So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed...

citation

Curiosity. (2024, January 7). Wikiquote. Retrieved April 14, 2024 from https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Curiosity&oldid=3439666.

Discourse on the Method (Wikipedia) Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences (French: Discours de la Méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences) is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation “Je pense, donc je suis” (“I think, therefore I am”, or “I am thinking, therefore I exist”), which occurs in Part IV of the work. A similar argument, without this precise wording, is found in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), and a Latin version of the same statement Cogito, ergo sum is found in Principles of Philosophy (1644).
René Descartes (Wikipedia) René Descartes (/deɪˈkɑːrt/ or UK: /ˈdeɪkɑːrt/; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt]; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes considered himself a devout Catholic.