데카르트의 『정신지도를 위한 규칙들』의 감각 이론에 나타난 인식의 기술적 모델

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to show that Descartes understood ature as a technical phenomenon and that he used mechanical models in order to explain the natural phenomena, and that he understood knowledge as analogous to the skill of constructing machines. In this study, I explain that Descartes understood knowledge as construction of objects from the simple elements of the mind. In particular, the study notes that his early work, Rules for the direction of the mind, uses artifacts to explain the sensory perception and presents the perception as a kind of art. From the Renaissance to the modern era, nature began to be considered as a big machine, and the machines began to be understood as natural in some sense. In this context, the artificial tools and machines that are products of technology can be used as models for understanding nature. In other words, the knowledge of nature became understanding how the nature-machine works. A machine can be disassembled into many parts and reassembled again. Therefore, just as a machine is produced by the union of simple elements, so knowledge becomes the work of the intellect that constructs the things out of simple elements. In short, knowledge is like technical construction. This is the result for epistemology of the deconstruction of the theory of forms in the Aristotelian sense, the consequent abolition of the Aristotelian distinction between nature and technics, and the consequent understanding of things as the result of technical production processes. Descartes' Rules is a text that testifies to this change.