Cartesian : of or relating to Cartesianism, traditions & attitudes derived from the rationalistic mind/matter dualism of Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who argued that the idea of mind & matter & that of God are innate. Besides its dualistic metaphysics, Cartesianism is known for its mechanistic physics & its deterministic ethics.
... (IV,11). 14 As we see, there are so many ways of conceiving of God, in three or three million persons, that we should not dogmatize, lest we eliminate everything, finally leaving nothing but a Cartesian God, one and universal by virtue only of his narrowness. Perhaps we still confuse unity with uniformity. It was in the spirit of that tradition that Sri Aurobindo was soon to write: The perfection... strange aberration indeed, found thousands of miles apart in civilizations totally unknown to one another? True, the Age of the Mysteries is behind Page 16 us; everything is wonderfully Cartesian and pragmatic, but still, something is missing. The first sign announcing a new being, probably, is the dawning sense of a terrible lack of something, which neither his science nor his churches nor ...
... body. And since it is not a little piece of the Mind that went on the journey (I was about to say excursion, but it is more of an incursion), it is difficult to couch that in Cartesian language. In fact, only the cage is Cartesian, the rest is much less rigid. It is the eyes of the cells that see, very young eyes that are still rather mindless (happily), but the descendants of the new species will be ...
... proposition "I am thinking" he saw that an inevitable proposition followed, namely, "I am" (sum). 'This is the famous Cartesian proposition "Cogito ergo sum". Indeed, in the later history of philosophy this argument, "I think therefore I am" has come to be questioned, and in the Cartesian spirit we may welcome this further questioning, for it opens up a new chapter in the pursuit of truth. But what... more deeply. According to him, an idea which is clear and precise is true. Negatively speaking, an idea which is unclear and imprecise is untrue. We shall leave it to the reader to doubt if this Cartesian definition is valid or not, on the condition that he finds valid grounds to doubt it. Descartes is not only famous for his doubting, but also for his argument to prove the existence of God ...
... sensation.” 661 “The German mind contains a strong ‘irrational’ component”, writes Jochen Kirchhoff, “which feels itself superior to the West-European rationalism … From the viewpoint of this mind the Cartesian clarté appears to be flat, superficial … The German spirit has this brooding inclination towards the ‘far-off’ and abysmal realm of being. This corresponds with the German fascination for things ...
... preference to the other; but, in the long run, he seems to be looking for something else. The contemporary man may resolve to explore. He may turn to the dialogues of Plato, learn and endure the Cartesian doubt, and marvel at the magnificence of Spinoza and Leibnitz. He may witness the conflict between Galileo and God, sharpen his intellect on the whetstone of materialism, pursue zealously the dis ...
... Jagadish Chandra Bose, had demonstrated the unity of matter, life and mind, and had demolished the mechanistic view of the universe. And now, the discovery made by Bell has further reiterated that the Cartesian-Newtonian approach is no more tenable. Study of Quantum Mechanics has also shown that not only super-luminal Connections exist but also they can be used in a controllable way to communicate messages ...
... Jagadish Chandra Bose, had demonstrated the unity of matter, life and mind, and had demolished the mechanistic view of the universe. And now, the discovery made by Bell has further reiterated that the Cartesian-Newtonian approach is no more tenable. Study of Quantum Mechanics has also shown that not only superluminal Connections exist but also they can be used in a controllable way to communicate ...
... about the reconciliation of such irrecon ilables as wave and particle, gravitation and electricity. In any case, at the end of all our peregrinations we seem to circle back to our original Cartesian-cum-Berkeleyean position; we discover that it is not easy to extricate the observed from the observer: the observer is so deep set in the observed, part and parcel of it that there are scientists ...
... scraps of memory, but we do not know that they are experiences, or that there is an experience, so we speak of "dreams," of "impressions”; it is vague, hazy, and soon covered over by the logic of the Cartesian world, which comes and seals us up like a glass jar. We are soon taught life, in other words, how to politely suffocate. Afterwards, we will speak of mystics, cranks, or charlatans, while we ourselves ...
... reality; that the Mind is an essential part of the human being, in the present human condition even its most determinative or characteristic part, but that the human being is far more complex than Cartesian dualism and reductionist materialism have chosen to accept. Since the Middle Ages the West has been desperately in search of a new Faith, mainly through science and (so-called Scientific) Marxism ...
... itself. It leads unavoidably to the view that the whole of all living beings consists of material elements, which react to each other through external forces. The prime example of this view is the Cartesian metaphor of the machine. Nothing in the universe exists by itself; everything is hierarchically interconnected with larger entities, to which it belongs, and with smaller entities, which are part ...
... animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.” 57 If the human being consists exclusively of matter, then the way it functions is by mechanisms which make him into a Cartesian machine, or La Mettrie’s homme machine. The former still allowed for a rational soul; the latter drew the logical conclusion and denied the existence of a non-material soul too. Neurobiology as ...
... and he enlisted as an artillery officer. Even during the war he grew more and more interested in occultism and felt a deep attraction to spirituality – against the grain of his education and the Cartesian intellectual environment in France. After the war he was employed as an engineer with the Ministry of Transport and Communications, but in 1920 he left for Japan to study Zen Buddhism. ‘I knew … yes ...
... transcend the thought, feeling and Page 8 action, therefore I am. Because I manifest, I am, and because I transcend manifestation, I am. The formula is not so clear and catching as the Cartesian, but there is a fuller truth in its greater comprehensiveness. The man of unalloyed intellect has a very high and difficult function; it is his function to teach men to think clearly and purely ...
... provided, however, that it is sufficiently 'descriptive,' and not a pre-synthesis of everything to be expounded upon in what follows. In a general way... you are going to smile, finding me quite Cartesian! But the readership we address is more or less permeated by a widespread Cartesianism, and you can help them, if you like, to reverse their methodology, but on the condition that you make yourself ...
... show these 'young people' that their attempts and aspirations are legitimate, even if they have discovered them through drugs, since in many cases drugs alone have been able to unmoor them from the Cartesian rationalist bedrock, to put before them experiences that, at least, are positive, and to offer them directions and models. In other words, the aspect of amateurism and exoticism found in Z [another ...
... and a constant exchange of energy with the elements must be assured. He is literally a part of the whole of nature considered as an interconnected self-sustaining system. Mentally too he is not a Cartesian solipsistic substance. His mind is a sub-system within the larger whole of the social mind and eventually the collective mind of the humanity. This is shown by the fact that indeed he will not come ...
... the philosophical implications of modem physics and are trying m an open-minded way to improve their understanding of the nature of reality. Page 262 In contrast to the mechanistic Cartesian view of the world, the world view emerging from modem physics can be characterised by words like organic, holistic, and ecological. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude ...
... the past search, we feel that a central study of this subject is not only most fascinating, but something that is indispensable to the further immediate steps of humanity's progress. In the Cartesian psychology, a sharp and radical division is made between mind and body; the two are regarded as separate substances and it is thought that the interaction between them is impossible. And yet, the ...
... bring about the reconciliation of such irreconcilables as wave and particle, gravitation and electricity. In any case, at the end of all our peregrinations we seem to circle back to our original Cartesian-cum-Berkeleyean position; we discover that it is not easy to extricate the observed from the observer: the observer is so deep set in the observed, part and parcel of it that there are scientists ...
... that of freedom, no Page 377 doubt, but along with it there is also the uncanny sense of isolation, of heavy responsibility, also a certain impotence, a loss of bearings. The normal Cartesian Co-ordinates, as it were, are gone and the being does not know where to look for the higher multi-dimensional co-ordinates. That is the real meaning of the Anguish which suddenly invades a being at ...
... an illusion. Thus we wander into a blind lane, a cul de sac: we knock our head against a dead wall. Modern scientific agnosticism or scepticism has been thus compelled to modify a little the Cartesian way: not to doubt outright, but to accept a probability, a working hypothesis as it is called: to see how it works provisionally, whether it is or it is not contradicted by other elements. If it gives ...
... dynamics of the nervous system."4 " In Indian psychology they proceed from the basis of the supremacy of mind over master and postulate Atman as the ultimate Reality of the universe. " "Cartesian dualism never obtained a firm foothold in this Country. "5 Patanjali's Raja Yoga begins with the suppression of the undulations of Chitta, the basic stuff of consciousness. It prescribes ...
... story (an unhappy story, as always) and sometimes also give me unexpected news. Among all those sad trivialities, I recall, for instance, an uncle of mine, a thorough and even brazen materialist and Cartesian (he was a professor at the Academy of Medicine!), who believed in nothing except the good and rich life. When I saw him, I expressed my gratitude to him, because it was he who had offered me my first ...
... the triad matter-life-mind, continued to determine the thinking. In science there were the material, vegetable and animal realms, the foundation of all natural classifications. Even materialistic Cartesians like La Mettrie wrote about a continuation in physical nature “from the human, down to the higher animals, down to the animals preceding these” (which shows that a descending evolution, from the ...
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