Status Updates From Discourse on Method & Other...

feeling very much the "sluggishness of one's intelligence" rn the way i am completely not comprehending this rule

"I confess that I was born with an intelligence such that my greatest pleasure in studying has always been... in discovering the same reasoning [of others] by my own efforts."

oh descartes u would hate ai 💔

"...those who never distribute their thought between many objects at the same time, but always focus it completely on thinking about certain very simple and easy things, become insightful."

descartes wouldve loved deep work pt 2

ohh descartes u would have loved cal newport's 'deep work'...

"[Completing deductions through well-enumerated thought] sometimes involves such a long chain of inferences that, when we arrive at the conclusion, we do not easily recall the whole journey that led us there."

me picking up this book again after a few months oops

".. for the art that they call by the barbaric name of 'algebra'..."

😭😭😭 ????? unprovoked ?????

"On the other hand, wherever they are lucky enough to discover something certain and evident, they never reveal it unless it is wrapped up in various obscurities, for fear that the simplicity of their argument would diminish the importance of the discovery or because they begrudge us the bare truth."

girl who hurt u lol 😭

"Therefore if someone wishes seriously to investigate the truth about things, they should not choose some particular science, because all the sciences are interconnected and dependent on each other."

(kenan thompson voice) that's really nice...!

girl they had a whole 30+ yrs to lose the manuscript LOL...

"This rule [of motion]... depends only on the fact that God conserves each thing by a continuous action, and therefore he does not conserve it as it may have been some time previously, but precisely as it is at the very instant that he conserves it."

he is... really losing me here lolll

"...the motion I suppose follows the same laws of nature... [including] those [the learned] call 'qualitates reales' (their real qualities) in which, I frankly confess, I cannot find any more reality in the others."

ok lowk why is he so funny in his asides tho lmao

my eyes r like fully glazing over at all of this elements mumbo jumbo LOL... also again. why do we hate vacuums so much

what did vacuums ever do to natural philosophers...

ill be honest i dont understand a lick of this section about hard/soft bodies LOL

"I am sufficiently convinced, I claim, by my arguments about this point, but this is not the appropriate occasion to tell you them."

lowkey "it came to be in a dream" type shit 😭

my guy w the double "i.e." in a single sentence...

"When someone says: 'I am breathing, therefore I am,' ... they do not deduce anything, because it would be necessary first to have proved that it is true that they are breathing."

i just laughed so hard omfg. u just activated descartes's trap card

"I am grateful to you for saying that I did not allow myself to be anticipated by others in the publication of my ideas. But that is something I have never feared."

again, my guy dgaf about publish or perish... of being scooped lolololol

"... and the general title will be: 'The Project of a Universal Science which could elevate our nature to its highest level of perfection. In addition... the most interesting things that the author could select are explained in such a way that even those who have not studied are able to understand them.'"

the way this title is giving my students' reports' titles 😭

"The second reason [for writing the current treatise] is that I see every day more and more they delay involved in my project of self-instruction because of the infinity of experiences that I need, and because they are impossible for me to do without assistance from others."

lolll a humble king who knows his limits?

"I am convinced... if I had learned [the truths from my youth] without effort, I might never have known any others; at least, I would never have acquired the habit and facility that I think I have for always finding new truths as I apply myself to search for them."

me @ the next person who asks why i need to do everything manually lol