Wednesday Wisdom

Deconstructing a Problem

Who?

In 1596, Renee Descartes was born in Touraine, France, and became one of France's most famous philosophers, mathematicians, and physicist. René Descartes' enrolled at the Jesuit College of La Flèche at the tender age of eight and at sixteen years of age entered the University of Poitiers which provided him with a strong foundation in classical and legal studies. The Jesuits emphasized a Scholastic approach, which was heavily influenced by the works of Aristotle and the Church Fathers and heavily influenced his thinking through life. His own intellectual curiosity and self-directed learning led him to explore other academic fields and led him to make groundbreaking contributions to philosophy and mathematics.

Descartes has been referred to as the "father of modern philosophy" as well as the "father of the scientific method and analytic geometry”. His influence cannot be underestimated, as he helped accelerate Western civilization toward a more modern era, where reason increasingly took precedence over faith, which often put him in the crossfire of the Catholic Church. The condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Catholic Church in 1633 had a profound impact on Descartes. Galileo was found guilty of heresy for supporting the heliocentric theory of the Sun as the center of the universe not planet Earth, which contradicted the Church's geocentric view. With Galileo’s fate in mind, Descartes was cautious in his writings, often emphasizing that his philosophical ideas were not meant to contradict Church teachings. Like many great thought leaders before him like St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he sought to reconcile his scientific and philosophical inquiries with his faith, and he remained a devout Catholic throughout his life.

What?

Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637) is one of the first important modern philosophical works not written in Latin. As Descartes said, “I wrote in French so that all people with good sense, including women, could read his work and learn to think for themselves”.  In 1644 Rene Descartes published his manuscript Principles of Philosophy.  In it, he defines "First Principles" thinking:” a logic based problem-solving technique that requires you to break down a complex problem into its most basic, foundational elements." Aristotle defined the "First Principle" also known in Latin as "A Priori" as "the first basis from which anything is known.” Rene Descartes, being a mathematician by training furthers this reasoning through a system he called "Cartesian Doubt" where he said, "systematically doubt everything he could possibly doubt until he was left with what he saw as purely indubitable truths.”

2024 Why should you care?

First Principle thinking is still a common practice across business, investing, physics, and problem-solving. The concept of taking the sum of the parts and breaking them into individual parts is an integral part of an analyst or mangers tool kit in evaluating the underlying issue. Understanding problems requires problem-solving by breaking them down into pieces. In his career, Elon Musk has used "First Principle" thinking to build rocket ships and batteries for electric cars. For example, Musk realized the price of lithium electric batteries to power a car were too expenxieve to compete with traditional combustion engines. When he looked at the underlying components to the batteries that traded on the London Mercantile Exchange, he realized he could assemble the batteries at a much lower price point, eventually making electric vehicles competitive on price.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon applies this philosophy to his business strategy, focusing on fundamental truths and prioritizing customer needs, which he describes as a "customer obsession" being the first principle. When it comes to meetings and decision making, Bezos developed the “Two Pizza Rule”, believing meetings and decision making should never be bigger than a room than can be feed everyone with two pizzas. The diagram below shows how to many inputs can lead to a lack of good ideas, confusion and a lack of decision making in a meeting.

Reed Hastings of Netflix credits "First Principle" thinking to his company's creative outcomes. Hastings has said, “First principle thinking is the idea that everything you do is underpinned by a foundational belief or first principles. Instead of blindly following directions or sticking to a process, a first principle thinker will constantly ask, ‘What's best for the company?’ and ‘Couldn't we do it this other way instead?” In other words, an organization’s primary operating principle ought to be good judgment, not good administration. When a company recognizes the importance of empowering employees such that they make sound decisions on behalf of the company’s long-term goals, it becomes a recipe for operating a highly engaged workforce. Netflix’s stock price certainly reinforces the success of this “First Principle” approach to running the organization.

Can "First Principles" or "A Priori" help in everyday life?

In his 1637 work Discourse on Method, Descartes developed a four-step process for solving problems. Unlike ancient skeptics who often concluded that nothing could be known with certainty, Descartes used skepticism as a tool to clear away uncertain beliefs and establish a new basis for certain knowledge. His goal was not to remain in doubt but to overcome it by finding indubitable or unquestionable truths. The following principles are followed: (1) accept nothing as true that is not self-evident, (2) divide problems into their simplest components, (3) solve problems in a step-by-step manner, and (4) recheck reasoning.

Sixteenth century logic still seems like reasonable advice today.

And now you know:

Thank you, Dad, for the gift of curiosity.

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses.

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.