Transformation in knowledge : the Aristotlian concepts of actuality and potentiality and the Cartesian method

In this thesis, I will discuss the Anstotelian concepts of actuality and potentiality in combination with the Cartesian method. On the one hand this will be done as an attempt to balance the traditional English language interpretation of the relationship between Anstotelian and Cartesian philosophy, which tends to characterise them as fundamentally opposed. On the other hand, it will be done in order to generate legitimate unexplored conceptual frameworks for viewing the work of both philosophers. There is an assumption central to the greater part of English language scholarship on Descartes, attaining almost the status of self evidence, that within the philosophical canon, the appearance of the Cartesian method marks a definitive break between the ancient and the modern. Descartes signal achievement, on this assumption, was that he found a way once and for all, to break philosophy free from the shackles of Aristotelian thought. Such an idea is based upon the notion that, after Aristotle and prior to Descartes, philosophy consisted of little more than the endless repetition, or subtle modification of a hybrid Christian/ Anstotelian doctrine. The subsequent trajectory of English language philosophy appears to attest to the validity of such a view, and its apparent self-evidence from the perspective of this tradition serves to cover over other legitimate approaches to interpretation and use of Aristotelian and Cartesian concepts. In this thesis, rather than performing a comparison of the philosophy of Aristotle and Descartes, the Aristotelian concepts of actuality and potentiality and the Cartesian method will be considered ID light of a smgle task, namely, an attempt to theorise transformations in fundamental structures of knowledge. This will be accomplished by identifying latent possibilities suitable for such a task within Aristotelian and Cartesian conceptual structures, and extending them accordingly. As such, this thesis must be understood as a speculative work rather than as a work in history of philosophy. Aristotle demonstrates the meaning and function of the concepts of actuality and potentiality by way of analogy. This form of demonstration leaves the meaning of actuality and potentiality open to further extension by analogy. As such, the concepts of actuality and potentiality can be extended to cases not originally brought under these concepts by Aristotle. In this thesis the concepts of actuality and potentiality will be extended, according to the structure of the analogy by which Aristotle originally defines them, to an explanation of transformation in structures of knowledge. At the same time, the Cartesian method will be interpreted as a detailed account of a particular transformation from one structure of knowledge to another. Whilst Descartes characterises his own project in terms of the attainment of certainty, I intend to show that Descartes' stated intention in the creation of his method is less significant in terms of his overall system that the transformation that this intent brings about.