V. Can a method of gaining insight into spheres beyond the sense-perceptible world be given a scientific basis?

To show what I mean let me refer to a philosopher of glorious eminence, Descartes,[^2] the founder of modern philosophy. His philosophy had the same basis as that of Augustine.[^3] Both thinkers found thinking itself to be the great riddle of existence. The world perceived by the senses was full of uncertainties to them, but they believed that if they saw themselves immediately as souls, as human beings, in thinking, there could be no uncertainty in what arose in their thinking. If one saw oneself as thinking, even if doubting everything, if thinking was nothing but doubt and one had to say: I doubt in my thinking—then the philosophers thought, one is in that doubt. And they established the thesis which shines out like a beacon, I would say, through the ages: ‘I think, therefore I am.’