in a computer simulation. As I said in tenet #2 of my evolutionary philosophy, all knowledge is probabilistic. By demanding one certainty, Descartes committed himself to proffering several fundamental errors. Because of his insistence though, the philosophical debate of his age was shifted from "what is true" to "of what can I be certain?" Possibly without realising it, Descartes changed the medieval search for an authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity, since the traditional concept of "truth" implies an external authority while "certainty" relies instead on the judgment of the individual. This was an anthropocentric revolution, raising the human being to the level of a free agent acting with autonomous reason. It was the basis for modernity in the philosophical sense, and for this we should be grateful.

Here are few quotes of his worth remembering before we test Descartes fully in my survival of the fittest philosophers.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.

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Rene Descartes (1596-1650 CE) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the father of modern philosophy, and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings.

Survives
Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge, and he expressed it in this way: “Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect, which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.” Logic and reason are the fundamental tools by which all experience is turned into knowledge. The questions of philosophy guide our explorations. As we have filled in the tree of life with our knowledge, a picture of morality and wisdom is indeed coming into focus.

Descartes wrote a response to skepticism about the existence of the external world. He argued that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily, and are not willed by him. They are external to his senses, and according to Descartes, this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind, and thus, an external world. Who but the most vain and childish can doubt that the external world exists?

Needs to Adapt
Descartes was a major figure in 17th-century continental rationalism (a view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification), later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought (theory that knowledge arises from sense experience) consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Hume. Descartes attempted to construct a system of knowledge discarding perception as unreliable and instead admitting only deduction as a method. The extreme forms of rationalism and empiricism are just that - extreme. The truth lies in the middle. Knowledge comes from using reason to understand our sense experiences. The iterative nature of the scientific method is what hones this process towards truth. In a large and changing universe, eternal absolutes are extremely difficult to prove. We must act based on the best available knowledge. This leaves us almost entirely with probabilistic knowledge, which means we must act with confidence and caution appropriate to the probability, being especially careful in realms where knowledge is uncertain and consequences are large.

Descartes is also known for his theory of dualism, suggesting that the body works like a machine, that it has the material properties of extension and motion, and that it follows the laws of physics, whereas the mind (or soul), on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial entity that lacks extension and motion, and does not follow the laws of physics. Descartes argued that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland. This form of dualism proposes that the mind controls the body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational mind, such as when people act out of passion. Most of the previous accounts of the relationship between mind and body had been uni-directional. Very nearly extinct. At least Descartes proposed a bi-directional relationship between the mind and the body. While the exact way that consciousness arises from the body is still a mystery, a much wider mind-body interaction is universally accepted now.

Gone Extinct
Descartes is best known for the philosophical statement "Cogito ergo sum"; I think, therefore I am. I feel, therefore I am. The universe responds to my actions, therefore I am. Others detect me, therefore I am. There is much evidence for our existence and the existence of others and other things. Our inner thoughts are actually the least convincing of these arguments.

Descartes believed that only humans have minds. This led him to the belief that animals cannot feel pain, and Descartes' practice of vivisection (the dissection of live animals) became widely used throughout Europe until the Enlightenment. How very sad for other animals is the ignorance and hubris of humans.
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In the last two weeks, I profiled Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei, the so-called fathers of the scientific method and modern science. They marked a massive turning point in the way humans thought and discovered facts about the world, but it still took us a few hundred years to accumulate the facts that mattered most. In one simple chart, here is what I mean by that statement:
Yes, this chart is highly simplified (seSee this infographic for a more detailed story of the variability of life expectancy since the time of Neanderthals, but the general slopes and durations of these lines are essentially correct and they portray quite starkly a species that was locked into its role on Earth until it was suddenly liberated in the 1900's by the aggregation of knowledge about microbiology, sanitation, political organization, economic models of production and distribution, medicine, and other advances in other sciences and technologies. The characterization of this long stretch of stagnant life expectancy as "nasty, brutish, and short" was given to us by the next thinker in my examination of the survival of the fittest philosophers--Thomas Hobbes. Though his thought experiment of what life must have been like in the state of nature before societies were formed was essentially correct, he didn't have enough knowledge of history, archeology, and anthropology to know that he was still living in the (only slightly less) nasty, brutish, and short age himself. It's important to remember this as we enter the era of the modern philosophers. Although their arguments and reasoning are often quite sophisticated, there is an explanation for why many of their conclusions appear off the wall—they just didn't have all the facts that the accumulation of our scientific methods have now unearthed. Let's hear some of the good words of Hobbes then before his philosophy is picked apart in the light of our current perch in history.

