Rules For The Direction Of The Mind on Superphysics

The Aim of Studies

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The aim of studies should be to guide the mind to form solid and true judgments.

Sciences entirely consist in the knowledge of the mind.

We should only engage with objects that lead to sure knowledge.

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We should only engage with objects which our minds can use to achieve sure knowledge.

All knowledge is certain and evident cognition.

Thus, through this proposition, we:

We should seek what we can clearly intuit or deduce with certainty

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We should seek not:

what others have thought or
what we ourselves have accepted

We should seek what we can clearly intuit or deduce with certainty.

Knowledge is acquired in no other way.

Absolute and Relative

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To distinguish the simplest things from the involved ones, we must, in each series of things, in which we have directly deduced several truths from one another, to observe:

The order of those things to which the mind should be directed

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The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of those things to which the focus of the mind should be directed, so that we may discover some truth.

We will strictly observe this if we gradually reduce involved and obscure propositions to simpler ones, and then attempt to ascend from the intuition of all the most simple things to the knowledge of all others through the same steps.

Focusing the Mind

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The mind’s keenness should:

be turned entirely to the smallest and most easily understandable matters, and
dwell on them longer until we become used to discerning truth clearly.

The 2 principal faculties of the mind are:

How to make the mind sharp

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In order for the intellect to become sharp, it should be exercised in the same inquiries which have already been discovered by others, and also to traverse, with method, even the most trivial human inventions, especially those which explain or imply order.

How to Understand Questions

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If we perfectly understand a question, it must be abstracted from all superfluous concepts, reduced to its simplest form, and divided into the smallest parts with enumeration.

In this, we imitate the Dialecticians in one respect, that just as they assume the terms or the matter to be known for handing down the forms of syllogisms, so also here we require the question to be perfectly understood.

Extension: Naked shapes to the imagination

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The same principles that are used for transferring real space [extension] of bodies should also be proposed entirely through naked shapes to the imagination.

This will make them perceived much more distinctly by the intellect.

Whenever something unknown is deduced from something else already known, not a new kind of being is found.

Describe these figures and present them to external senses

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It is also very helpful to describe these figures and present them to external senses, so that by this means our thought may more easily retain attention.

However, how these should be depicted for distinctness, while they are set forth before our eyes, and how their species should be formed in our imagination, is evident by itself.

These things are better designated by very brief notes

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Those things which do not require the present attention of the mind, even though they are necessary for reaching a conclusion, are better designated by very brief notes than by complete figures.

Cartesian Method

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The proposed difficulty is to be directly traversed, abstracting from the fact that some of its terms are known, others unknown, and the mutual dependence of each upon others is to be observed through true discourses.

Equations

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RULE 19

By this method of reasoning, as many magnitudes expressed in two different ways must be sought as the number of unknown terms we assume to be known in order to proceed directly through the difficulty; for thus, there will be as many comparisons between equal things.

The 4 Basic Operations

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

To this end, only 4 operations are required: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

The last two are often not to be completed here, both so that nothing is rashly involved and so that they can be completed more easily later.