The Cartesian split

The Cartesian Split is an original trauma of human society. The forest does not think - it therefore is not. What used to be sanctuary is now wood. River is now hydraulic potential. Ocean is now extraction site.


The Cartesian lens is one of mechanism, where nature is a machine, physicality is machinery. There’s a few levels to physicality: our environment, and our bodies. When the physical world - our bodies, organs, biochemistry - is a machine to be studied mechanically and mathematically, does it lead to the same exploitation and destruction the Cartesian split led us towards our environment?

Considering the mind (res cogitans) as separate from our body (res extensa) is putting culture above biology.

Alveoli in our lungs are composed of single cell layers. Our single most important function - respiration - is permitted through the thin, single cells supporting all gas exchanges throughout our lives. What is a single cell? That is unobservable to the naked eye. That level of fragility is the pillar which keeps us alive.


How can we subject such fragility to toxic smoke, willingly? Because we are disconnected from our bodies. What comes first to mind is culture (res cogitans), a smoke, which is entirely separate from biology (res extensa). The decision to smoke happens at the level of identity, social belonging, habit - not at the level of alveolar tissue. I see the Cartesian split - the lack of visceral knowledge and education surrounding our bodies, our environment - as an immense threat to public health.

This translates to medical technology : we must leave models that act in ways reminiscent to paternalistic medicine behind. ML by nature treats the body like a machine with quantifiable proxies (heart rate, blood pressure) while ignoring fragility patterns, behaviour, temporal data, and environment - which is why I believe multi-modal data integration in clinical settings is not just technological advancement, but a deeply philosophical one we seem to miss. We are reliving the medical shift from Descartes’s paternalistic view to Viktor von Weizsäcker’s subjective view all over again, this time at a technical scale.