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René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, Province of Touraine (now Descartes, Indre-et-Loire), France, on 31 March 1596. In May 1597, his mother Jeanne Brochard, died a few days after giving birth to a still-born child. Descartes' father, Joachim, was a member of the Parlement of Rennes at Rennes.
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René Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher during the 17th century. He is often considered a precursor to the rationalist school of thought, and his vast contributions to the fields of mathematics and philosophy, individually as well as holistically, helped pushed Western knowledge forward during the scientific revolution.
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What is René Descartes known for?
René Descartes is most commonly known for his philosophical statement, “I think, therefore I am” (originally in French, but best known by its Latin translation: "Cogito, ergo sum”). He is also attributed with developing Cartesian dualism (also referred to as mind-body dualism), the metaphysical argument that the mind and body are two different substances which interact with one another. In the mathematics sphere, his primary contribution came from bridging the gap between algebra and geometry, which resulted in the Cartesian coordinate system still widely used today.
Although Descartes’s birthplace, La Haye (now Descartes), France, is in Touraine, his family connections lie south, across the Creuse River in Poitou, where his father, Joachim, owned farms and houses in Châtellerault and Poitiers. Because Joachim was a councillor in the Parlement of Brittany in Rennes, Descartes inherited a modest rank of nobility. Descartes’s mother died when he was one year old. His father remarried in Rennes, leaving him in La Haye to be raised first by his maternal grandmother and then by his great-uncle in Châtellerault. Although the Descartes family was Roman Catholic, the Poitou region was controlled by the Protestant Huguenots, and Châtellerault, a Protestant stronghold, was the site of negotiations over the Edict of Nantes (1598), which gave Protestants freedom of worship in France following the intermittent Wars of Religion between Protestant and Catholic forces in France. Descartes returned to Poitou regularly until 1628.
In 1606 Descartes was sent to the Jesuit college at La Flèche, established in 1604 by Henry IV (reigned 1589–1610). At La Flèche, 1,200 young men were trained for careers in military engineering, the judiciary, and government administration. In addition to classical studies, science, mathematics, and metaphysics—Aristotle was taught from Scholastic commentaries—they studied acting, music, poetry, dancing, riding, and fencing. In 1610 Descartes participated in an imposing ceremony in which the heart of Henry IV, whose assassination that year had destroyed the hope of religious tolerance in France and Germany, was placed in the cathedral at La Flèche.
In 1614 Descartes went to Poitiers, where he took a law degree in 1616. At this time, Huguenot Poitiers was in virtual revolt against the young King Louis XIII (reigned 1610–43). Descartes’s father probably expected him to enter Parlement, but the minimum age for doing so was 27, and Descartes was only 20. In 1618 he went to Breda in the Netherlands, where he spent 15 months as an informal student of mathematics and military architecture in the peacetime army of the Protestant stadtholder, Prince Maurice (ruled 1585–1625). In Breda, Descartes was encouraged in his studies of science and mathematics by the physicist Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637), for whom he wrote the Compendium of Music (written 1618, published 1650), his first surviving work.
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Descartes spent the period 1619 to 1628 traveling in northern and southern Europe, where, as he later explained, he studied “the book of the world.” While in Bohemia in 1619, he invented analytic geometry, a method of solving geometric problems algebraically and algebraic problems geometrically. He also devised a universal method of deductive reasoning, based on mathematics, that is applicable to all the sciences. This method, which he later formulated in Discourse on Method (1637) and Rules for the Direction of the Mind (written by 1628 but not published until 1701), consists of four rules: (1) accept nothing as true that is not self-evident, (2) divide problems into their simplest parts, (3) solve problems by proceeding from simple to complex, and (4) recheck the reasoning. These rules are a direct application of mathematical procedures. In addition, Descartes insisted that all key notions and the limits of each problem must be clearly defined.
- Richard A. Watson
Dec 3, 2008 · René Descartes. René Descartes (1596–1650) was a creative mathematician of the first order, an important scientific thinker, and an original metaphysician. During the course of his life, he was a mathematician first, a natural scientist or “natural philosopher” second, and a metaphysician third. In mathematics, he developed the ...
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Apr 9, 2001 · Descartes’ Life and Works. First published Mon Apr 9, 2001; substantive revision Wed Mar 1, 2023. Descartes has been heralded as the first modern philosopher. He is famous for having made an important connection between geometry and algebra, which allowed for the solving of geometrical problems by way of algebraic equations.
Aug 8, 2023 · Learn about the life and work of René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy who coined the famous phrase "I think; therefore I am." Explore his contributions to mathematics, science, metaphysics and theology, as well as his personal struggles and controversies.
Sep 22, 2020 · René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French mathematician, natural scientist, and philosopher, best known by the phrase 'Cogito ergo sum' ('I think therefore I am').He published works on optics, coordinate geometry, physiology, and cosmology, however, he is mostly remembered as the "father of modern philosophy".
A comprehensive overview of the life and philosophical thought of René Descartes, the "Father of Modern Philosophy" who broke with Scholasticism and developed mechanistic sciences. Learn about his method of doubt, his epistemology, his metaphysics, his moral system and his influence on modern philosophy.
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