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The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality—to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our senses—intellect and abstract it away form reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted, and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected, and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.

Rene Descartes (1596–1650), the great French philosopher and mathematician, raised the above problem. Since existence of anything, including my being, is not certain, what is there in the universe beyond any shadow of a doubt? When one has doubts about the world, and even about the whole entire universe what is left? Let’s “stand” outside this world for a moment and follow Descartes and see what is actually left.

According to Descartes, the doubt itself is left, because for something to be doubtful, it must seem to me that it is; and the whole universe may seem to me doubtful, except for the fact of its seeming to me. To doubt is to think, and thought is the only thing in the universe whose existence cannot be denied, because to deny is to think. When one says that thought exists, it automatically includes saying that one exists because there is no thought that does not contain as one of its elements a subject who thinks.