Cogito Ergo Sum

The Philosophy Archive Dialogues · Sep 17, 2026 · 34m

What if everything you know—your memories, your senses, even the ground beneath your feet—could be doubted? For René Descartes, this was not a mere thought experiment. It was the reality of a world where old certainties were breaking down.In the early seventeen hundreds, the world of learning seemed stable from the outside. Classrooms followed time-honored routines. Libraries displayed their ancient volumes in neat order. But behind the scenes, something was shifting. New sciences, new questions, and a rising skepticism had begun to erode the old foundations of knowledge. Descartes grew up…