In the state of nature, profit is the measure of right. (Note, free marketers, that this is not a good thing!)

Leisure is the mother of philosophy, and common-wealth the mother of peace and leisure; where first were great and flourishing cities, there was first the study of philosophy.

If this superstitious fear of spirits were taken away, and with it, prognostications from dreams, false prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill obedience.

For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: for they see their own wisdom at hand, and other men's at a distance.

Where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruin.

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions.

The office of the sovereign, be it a monarch or an assembly, consists in the end for that which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature.

(Particularly the laws of nature that govern evolution!)

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679 CE) was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.

Survives
Hobbes is famous for describing the natural state of mankind (the state pertaining before a central government is formed) as a war of every man against every man in which life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” This is an apt description of a species characterized primarily by competition. Unchecked competition narrows time horizons and does lead to a shortened existence.

Hobbes’ account of human nature as self-interested cooperation has proved to be an enduring theory in the field of philosophical anthropology. Yes. We cooperate in order to better compete. Over all time horizons, self-interested cooperation explains the survival of genes, the survival of the self, and the survival of the species.

Needs to Adapt
Hobbes was one of the main philosophers who founded materialism (matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter). He argued repeatedly that there are no incorporeal substances, and that all things, including human thoughts, and even God, heaven, and hell are corporeal matter in motion. Materialism is the basis for reality and it has discovered no evidence of god, heaven, or hell. Human thoughts are brain states.

The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, usually termed the “state of nature.” In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power, constrained by conscience. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom one has in the state of nature in order to obtain the benefits of political order. Hobbes advocated absolute monarchy but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid. Cooperative groups outcompete individualistic groups. This is why society develops from “states of nature.” Cooperation is maintained by recognizing the right of the individual, the equality of all men and women, and the consent of the governed. Absolute monarchies are incompatible with consent. Economic theory demonstrates the need to have monopoly providers for public goods such as justice, but representative government with checks and balances in the system is a better solution to the need to enforce and engender cooperation.

Gone Extinct
Leviathan was written during the English Civil War; much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war. In particular, the doctrine of separation of powers is rejected: the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers. Right diagnosis - wrong solution. A better one was yet to come.
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In coming to terms with some of Hobbes' poor political philosophy conclusions, it's important to keep in mind just what a time of upheaval the English Civil War was. To give you an idea of the horrors that Hobbes was witnessing, estimates indicate that "England suffered a 3.7% loss of population, Scotland a loss of 6%, while Ireland suffered a loss of 41% of its population. Putting these numbers into the context of other catastrophes helps to understand the devastation. The great potato famine of 1845–1852 resulted in a loss of 16% of the Irish population, while during the Second World War the population of the Soviet Union also fell by 16%." A man of sympathy can therefore be forgiven for overreacting to these levels of destruction by arguing for the stability of strong monarchies. However, political reform was, and continues to be, necessary to avoid a repeat of the devastation that war and conflict bring to our species. The key to combatting our nasty, brutish, and short lives? It's cooperation among informed citizens in a progressive society organised by those with an understanding of philosophy. This is what will lead us to the pleasant, gentle, and long lives we all wish for ourselves.

The Piazza dei Miracoli, or the Square of Miracles, in Pisa, Italy. It's a place named for supernatural unexplainable phenomena, but paradoxically it's much more famous for engineering (both failures and fixes) and science, because it was the location of Galileo's (apocryphal?) experiment about falling objects, which overturned Aristotle's 2,000-year-old theory of mass that was so horribly wrong. I suppose it was miraculous that mankind held on that long to the idea that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones in direct proportion to their weight. What else could explain such an unexamined belief?

Last week I wrote about Francis Bacon—the man credited with inventing the scientific method. While he did famously die of pneumonia after experimenting with the use of snow to refrigerate chicken meat, it's one thing to devote your life to science, it's another thing to do so in the face of great hostility and manage to change the world's view of its worldview. That's what Galileo Galilei managed to achieve from his humble origins in Pisa. He wasn't exactly a philosopher in the way that we use the term today; he was chiefly concerned with the cosmology aspect of metaphysics rather than any of the moral, epistemological, political, or logical aspects of the field. But Galileo "has always played a key role in any history of science and, in many histories of philosophy, he is a, if not the, central figure of the scientific revolution of the 17th Century. When he was born there was no such thing as ‘science’, yet by the time he died science was well on its way to becoming a discipline and its concepts and method a whole philosophical system." As an evolutionary philosopher myself, one who's whole philosophical system is indeed driven by science, I thought is was very important to mark this transition in philosophy when I was making my list concerning the survival of the fittest philosophers. Here is what I briefly said about Galileo at that time:

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Galileo Galilei (1564-1642 CE) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. Galileo has been called the father of modern observational astronomy, the father of modern physics, the father of science, and the father of modern science.

