The Imposition Of Method: A Study Of Descartes And Locke

T H E IMPOSITION OF METHOD A Study of Descartes and Locke BY P E T E R A. S C H O U L S C L A R E N D O N PRESS 1980 · OXFORD Oxford University Press. Walton Street> Oxford OX2 6DP OXFORD NBW YORK KUALA LUMPUR DELHI LONDON TORONTO SINGAPORE BOMBAY NAIROBI GLASGOW MELBOURNE JAKARTA CALCUTTA WELLINGTON HONG KONG MADRAS DAR RS SALAAM TOKYO KARACHI CAPB TOWN © Peter A. Schouls 1980 Published i n the United States by Oxford University Press New York All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press British Library Cataloguing i n Pubtication Data Schouls, Peter A The imposition of method. 1. Descartes, Reno-Knowledge, Theory of 2. Locke, John-Knowledge, Theory of 3. Knowledge, Theory of I . Title 121*.092'2 B1878.K6 79^41041 To Jeanette, Tim, Lyrm, and Michelk ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Several parts of this study are based on work akeady in print. Chapter I I incorporates a good deal of 'Descartes and the Auto­ nomy of Reason', pubUshed in xhcJoumal of the History of Philo­ sophy, X (1972), 307-22. Sections 1 and 2 of the third chapter incorporate parts of 'Reason, Method and Science in the Philosophy of Descartes'; this article was pubUshed in the AustralasianJournal ofPhilosophy, 50 (1972), 30-9. Some parts of 'The Extent of Doubt in Descartes' Meditations', from Volume I I I (1973) of the CanadianJournal ofPhilosophy, pp. 51-8, have found their way into the first two sections of Chapter I V . Chapter V I presents an extensively rewritten version of 'The Cartesian Method of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding*; its original appeared in Volume I V (1975) ofthe CanadianJournal ofPhilosophy, pp. 579^>01. Some ofthe paragraphs of section 4, Chapter I I I , are to appear in a Festschrift for T . A. Goudge, edited by members of the Philosophy Department of the Univer­ sity of Toronto and to be pubHshed by the University of Toronto Press; they appear there in the essay 'Peirce and Descartes: Doubt and the Logic of Discovery'. I wish to thank the editors and publishers in question for their permission to makeuse of these various items. I am grateful to the University of Alberta for study leave granted for the entire academic year of 1972-3, and again for the first term of 1976-7. I t was during these periods that this study was conceived and much of it was written. Thanks are due ako to the Canada Council for support through a Leave FeUowship during the first of these periods. The second term of 1976-7 was spent as a Visiting Professor at the Free University of Amsterdam. A series oflectures to members ofthe staffand graduate students of its Department of Philosophy have helped much to give my ideas on Descartes's and Locke's methodology a coherent form. A special boon was the presence at the Free University o f D r . E. D . FackereU, Senior Lecturer in the Department of AppHed Mathe­ matics at the University of Sydney, AustraHa; he generously gave ofhis sabbatical time to help me with the third section of Chapter III. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii Many students and coUeagues have contributed to this study through their encouragement and criticism. Persistent probing from Richard I . Aaron (Aberystwyth) forced me to rewrite several parts of Chapter V I . EquaUy persistent criticism from Hendrik Hart (Institute of Christian Studies, Toronto) led me to become clearer about both the nature of methodology and the status of scientific knowledge in Descartes's work. John W. Yolton (who, to the grief of Canadian philosophers, has left Toron