Descartes, Steno, and the Anatomy of the Earth: An Epistemological Inquiry

Both René Descartes and Nicolaus Steno attempted to explain how the surface of the Earth became irregular. This chapter compares the approaches these two offered and evaluates the different ways in which they appeal to experience. In the case of Descartes, the experience in question is that of the world in general: how the surface of the Earth is irregular and formed of mountains and valleys. Though Descartes sometimes suggests that his account is genuinely certain, it is self-consciously hypothetical. Steno, on the other hand, has figured out how to deduce the history of the surface of the Earth from present observations, using some general principles concerning strata, and given some specific observations he made of the Tuscan landscape. The chapter ends by suggesting that Descartes and Steno may, in a way, have been addressing very different questions. While Steno was genuinely interested in the history of the Earth, Descartes may have been more interested in showing that his mechanist natural philosophy is capable of explaining cosmological and terrestrial phenomena, even if the actual details of his explanation is not historically correct. These two cases illustrate two very different varieties of Continental Empiricism.