Ligando a dúvida metódica de René Descartes aos herméticos e rosa-crucianos, A C Grayling escreveu no seu livro «Descartes: the life of Rene Descartes and its place in his times» [Free Press, 352pp, £20, ISBN 0743231473]: «Hermeticists and Rosicrucians shared the desire to discover methods that would unify all knowledge and allow the practitioner to discover anything and everything, moving from discoveries in one area of thought to discoveries in another by infallible means. This is what Bacon and Descartes sought too». É um momento curioso, o um como a soma lógica do tudo e do nada.