Survives
Stephen Hawking says, "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.” He aided the separation of science from both philosophy and religion - a major development in human thought. For his views on heliocentrism, he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Just a brief note to honor the debt we owe this man for his imprisonment and determination in the face of the church.

Needs to Adapt

Gone Extinct

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Just what does this mean to say Galileo was at the centre of a scientific revolution? Well we're drawing the period of medieval philosophy to a close because of this revolution so let's look at some of the key ideas and people that were a part of it. As you read through this list, try to imagine a world that had not discovered these ideas yet (though to be honest, it's probably impossible for us to do so since so much of our concepts of the world and ourselves are bound up in understanding these things).

• Nicolaus Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, which advanced the heliocentric theory of cosmology.
• Andreas Vesalius published De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body) in 1543, which found that the circulation of blood resolved from pumping of the heart. He also assembled the first human skeleton from cutting open cadavers.
• William Gilbert published On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth in 1600, which laid the foundations of a theory of magnetism and electricity.
• Tycho Brahe made extensive and more accurate naked eye observations of the planets in the late 16th century, which became the basic data for Kepler's astronomical studies.
• Sir Francis Bacon published Novum Organum in 1620, which outlined a new system of logic based on the process of reduction, which he offered as an improvement over Aristotle's philosophical process of syllogism. This contributed to the development of what became known as the scientific method.
• Galileo Galilei improved the telescope, with which he made several important astronomical discoveries, including the four largest moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and the rings of Saturn, and made detailed observations of sunspots. He also developed the laws for falling bodies based on pioneering quantitative experiments, which he analyzed mathematically.
• Johannes Kepler published the first two of his three laws of planetary motion in 1609.
• René Descartes published his Discourse on the Method in 1637, which helped to extend the definition of the scientific method.
• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek constructed powerful single lens microscopes and made extensive observations that he published around 1660, opening up the micro-world of biology.
• Isaac Newton (1643–1727) built upon the work of Kepler and Galileo. He showed that an inverse square law for gravity explained the elliptical orbits of the planets, and advanced the law of universal gravitation. His development of infinitesimal calculus opened up new applications of the methods of mathematics to science.

In just over 100 years (lightening speed without modern transportation and communication methods), the entire world changed with the introduction of science. Where did I come from? Where am I? What am I? All of the answers to these age-old philosophical questions were changed forever. We'll discuss Descartes and Newton from this list a little later (as well as many other descendants of the scientific revolution), but for now, let's just finally say goodbye to medieval philosophy with some wise words from the man who marks its end.

The modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

To apply oneself to great inventions, starting from the smallest beginnings, is no task for ordinary minds; to divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents.

In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.

It's time to take stock of where we've been, because we are about to cross a momentous threshold. So far in this series of essays about the survival of the fittest philosophers, I've looked at 21 of history's most influential thinkers. Starting with the foundations of the major religions and their moral philosophies for the world, I looked at Moses and the 10 Commandments, the writings of the Upanishads, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Together, these form the basis of 77% of the religious population of the world (with unaffiliated, folk, and "other" making up the rest). Next up in my essays was the birth of proper philosophy in Ancient Greece that brought us logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy. These were given to us by the pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, and the Skeptics. After these Greeks took our thoughts as far as they could go with the use of our senses alone—without the benefit of any great advancements in science and technology—humanity then turned inward for 1,000 years, battling over doctrines of revelation and their interpretation by religious thinkers such as Jesus, Augustine, Muhammed, Avicenna, Anselm, Averroes, Aquinas, Erasmus, and Luther. This collected cannon of ancient wisdom, philosophy, and religion sometimes seems like a mountain of thought upon which we might rely, but as Francis Bacon said:

The age of antiquity is the youth of the world.

