I was early introduced to to Cartesian thought through the study oflinguistics. A book influential in my intellectual development, at thetime, was Chomsky, Noam. Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Descartes was the originator of what has been termed, "Cartesian Doubt."It is not my intention to apply this in a philosophical sense, but morein the classic scientific methodological sense, that is, to doubt,automatically all knowledge and thereby ascertain what cannot bedoubted. Application of this method to genealogy starts with onlyaccepting as proven those facts that are beyond doubt or to put theconcept into a legal terminology, accepting those facts that are provenbeyond a reasonable doubt.
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