Descartes' Perspective

Descartes said, 'I think, therefore I am.' He doubted everything, and doubted it again, and concluded that this was the one thing that remained as absolutely true. From there, he attempted to reconstruct the truth.
Descartes also devised a method to 'represent the position of a point on a plane using two numbers.' By establishing an origin as a reference point, he represented the position of a point using a combination of two numbers and expressed shapes through equations. This is called 'Cartesian coordinates.' It is the method we have been using since junior high school, where we draw graphs by plotting horizontal and vertical axes.
Now, what do these two things have in common?

It is that they have a 'center.' It is a perspective that defines a center and views the world from there. It is the origin of Cartesian coordinates, and the 'I' in 'I think.'
So, what happens when you connect these two?
It leads to the conclusion: 'I am the center of the world.' I have not found any record of Descartes saying this himself, but that must have been his true intention.
Just as all points are expressed by their positional relationship to the origin, it means 'judging everything based on me.' Philosophy has various positions such as existentialism and structuralism, but if one were to name Descartes' position, it would be egocentrism. It is a level of self-centeredness different from your average selfish person; it is a deliberate, calculated egocentrism.

And so, people's worldview changed. Let me list three things.
First, people began to view things with themselves at the center. You could say they awakened to the individual, but in short, they seated themselves at the center of the world. In European society until then, God was at the center of the world. 250 years before Nietzsche (1844–1900) declared that 'God is dead,' Descartes (1596–1650) had already laid the groundwork to drag God down from the center of the world.
Second, people began to perceive time and space linearly. Long ago, time went in circles. Like 'morning → noon → evening → morning → ...' or 'spring → summer → autumn → winter → spring → ...'. By dividing what was cyclical, time and calendars were born. People also cycled. This was reincarnation. And just like time and calendars, people inserted divisions into it. A lifetime is one segment in the cycle of life and death. Cyclical time has no beginning and no end. And there is no past or future. That was time for people of the past, and it was time shared by everyone.
The same applies to space. You walk through a forest, cross a river, and the forest continues; you meet a person, walk further, and meet another person. In this way, the same things repeat. Just as days, years, and lifetimes go around in circles, space also goes around in circles. Beyond the sea, there must be another forest, and beyond the sky, there must be people, forests, rivers, and seas. That was space for people of the past, and it was space shared by everyone.
Such a worldview changed into a one-way, point-of-no-return sense of time and space. It is as if Descartes cut open the circular worldview and stretched it out into a straight line. From that perspective, Darwin's (1809–1882) theory of evolution and Wegener's (1880–1930) theory of continental drift were born.

And third, people began to think about what lies beyond the straight line. They began to worry about what lies at the end of the straight line that was cut open and stretched out. The distant past of the distant past, the far future of the far future, and what lies beyond the beyond. What is at the edge of the universe? What was it like before the Big Bang? Everyone naturally began to think about such things.
However, I do not know if infinity truly exists. It might just be a little habit of thought resulting from the fact that we have come to perceive space-time linearly.

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~ The boundary between philosophy and science ~
▷ Descartes' Perspective　　
▷ Pythagoras' Confusion
▷ Pascal's Wager