Why does Descartes want to "destroy" all his former beliefs?

In the first Meditation, Descartes announces his intention to "freely address myself to the general upheaval of all my former opinions." In other words, he wants to sweep away everything he has learned, because much of it is learned from the senses, which can, as he puts it, be "deceptive." Descartes is trying to winnow down his knowledge to those things which absolutely must be the case. He concludes that even those things that seem to be obviously true could actually be false. He cannot dismiss the fact that everything he sees might be part of a dream that is non-existent in reality. Descartes eventually reaches the conclusion, in the second Meditation, that there is only one thing of which he can be absolutely certain. This is that he exists, because he is thinking: "I am, I exist—that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking." If he could not think, he could not question his existence in the first place. Descartes is attempting to "destroy" all of his knowledge in order to rebuild it upon firmer ground than previous philosophers had, especially the Scholastics. He is attempting to establish a "first principle" upon which philosophy can be based. In the same way that mathematicians can extrapolate complex solutions from simple mathematical principles, he sought to develop a philosophy based on one irrefutable truth. To do this, he had to question everything he "knew."
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1641_1.pdf

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