Rene Descartes Men In The Street

example and the anecdote of “men walking by”, was the spark that ignited modern science. The story of the men in the street is strikingly similar to the wax example, for it describes multiple beings, or substances, with different physical features all being identified under one umbrella term. Just as different colors and textures of wax are all labeled wax, the different colors and textures of the humans label them as men. From a purely physical perspective, these men could be from different species, but Descartes concludes he “[judged] them to be men” (22). Humans constantly live with untrustworthy senses, yet see past that to the inner extension and commonalities. Descartes describes the routine jump from observation to rational judgment

He states that “if [he judges] that the wax exists from the fact that [he can] see it, certainly from this same fact that [he sees] the wax it follows much more evidently that [he himself exists]” (23). He knows his vision can be somewhat faulty at times, but the bottomline is that he can see all the physical objects around him, and he sees the wax, just as he sees and feels his own body. He knows the wax is real because his mind, his rational being, tells him it exists even when his senses tell him it has changed into something alien. The mind says that the wax exists, and the mind identifies and acknowledges his body, so logically, the body must exist as well. In the hierarchy of the existing systems thus far in Descartes’ meditations, the mind is placed far above the body, but both are seen as being in

The ball of wax is the bridge between the chilling isolation of only trusting a single mind to living in a world filled with other beings and souls. One of Descartes’ major concerns was that the illusionary world he was living in was created by an evil demon to confuse and destroy him, but the truth that the ball of wax example brings to light allays the evil demon hypotenuse. Since the strength of the mind can measure the world and find the mathematical truths that explain the reality of the physical world around us, and it was created by God, what it can see and measure must be the truth. Descartes’ mind did not create itself, nor has it always been in existence, but rather it was created by some kind of higher being. Descartes comes to the realization that to explain his mind being infinite, the idea must have “proceeded from some substance which is really infinite” (31). In his analogy, God is the fire and heat source that radiates outward, and he is the subject that receives this warmth, and thus the idea of God cannot be “materially false” (31). If God has the power to bring Descartes into being, He could also bring in another man, or animal, or