Home Page Fiction and Poetry
Essays and Reviews
Art and Style
World and Politics
Montreal
Archive
 

On Descartes' "Optics"

***

The Montreal Review, September 2010

***

| MORE

***

The objects must be illuminated in order to be seen, says René Descartes in his "Optics." And the objects are perceived by us as ideas. We feel the objects as ideas through the illumination of the light and through the quality of their actions. It is not necessary to touch them in order to understand them. We transform the qualities of the objects into knowledge through our ability to imagine and do analogies.

The light is constant and soft like a spirit. It doesn't change its qualities, but reflects the true nature of the objects. The objects could be soft, hard, or fluid. We understand their substance through their reflection of the light.

If we speculate more philosophically on the existence and importance of the light, we might say that the light could be not only physical, but also ideal. For example, the reason can be light. It illuminates the objects and reveals their substance. The knowledge of the objects' substances is important for us as living creatures that depend on the qualities of the surrounding environment. The light of the reason gives us knowledge if a given object or environment is good or evil for our survival. The objects that the reason illuminates might be not only material, but also ideal. Thus, the reason illuminates the ideas that are secondary product of our ability to perceive and process information. The reason illuminates the quality of these ideas when they are transformed into actions (or acting ideas such as political and economic systems, technology, medicine, etc) or through analogy.

***

 
pdf
Submissions Guide
Letters to the Editor
newsletter
RSS

All featured book titles
 
home | past issues | world & politics | essays | art and style | fiction and poetry | links | newsletter
The Montréal Review © 2009 - 2012 T.S. Tsonchev Publishing & Design, Canada. All rights reserved. ISSN 1920-2911
about | contact us | copyright | user agreement | privacy policy