Also an important indicator was the Modality or mood of the sentence. Where empirical sciences were content with the modality of actuality, mathematical knowledge strived to achieve nothing less than that of necessity. Thus the rationalists were in a constant search for new knowledge that resembled the mood of indubitability. .
Principle 1: Axiom of Equality The axiom is a self evident .
Principle 2: 1 + 3 = 4 truth and therefore must be learnt .
Principle 3: 2 + 2 = 4 before other knowledge in Math.
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Therefore: 2 + 2 = 3 + 1.
Also, pre-enlightenment thinkers asked teleological questions ( why') since they believed that God was the one who decided what to do. However, during the revolution, the enlightenment thinkers learnt to ask how' instead and changed from a pull' to a push'.
As time passed these new-age thinkers moved towards a more mechanistic explanation (expulsion of God from their explanations) and ultimately began their search for new knowledge by emulating either mathematics or the empirical sciences.
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A 2).
Descartes, one of the revolutionary philosophers and prime contributors to the Enlightenment movement, played in the important role in seeking indubitable knowledge in through First Principles and his Meditations. A keen rationalist, he believed that to gain new knowledge he would have to adopt one of the predominant methods at the time. His hypothesis provided that he emulate the method of Mathematics and he decided that by eliminating knowledge gained by empirical methods (through the senses) he could then by default' select to emulate mathematical knowledge.
Descartes is not certain as to where he should begin his search for knowledge and ultimately starts from common sense. He begins a Dialectic procedure in which he uses several Principles of Evidence, each one more discriminating than the earlier one (error being in fact or in principle) until he reaches a point where God Himself seems to be the cause of his non-dependence on the senses to gain knowledge.