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The life and works of Rene Descartes
Rene descartes math
The life and works of Rene Descartes
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Rene Descartes was a brilliant man who was born on March 31st, 1596. He was born in a small town in the South of France, named La Haye. Rene Descartes lived from 1596-1650. He was the son of an intellectual councilor in Parliament, named Joachim Descartes. His mother, Jeanne Brochard, died when he was only 1 years old. Rene Descartes was 8 years old when he attended the Jesuit College of Henry VI in La Fleche. Rene studied science, grammar, mathematics and literature which led him to become a famous Mathematician. He later left La Fleche in 1614 to study civil and cannon law at Poitiers. In 1616, Rene Descartes received his Bachelor's Degree and licensed degree in Law. In 1618, Descartes spent some time in the military where he was placed in a defense force of Maurice of Nassau, Dutch Republic. In 1622, Descartes came back to France. It was during this stay in Paris where he wrote his first essay called “Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii” also known as Rules For The Direction Of The Mind. In 1628, Rene moved to the Dutch Republic where he lived for over 20 years. During this time period, he learned more about mathematics, utilizing his spare time. Rene Descartes published many works on philosophy and mathematics at this time. He also came in contact with the school of Dordrecht's principal, Isaac Beeckman. However, in 1630, the two parted ways as Rene Descartes charged Beeckham with plagiarizing his original ideas. Descartes decided not to publish his work “Treatise On The World” because he had heard of the censorship of Galileo's writings in 1633 by the Catholic Church. However, he made some of his writings in his essays named “La Geometrie, Les Meteores and La Dioptrique”. In 1641, Descartes presented his work such as “Med... ... middle of paper ... ...with this in his books “The Description Of Human Body” and “Passions Of The Souls”, where he says that the human body operates like a machine because it has material properties. The King of France rewarded Descartes a pension in 1647. After the reward, his books was banned by the pope in 1663. Rene had a daughter named Francine from his relationship with Helena Jans van Der Strom, who was a servant. Sadly, Francine died in 1640 due to scarlet fever. Descartes also died February 11th , 1650 in Stockholm, Sweden due to pneumonia. He was serving as a tutor for queen of Sweden. He was laid to rest at the Abbey of Saint-German-des-Pres,Paris. A memorial of Rene Descartes was built in the Swedish church in the eighteenth century. Rene left a good legacy about using ideas such as geometry and the creation of x,y, and z as representations of equations.
René Descartes signifies a unique change compared to ancient and medieval traditions in many ways. The ancient and medieval traditions consist of ideals of which people impose meaning on things. These classical traditions also consist of how a person identity starts from outside of the body and the works its way inwards towards a complete person. Those traditions had a perception that humans began to analyzes themselves outside of themselves first before they analyze themselves internally. Descartes challenged the ancient and medieval traditions by having a different perception of how he came to know things. Descartes, instead of imposing meaning on things, he would derive meaning from things. He also challenged the classical traditions because
Before students can judge others ideologies they must understand the philosopher first. Rene Descartes, the father of modern western philosophy, was born in 1596 to French parents. Rene Descartes excelled in mathematics. By 1616 Descartes received his baccalaureate and became a licensed lawyer. In 1618 Descartes joined the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. During his service Descartes never saw combat, but while in the service he was able to travel and explore the world. During his time in Germany Descartes began to inquire about life’s hardest questions regarding logic, reasoning, arithmetic, God and knowledge. By the early 1830’s Descartes continued his conquest of knowledge; he secluded himself from all temptations and began to write. Descartes
Descartes main objective in his meditations is to question or doubt knowledge and for him, in order to get an unbiased knowledge; he basically started from zero and questioned everything. He uses radical form of skepticism in his investigation for the absolute truth. I think that Descartes wrote the meditations to reaffirm his beliefs and/or to justify his beliefs. Most of the ideas that he tried to prove where based on the existence of god. Rene Descartes was a devout catholic and being one of the key figures in the scientific revolution, I think he had conflicting thoughts about what he believes and tried to prove his beliefs with the Meditations.
Rene Descartes’ third meditation from his book Meditations on First Philosophy, examines Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to explore Descartes’ reasoning and proofs of God’s existence. In the third meditation, Descartes states two arguments attempting to prove God’s existence, the Trademark argument and the traditional Cosmological argument. Although his arguments are strong and relatively truthful, they do no prove the existence of God.
The book is comprised of six meditations, and he refers to each previous meditation as “yesterday”, but he began working on the book in 1639. Descartes uses the method of doubt (a process of being sceptical about the truth of a belief) in order to determine which of his beliefs he could be completely sure of, and which could be taken apart by simple doubts; “I realised that it was necessary… to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.”
1. "RENÉ DESCARTES AND THE LEGACY OF MIND/BODY DUALISM." Rene Descartes and the Legacy of Mind/Body Dualism. Web. . .
Descartes was born in 1596 in Touraine, France. His education consisted of attendance to a Jesuit school of La Fleche. He studied a liberal arts program that emphasized philosophy, the humanities, science, and math. He then went on to the University of Poitiers where he graduated in 1616 with a law degree. Descartes also served as a volunteer in several different armies to broaden his horizons.
Descartes, Rene. The Philosophical Writings, tr. John Cottingham and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
René Descartes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by John Cottingham. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 1996.
In the reading of Descartes he interprets his understanding of how and why the mind is better known than the body. He states that, “Myself in my entirety in as much as I am formed of body and soul (mind) taught by nature, sun, stars, and sky. Descartes realized that he could learn things from his body. Things like pain if he touches a flame or pleasure if he drinks a cup of wine. With senses Descartes could see textures and beautiful landscapes. This made Descartes realize that from this generalization that he has made, what he learns from his body does not exceed what he already knows in his mind. I think Descartes point is well made in his quote above. I come to understand this though, through the fact that the minds common sense is what tells me I should not touch a flame, because of the pain it will bring me.
[1] Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. 1641 [Translated by John Veitch (1901)] Meditation 6, http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/9.htm
Descartes. "Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy." Readings in Modern Philosophy. Ed. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Vol. I. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000. 22-55. Print.
Rene Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher believed that the origin of knowledge comes from within the mind, a single indisputable fact to build on that can be gained through individual reflection. His Discourse on Method (1637) and Meditations (1641) contain his important philosophical theories. Intending to extend mathematical method to all areas of human knowledge, Descartes discarded the authoritarian systems of the scholastic philosophers and began with universal doubt. Only one thing cannot be doubted: doubt itself. Therefore, the doubter must exist. This is the kernel of his famous assertion Cogito, ergo sum (I am thinking, therefore I am existing). From this certainty Descartes expanded knowledge, step by step, to admit the existence of God (as the first cause) and the reality of the physical world, which he held to be mechanistic and entirely divorced from the mind; the only connection between the two is the intervention of God.
We can apply Rene Descartes philosophy to our everyday lives because we can make a difference. We can analyze what we do in our daily lives and we can make a difference finding the truth about life. I personally like the philosophy of Rene Descartes even though his philosophy is considered to be epistemological and it has zero ground. His philosophy can help our community by making us look at reality in a different way. Even if his philosophy is considered to be irrational, we should take in mind what he mediated in his meditation