The concept of knowledge, what it is, what it means, and how it is gained, has been debated for literally centuries. Philosophers, historians, social scientists have questioned the components of knowledge and its acquisition and developed their individual theories based on the cultural and intellectual developments of their age.

Many of the major ideas that are most often linked to the 18th-century French Enlightenment originated as a part of "Cartesianism," or the philosophy and mathematical ideas and methods developed by 17th-century philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). While he is most famous for his cognito "I think, therefore I am," that proclamation is less than an accurate or meaningful statement as it relates to the reality of what Descartes believed to be the existence of humanity and humanity's understanding of what knowledge truly is. Descartes' "The Meditations" was published in Paris in 1641 and has come to generally be viewed as the most important of all of Descartes' works. It is in "The Meditations" that he best presents his metaphysical and epistemological premises in their entirety. He considers the problems of the sources and n

Plato. "The Republic of Plato," translated by Francis MacDonald Cornford (London, UK:

In comparison, Descartes claims in "Meditation II" that the recognition of his omnipresent skepticism makes him similar to a swimmer suddenly thrown into deep water. He cannot touch the bottom and cannot see the surface. In this position of unknowing discomfort, tinged with fear, he must discover the security one specific and unchangeable position from where he can determine how to proceed. While Socrates is not faced with the burden of skepticism, Descartes is convinced that absolutely the only assumption that he can make at this point in the established and universally agreed upon reality is that he exists as a thinking thing. In fact, he knows that he exists only when he is thinking. Therefore, the mind, as the creator of thought, is much more accessible to belief, realization, and legitimization than the body. It is the entity that determines what is and what is not and therefore has far more legitimacy than the simple, "mindless" body.

Descartes explains that everyone knows what an external object is (an apple, a book, a boat), but few people can properly answer the question "who am I" (an issue of personal identity).

Much of Descartes' arguments rest on a distinction which became known as that between primary and secondary qualities. If a person looks at an apple and perceives the qualities of redness, scent, roundness, and singularity, those perceptions belong to the person and do not really belong to the apple. Such qualities exist only in the mind of an observer, and are then imposed onto the apple. These are secondary qualities. By contrast, the qualities of roundness and singularity belong to the apple itself, and are not products of the observer's mind. These have been termed primary qualities. For Descartes, secondary qualities arise from what he calls "objects of the senses," and primary qualities from "objects of mathematics."

Descartes admits that if he is conscious that he exists. The next qu

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