Night School: Inaugurating the Modern

It is written of 17th Century philosopher Rene Descartes that he had four rules for himself in his thinking: Never accept anything except clear and distinct ideas; Divide each problem into as many parts are needed to solve it; Order your thoughts from the simple to the complex; Always check thoroughly for oversights. His “methodological doubt” lead him to the famous formulation “I think, therefore I am”. And in doing so inaugurated a break in Western thought with the thinking subject – the “I” of cogito ergo sum – at its center.