Method and Reason

The work of Descartes' that is sometimes glossed as 'Discourse on Method', is, in fact, titled 'Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences'.  Now, the definite article in the title, which implies that several established alternatives are not legitimate in some respect, is open to easy challenge.  But more problematic for Descartes is the conjunction in the title.  For, it implies that Reason only seeks Truth.  However, Method seeks, first and foremost, Efficacy, i. e. that it can be effectively executed.  So, the title implies that any Method, including his own, is Irrational.  But, a Method is not Irrational; rather, it is an expression of Technical Reason, which, perhaps, Descartes might have discovered in a preparatory Discourse on Method.

Technical Reason and Events

Kant more than merely systematizes the conflicting Modern Rationalism and Modern Empiricism.  He surpasses both traditions by, probably influenced by Newton, no longer conceiving the objects of Knowledge as things, but as events, and, hence as temporally constituted.  Accordingly, a link between concepts and a temporal sensory manifold is required, and Schematism provides that link in his system.  However, he still does not recognize that Newtonian Physics is itself only preparatory--for the harnessing of the forces that it represents.  Accordingly, even in recognizing the priority of Practical over Theoretical Reason, he does not recognize that the Experience of the World no longer consists in the mere observation of Events, but in the harnessing of them.  Thus, what is required by a Philosophical grounding of Experience is a Practical correlate of Schematism, i. e. a explanation of how concepts can harness causal relations, as if they were raw materials. That correlate is Technical Reason.  But, unlike Schematism, Technical Reason is not a hitherto concealed art only first discovered by Kant.  Rather, it is well-known as Techne, by Aristotle, and it is the basis of Method, which is familiar to all Kant's Modern predecessors, but never as itself an object of their studies.

Acceleration and Life-Force

Via Calculus, Physicists can only approximate, no matter how closely, to to the continuity of Motion.  In contrast, if, as Kant proposes, there is a Schematism, then there is also a direct perception of Motion to which their representation approximates.  Accordingly, Bergson's criticism that Physics spatializes Duration does not necessarily apply to Schematism.  But even granted one or the other means of a direct perception of Motion, neither explains Acceleration, which consists in not merely Motion, but an increase in rate, thereby leaving the objective actuality of Acceleration still in question.  However, despite his innovation, Bergson shares with Kant, and with most of theorists of Temporality, the attribution to Time of mere Continuation.  So, little attention is given to how Newton's discovery of a correlation between Force and Acceleration might apply to a special case of the former---Life-Force.  In other words, even Bergson does not consider that the essential character of Temporality is not mere Continuation, but Growth, on the basis of which Continuation a special case.  So, if the Temporality of a Human is essentially Growth, then so, too, is that of Schematism, from which it follows that there is an Epistemological ground of the direct perception of Acceleration.

Acceleration and Technical Reason

As Hume's Skepticism demonstrates, Empiricism seems to lack the capacity to ground any direct perception of the uniformly increasing Velocity entailed in the concept of Acceleration that is a foundation of Modern Physics.  On the other hand, while Rationalism can be the source of the Unity that is entailed in the perception of homogenized Motion, which would be required for Acceleration to be directly perceived, the application of a fixed concept to Motion seems problematic.  Now, a potential third alternative is proposed by Kant--his faculty of Schematism, which temporalizes his Categories.  So, if that faculty is, as he asserts, "an art concealed in the depths of the human soul", and not a mere ad hoc gimmick, then it, with a qualifier of Increase, could be the source of a direct perception of Acceleration.  Likewise for Technical Reason, if, as has been previously discussed, Schematism is an expression of that faculty. So, in the absence of a compelling rejection of Kant's discovery of Schematism--a rejection that is does not take for granted the kind of quasi-Dualism that, since Parmenides, Rationalists and Empiricists alike have been espousing--Technical Reason is the Epistemological ground of one of the foundations of Modern Physics.

Rationalism, Empiricism, Acceleration

Descartes' specific Mathematical innovation is the application of Algebra to phenomena.  Newton develops that technique further, by inventing Calculus, to apply to his most fundamental discovery--the correlation of Force and Acceleration.  But, despite this combination of Rational and Empirical methods, neither Newton nor anybody else has represented Acceleration by anything more than an approximation, i. e. 'approaching zero differential'.  In other words, even though Acceleration is accepted as concretely existing, neither Rationalists nor Empiricists have supplied an immediate Epistemological foundation of such an existent.  Nor does Bergson's later Intuition of Motion explain Acceleration, i. e. as opposed to any other rate.  So, despite the predominance of Epistemology in Modern Philosophy, and the centrality to the era of debates between them, neither proves adequate to the phenomenon that is perhaps the foundation of Modern Physics.

Method, Skepticism, Mathematics

On the basis of the standard academic Philosophy curriculum, the seminal work of Modern Epistemology is the Meditations.  Accordingly, the seminal Philosophical Method of the era is Skepticism.  However, that status of the work is belied by its being predated by not only the Novum Organum, but Descartes' other projects, as well.  Taking those into consideration, his Skepticism serves one specific purpose--to incorporate his deity into those other projects.  Once he accomplishes that in the Meditations, his real methodological innovation becomes clear, when the first application of the newly-gained Certainty is to Mathematics.  He thereby grounds the Method that surpasses Bacon, and has had a profound influence on history everywhere except in insular Philosophy--the quantification of Experience.  Accordingly, a significant factor in the Empiricist responses to Descartes, and, subsequently, Leibniz, is a counter to any thesis that Mathematical knowledge is innate.  But in sharp contrast to this Rationalism vs. Empiricism debate that dominates Philosophy for a few centuries, scientists recognize that the value of observation and Mathematics is as combined, i. e. as the method of quantifying evidence.  So, while Kant's system sometimes seems to be an attempt to reconcile Modern Rationalism and Modern Empiricism, it can also be interpreted as a formalization of a synthesis that already been widely actualized in that same period.

Empiricism and Democracy

For Bacon, Empiricism is an active, methodical, collective process.  For Locke, the foundation of Empiricism is a passive experience of an individual subject, though his concept of Space as a Primary Quality maintains a recognition of the existence of a public sphere that is independent of the individual subject.  For Berkeley, that existence is eliminated, transforming Empiricism into a characterizing of the passive relation of a private subject to a communicating deity.  Thus, despite Locke's efforts to coordinate Empiricism and Democracy, i. e. his concept of Tabula Rasa grounds both, his own abstraction from the active, methodical, collaborative dimension of Bacon's Empiricism paves the way for Berkeley's elimination of the rest of its Democracy, i. e. by grounding the possibility of an a posteriori inegalitarianism. This two-stage radical privatization of Experience, implicitly inherited by Smith, remains to this day a destructive threat to Democracy, and suggests that the significant sequence in Modern Empiricism is not, as it usually taught, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, but Bacon, Locke, and Berkeley.