For a more complete formal presentation of this foundational experience, we must turn to the Meditationes de prima Philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy) (1641), in which Descartes offered to contemporary theologians his proofs of the existence of god and the immortality of the human soul. This explicit concern for religious matters does not reflect any loss of interest in pursuing the goals of science. By sharply distinguishing mind from body, Descartes hoped to preserve a distinct arena for the church while securing the freedom of scientists to develop mechanistic accounts of physical phenomena. In this way, he supposed it possible to satisfy the requirements of Christian doctrine, but discourage the interference of the church in scientific matters and promote further observational exploration of the material world.
The arrangement of the Meditations, Descartes emphasized, is not the order of reasons; that is, it makes no effort to proceed from the metaphysical foundations of reality to the dependent existence of lesser beings, as Spinoza would later try to do. Instead, this book follows the order of thoughts; that is, it traces the epistemological progress an individual thinker might follow in establishing knowledge at a level of perfect certainty. Thus, these are truly Meditations: we are meant to put ourselves in the place of the first-person narrator, experiencing for ourselves the benefits of the philosophical method.
The Method of Doubt
The basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt is to defeat skepticism on its own ground. Begin by doubting the truth of everything—not only the evidence of the senses and the more extravagant cultural presuppositions, but even the fundamental process of reasoning itself. If any particular truth abo ...