Descartes attempted to apply the philosophy of the deductive method of mathematics. Rejecting the method of education based on the principle of authority and the persuasiveness of the tradition, Descartes said that in the search path to knowledge would have accepted as true only to clear and distinct propositions, with evidence equal to that possessed by mathematical proofs and geometric. Therefore decided not to consider anything real before being absolutely certain and identified a method to discover truth in practice absolutely certain skepticism: he tried to doubt everything that felt real to investigate the possibility of doubt.
Pursuing this "method of doubt", he observes to be able to doubt everything, except their own existence: because the very act of thinking needed to be a thinking subject, he had to exist in order to think. Descartes expressed this conclusion in the famous motto: "Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am").
Based on the concept that thought can prove its own existence, he concluded that the essential characteristic of the subject was thinking. Descartes continued reflection claiming the existence of God and claiming that he had created two substances: the thinking substance (res cogitans), whose essential characteristic is the thinking and extended substance (res extensa), whose essential characteristic is that to occupy a particular physical extent, while the thinking substance shall comply with the laws of thought, the extended substance conforms to the mechanical laws of physics.
The bifurcation of reality into two substances, the physical and mental, is known as Cartesian dualism and extraordinarily influenced Western philosophy.
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