Paralelizm strukturalny projektów nauki uniwersalnej Lulla i Kartezjusza

Abstract

Joanna Judycka
The Structural Parallelism of Lull and Descartes’s Projects of Universal Science

Abstract

In spite of Descartes’s negative attitude towards Lull’s thought, being the result of his superficial knowledge of the latter, certain similarities between his mathesis universalis and the Lullian ars can be discerned. The starting point of both systems was the criticism of contemporary knowledge and a conviction of the unity of knowledge as an essentialist picture of the world’s structure. Both projects, based on the category of order, are constructed through operations on elements constituted by Lull’s absolute and relative principles and Cartesian simple natures respectively. Parallel to the function of imagination and figuration that formed the foundation of Lull’s combinatorics treated as an instrument of visualising metaphysical truths, the use of mathematics by Descartes can be seen as an aid and a way to mathesis universalis in its function of ultimate wisdom.

Keywords: Lull, Descartes, ars generalis, mathesis universalis, order, imagination, formalisation.