ABSTRACT
Descartes’ famous method consisted of four stages. In the first stage, he searched for a solid foundation, which he found in human intuition. In Part I, we investigated some of the key foundations that have shaped our beliefs and actions through the ages; actions which include the design and development of cities. The second stage of the Cartesian method was to subdivide phenomena into their constituent parts: ‘to divide each of the difficulties that I was examining into as many parts as might be possible and necessary in order best to solve it.’1 Breaking down phenomena into their constituent parts and regrouping them in new ways is one of the oldest methods of applying reason to human affairs, as exemplified by Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle, for example, used this analytical method extensively: ‘We have to analyse other composite things till they can be subdivided no further, because we have reached the smallest parts of the wholes.’2 The wholes, therefore, could be understood through understanding their parts. After this stage of analysis, the Cartesian method had a third stage for synthesis: ‘to conduct my thoughts in an orderly way, beginning with the simplest objects and the easiest to know, in order to climb gradually, as by degrees, as far as the knowledge of the most complex, and even supposing some order among those objects which do not precede each other naturally’.3 In justifying his method, Descartes spoke of geometers, who were accustomed to using these long chains of reasoning, deducing one thing from what preceded it. Part II deals with these analytical and synthetic stages of reasoning and their implications for urban design and development, focusing on the problems of time, space, meaning, value and action.
