Descartes: Knowledge is truthWith the emergence of the scientific revolution in the 17th century, views of society and nature were transformed throughout Europe. Great advances have taken place in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology and chemistry. The world and its views were changing, and with this change came a new change in thought, a new change in philosophy. In addition to ancient Greek philosophy, which aimed to find order in a wide variety of things by seeking a fundamental principle of fusion, Descartes sought to establish order via fundamental division. Descartes understands and expresses that what we know about our minds is more precise than what we know about the world outside our minds. Descartes' philosophy is completely different from that of the Greeks, where it is not a fundamental principle, but fundamental knowledge. Descartes' examination of knowledge and its origins ultimately leads him to a new belief about how knowledge is acquired. In addition to previous beliefs that knowledge comes to us through sense perception, Descartes argues that this is not the case, because knowledge only comes to us by applying pure reason. Descartes rejects the idea that our senses give us knowledge because, according to Descartes, our senses give us accidental qualities of things. In other words, we see, hear, feel, smell and taste things as they are in relation to our human body. Our senses are different from those of other animals; so we cannot rely entirely on our senses to provide us with the information we need. Descartes' famous saying, "cogito ergo sum", is a conclusion he arrived at "a priori" and not through his senses or experience. For Descartes it was a p......middle of paper......or humans to benefit from it. We benefit from nature using applied sciences, such as medicine and mechanics. Every applied science has a set of moral principles, which flow from the “tree of knowledge”. With knowledge and our acquisition of it, our place in the cosmos changes from one person to another. My outlook is unique, and after reading Descartes, it changed. I gained new knowledge after reading Descartes, and now I have a different understanding of “the truth” of the cosmos and my place in it. Works Cited Descartes, René and John Cottingham. The philosophical writings of Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Print. Newman, Lex. “Epistemology of Descartes”. Stanford University. Stanford University, December 3, 1997. Internet. May 22 2014. .