Assertions and Truth
1. The fifteenth-century Renaissance effected a completely new orientation of the sciences. The manner of thinking appeared that was typical of the sixteenth century: rationalism. Here, it was the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650) that founded a new form of thought and made it the standard of the sciences. As Descartes demonstrated in his Discours de la Méthode (Fr. “Discussion of Method”; 1637), reason was no longer satisfie…