Colin Murray Turbayne on René Descartes

“The mechanical philosophy is a case of being victimized by metaphor. I choose Descartes and Newton as excellent examples of metaphysicians of mechanism malgré eux, that is to say, as unconscious victims of the metaphor of the great machine. Together they have founded a church, more powerful than that founded by Peter and Paul, whose dogmas are now so entrenched that anyone who tries to reallocate the facts is guilty of more than heresy.”

“Having laid down his rules of method, Descartes proceeded to deviate from them. We expect a demonstration of the truth after the principles have already been found, such as been prescribed by Plato. But we get a different way of accounting for the facts: "the way of hypothesis" proscribed by Plato. Unable to proceed further deductively, he resorted to the invention of and choice among different hypothesis, the choice being determined by crucial experiments. Thus he gave up the certainty of the a priori method in favor of the conjectural a posteriori. This meant that in his practice, the synthesis preceded analysis, for it preceded that form of it known as inductive testing.”