Have you ever wondered why René Descartes called his 1641 work ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’? It became lucid only with his later published work, Principles of Philosophy (1644), what he meant by ‘first philosophy’. In the preface of Principles of Philosophy, he talks about a metaphor. He says, “The whole of philosophy is like a tree of which the roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences”.
It means that Descartes thought knowledge to be like a tree. The branches of a tree depend on the strength of the trunk, and the trunk hangs on to the strength of the roots. One can absolutely not hope to secure knowledge without securing the roots. Therefore, if one wants to show that physics is secure, one must show that its roots, i.e., metaphysics, are firm.
If anyone has to theorise the material world in any form, they must first settle questions about metaphysics. These questions include:
- Does the material world exist?
- What is the nature of matter?
René viewed these questions under the ‘first philosophy’. The idea of ‘first philosophy’ is the foundation on which all forms of knowledge depend. Thus, the goal of the Meditations on First Philosophy is to prove that these roots are secure and reliable.
Source
https://www.woldww.net/classes/General_Philosophy/Study-Guide-to-Descartes-Meditations-Part-I.htm
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