It's important to remember that the 2,800 years during which these thoughts were developed is still just a spec in the vast sweep of evolutionary history—a spec that was overwhelmed once we discovered the tools to uncover the rest of time that our universe has existed. The update of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson is on tv right now and I hope you are all watching it. In one of the recent episodes, they updated the cosmic calendar—a concept first popularised by Carl Sagan in his book Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, and then widely expanded when Sagan hosted the original televised version of Cosmos that first aired in 1980. In the cosmic calendar, the entire history of the universe is compressed into a 365-day scale to help our human brains make sense of the vast numbers we get into when discussing the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe. Here's the original 5-minute clip explaining this concept:

So each month is 1.25 billion years. Each day is 40 million years. Each second almost 500 years. The first humans arrived at 10:30 pm on December 31st. At 11:46, humans tamed fire. At 11:59 and 20 seconds, we finally domesticated plants and animals. The first cities took hold at 11:59:35. All the philosophical works I've profiled were compiled from 11:59:52 to 11:59:59. It's only in the last second of the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the last month of the cosmic calendar that all of our scientific advances have occurred. It's only during that last second that we learned anything about the previous 31,535,993 seconds that were in the cosmic calendar before recorded history. It's only during that last second that we learned anything about 99.999978% of the history of the universe. And yet we lend credence to those ancients who relied upon their 0.000022% of experience?

What happened that changed all this? What happened that unlocked the overwhelming majority of history to our inquisitive minds? The scientific method happened. And it was ushered in by Francis Bacon in 1620 when he published Novum Organum (New Instrument in English). Although Aristotle had "provided specific axioms for every scientific discipline, what Bacon found lacking in the Greek philosopher's work was a master principle or general theory of science, which could be applied to all branches of natural history and philosophy." Novum Organum filled that gap when it "outlined a new system of logic based on the process of reduction, which he offered as an improvement over Aristotle's philosophical process of syllogism. This contributed to the development of what became known as the scientific method" during the scientific revolution.

Under King James I of England, Bacon had risen to the highest political office of Lord Chancellor, but "his international fame and influence spread during his last years when he was able to focus his energies exclusively on his philosophical work, and even more so after his death, when English scientists took up his idea of a cooperative research institution in establishing the Royal Society." As if this all weren't enough, Bacon was also a beautiful writer, contributing many strong quotes to the history of philosophy.

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power. Knowledge itself is power.

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. 

We cannot command nature except by obeying her.

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury.

But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this—that men despair and think things impossible.

Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing, an exact man.

Let's see exactly what I wrote about Bacon when I considered him in my original Evolutionary Philosophy book.

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Francis Bacon (1561-1626 CE) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author, and pioneer of the scientific method. Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism, and remains extremely influential through his works, especially as a philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution. The third US president Thomas Jefferson wrote; "Bacon, Locke, and Newton. I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences."

Survives
Scientific Method - a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. It bears repeating just how important this is to the discovery of knowledge we need to survive.

Bacon did not propose an actual philosophy, but rather a method of developing philosophy. He argued that although philosophy at the time used the deductive syllogism to interpret nature, the philosopher should instead proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to law. This is the spirit by which Evolutionary Philosophy hopes to develop its beliefs.

Needs to Adapt
The end of induction is the discovery of forms, the ways in which natural phenomena occur, the causes from which they proceed. The continuation of science has uncovered that perfect forms do not lie behind existence. Diversity of form, adaptability of existence - these are what allow natural phenomena to survive.

Bacon said that men should confine the sense within the limits of duty in respect to things divine, while not falling in the opposite error, which would be to think that inquisition of nature is forbidden by divine law. Another admonition was concerning the ends of science: that mankind should seek knowledge not for pleasure, contention, superiority over others, profit, fame, or power, but for the benefit and use of life, and that they perfect and govern it in charity. Life is the end goal. Senses must be confined within the limits of what is good for life. This is not divine. It is not from a god. It is from reality and the world we live in. It is profane and it is good.

In 1623 Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideals in New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit" were the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of Bensalem. Taking the definition of piety as dutiful to oneself and to society (and not to religion), then this utopian vision does indeed describe a cooperative species built to survive for the long term.

Gone Extinct

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Our first thinker with none of his major contributions having gone extinct. That is the power of the scientific method. Will we continue to use it? Will we use it wisely? As Carl Sagan said at the close of the clip above, "what happens in the first second of the next cosmic year, depends on what we do." In the anthropocene we are certainly now in, our choices do dominate the path that life on earth will take. Will we even make it another 500 years? I hope so. It would be a shame to throw away all this work from the last cosmic second.