René DescartesRené Descartes was a French philosopher and also mathematician. His method of doubt led him to the famous "cogito ergo sum" which translated means "I am thinking, therefore I exist". This cogito was the foundation for Descartes' search for certain knowledge. He explored doubt and how we can prove our very existence, taking the first steps of skepticism. His book "Meditations on First Philosophy" was written in six parts. Each represents the six days it took God to create the world. In order not to upset the Church, Descartes would need to demonstrate the existence of God and the soul. Within Descartes' argument we find some important areas. Two, which require attention, are his perception of "clear and distinct ideas" and the example he gives regarding wax. Descartes began his journey towards the cogito, using the skeptical view of argumentation. Doubt everything. Descartes himself was not sceptical, but saw doubt as the first step; to clear the board and start over. Even though he seems to be able to doubt most things, he cannot doubt that he actually doubts them. This is what leads to his cogito. Descartes cannot be sure that he is not actually dreaming. Even if he thinks he is sitting by the fire, he may actually be naked on the bed. Descartes says that dreams present us with copies of real things and when we dream we combine these things. For example, a flying cat. We saw, outside the dream, a cat and also wings. Therefore in the dream they were combined. He concludes that the senses are incapable of reliability; that we shouldn't trust something that has deceived us even once before. This seems very unreasonable since, if we were to distrust every… medium of paper… yes, René Descartes left us thinking seriously about the existence of the world we seem to have known all our lives. Contemplating that life as we know it is just an illusion, to assume that this body and all the other bodies around me are false. It is true that Descartes made a clear distinction between the body and the mind and said that it is possible to have a thought without a body, but not a body without thought. It has given us the ability to see ourselves differently from who we really are, and to allow us to ask questions that had never been possible to ask before. It is true that we are no closer to solving the problem of certain knowledge than Descartes was, but he maintained his ideals throughout his philosophy. Although Descartes did not find certain knowledge, he helped each individual in their own search, towards their own certain knowledge.