Descartes

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applying sceptical
doubt to all our beliefs, we can discover which of them are
indubitable, and thus form an adequate foundation for knowledge.
The third world-view resulted largely from the work of the new
scientists; Galileo, Copernicus, Bacon et al. Science had finally
begun to assert itself and shake off its dated Aristotelian
prejudices. Coherent theories about the world and its place in
the universe were being constructed and many of those who were
aware of this work became very optimistic about the influence it
could have. Descartes was a child of the scientific revolution,
but felt that until sceptical concerns were dealt with, science
would always have to contend with Montaigne and his cronies,
standing on the sidelines and laughing at science's pretenses to
knowledge. Descartes' project, then, was to use the tools of the
sceptic to disprove the sceptical thesis by discovering certain
knowledge that could subsequently be used as the foundation of a
new science, in which knowledge about the external world was as
certain as knowledge about mathematics. It was also to hammer the
last nail into the coffin of scholasticism, but also, arguably,
to show that God still had a vital r_le to play in the discovery
of knowledge.

Meditation One describes Descartes' method of doubt. By its
conclusion, Descartes has seemingly subjected all of his beliefs
to the strongest and most hyberbolic of doubts. He invokes the
nightmarish notion of an all-powerful, malign demon who could be
deceiving him in the realm of sensory experience, in his very
understanding of matter and even in the simplest cases of
mathematical or logical truths. The doubts may be obscure, but
this is the strength of the method - the weakness of criteria for
what makes a doubt reasonable means that almost anything can
count as a doubt, and therefore whatever withstands doubt must be
something epistemologically fo...