Rene Descartes, “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences”, 1637 is the text source of the idiomatic statement: “I think; therefore, I am”. The Roget, “Thesaurus” is a classification of English words by semantic meanings into taxon classes. Roget, “Thesaurus’ paradigm for the word “animal” is discussed below.
1. Animal Vegetable Mineral.
2. Animal Bird Fish.
3. Animal Man.
4. Man Cook.
Level #1 semantic meaning, “animal” is neither vegetable nor mineral. Level # 2 semantic meaning, “animal” is neither bird nor fish. Level #3 sematic meaning, “animal” is not man. Level #3 semantic meaning, man is not “animal” in the Roget, “Thesaurus raises my question? What is “man”? I look up “cook” and cook is equated with man, in Level #4 semantic meaning in the Roget, “Thesaurus”. I have the answer: “I cook; therefore, I am”.
Finally, I conclude that Rene Descartes of “I think: therefore, I am” was not a “cook.”
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