René Descartes:
"Father of Modern Mathematics" 1596-1650
René Descartes was born in La Haye, Touraine (France) in March of 1596 and died at Stockholm on February 11, 1650. René, the second of a family of two sons and one daughter, was sent to the Jesuit School at La Flêche at the early age of eight. Since he was of poor health he was permitted to lie in bed till late in the mornings, a custom which he always followed. When Pascal visited in 1647 he told him that the only way to do good work in mathematics and to preserve his health was never to allow anyone to make him get up in the morning before he felt like it
On leaving school in 1612 Descartes went to Paris to be introduced to the world of fashion. Through the medium of the Jesuits, he met Mydorge, and renewed his childhood friendship with Mersenne. Together they devoted two years, from 1615 1617, to the study of mathematics. During that time a man of position usually entered either the army or the church and so in 1617 Descartes joined the army of Prince Maurice of Orange, then at Breda. Walking through the streets one day in Breda he noticed a placard in Dutch which made him quite curious. He asked a stranger to translate it into either French or Latin. The stranger was Isaac Beeckman, the head of the Dutch College at Dort. He told Descartes he would do so only if he would answer it for him. The placard was a challenge to the world to solve a certain geometrical problem. Descartes worked it out within a few hours, and a close friendship had formed between the two.This unexpected test of his mathematical attainments made the unpleasant life of the army distasteful to him, but because of family influence and tradition he remained a soldier. He was persuaded at the commencement of the Thirty Years' War he was persuaded to volunteer under Count de Bucquoy in the Bavarian army. He continued all this time however, to occupy his leisure with mathematical studies. He would date the first ideas of his philosophy and of his analytical geometry according to three dreams which he experienced on the night of November 10, 1619, at Neuberg.
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
In Meditations on First Philosophy: Meditation VI, René Descartes argues for the distinction between mind and body. He asserts: “And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it…” (p. 618) This argument takes place in the last of six meditations, in which Descartes attempts to prove the existence of the physical world and the distinction between mind and body (Descartes’ Dualism). In earlier Meditations, he doubts everything that is not self evidently true, including the material world. He uses doubt as method of discovering simple truths he can build upon. The first truth he establishes is “the cogito” which is Latin for I think, Descartes uses this self-evident truth to argue that the mind is better known than the body, and uses thought as a proof for it’s existence. After he establishes his archimedean point or “the cogito” he starts to build his ontology. However, before he even proves matter exists, Descartes explains the essence of matter.
The next stage in the system, as outlined in the Meditations, seeks to establish that God exists. In his writings, Descartes made use of three principal arguments. The first (at least in the order of presentation in the Meditations) is a causal argument. While its fullest statement is in Meditation III, it is also found in the Discourse (Part IV) and in the Principles (Part I §§ 17–18). The argument begins by examining the thoughts contained in the mind, distinguishing between the formal reality of an idea and its objective reality. The formal reality of any thing is just its actual existence and the degree of its perfection; the formal reality of an idea is thus its actual existence and degree of perfection as a mode of mind. The objective reality of an idea is the degree of perfection it has, considered now with respect to its content. (This conception extends naturally to the formal and objective reality of a painting, a description or any other representation.) In this connection, Descartes recognized three fundamental degrees of perfection connected with the capacity a thing has for independent existence, a hierarchy implicit in the argument of Meditation III and made explicit in the Third Replies (in response to Hobbes). The highest degree is that of an infinite substance (God), which depends on nothing; the next degree is that of a finite substance (an individual body or mind), which depends on God alone; the lowest is that of a mode (a property of a substance), which depends on the substance for its existence.
In the New Merriam Webster Dictionary, sophism is defined as a plausible but fallacious argument. In Rene Descartes Meditation V, he distinguishes the existence of God, believing he must prove that god exists before he can examine any corporeal objects outside of himself. By proving that the existence of God is not a sophism, he also argues that God is therefore the Supreme Being and the omnipotent one. His conclusion that God does exist enables him to prove the existence of material things, and the difference between the soul and the body.
This essay will focus on discussing the way people used to live and the beliefs they had about God being the creator and controller of the universe during the middle ages or the pre modern times by first describing what pre modernity is then following with the dynamics of that time. This essay will then discuss Descartes the father of modernity together with some other contributing philosophers, and how he changed the beliefs of the middle ages prior to the way in which people now see themselves as subjects which can give meaning to objects and are free to choose whatever meaning they want to give to themselves and their surroundings.
Descartes’ “evil genius scenario” provides the possibility for the existence of an evil genius that is in control of our world in place on an omnipotent god. By in control, I mean that he would in some magical way compose our lives by his own will, thus making any certain knowledge about material objects impossible. This scenario presents some real questions with Descartes’ argument because it basically completely rules out the possibility of any god.
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.
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
René Descartes was a French philosopher who refused to believe that true knowledge was obtainable through the means of sense perception. Descartes believed that the senses; as we know them, could be manipulated and twisted into providing false understanding of the external world. In the search for the truth amongst what we perceive in life, Descartes is justified in his claims that our senses cannot be trusted. Only by questioning all that is known as human beings, can one find the absolute truth in life. Through the use of two different thought experiments, Descartes uses reasoning to questions what we perceive as reality and truth.
He felt like he was “bogged down in so many doubts and errors”(Descartes, 7). Due to this, in his later life, when he was in Germany fighting in the war, he spent the day in a stove heated room by himself and pondered his thoughts. There is where he discovered that he needed to rethink everything, he says, “the realization that things made up of different elements and produced by the hands of several master craftsmen are often less perfect than those on which only one person has worked”(Descartes, 12). Descartes goes against old ideas of certainty and questions the foundations of knowledge that had already been built. He believes that the foundation of knowledge that has been built over time by many different thinkers is not as strong as one that is built by just one person.
His father taught his Latin but after a while saw his son’s greater passion towards mathematics. However, Andre resumed his Latin lessons to enable him to study the work of famous mathematicians Leonhard Euler and Bernoulli. While in the study of his father’s library his favorite study books were George Louis Leclerc history book and Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond Encyclopedia, became Ampere’s schoolmasters (Andre). When Ampere finished in his father’s library he had his father take him to the library in Lyon. While there he studied calculus. A couple of weeks later he was able to do difficult treaties on applied mathematics (Levy, Pg. 135). Later in life he said “the new as much about mathematics when he was 18, than he knew in his entire life. His reading...
Etienne Pascal was very concerned about his son becoming an educated man. This is why he decided to teach his son on his own. He brought a young Blaise to lectures and other gatherings. He decided Blaise would not study math until age 15. When he made this decision he took all the math books out of the family home; however, this did not stop a curious Pascal. At age twelve, he started to work on geometry by himself. Blaise’s father finally started to take him to mathematical gatherings at "Academic Parisienne." At the age of 16, Pascal began to play an active role in "Academic Parisienne," as the principal disciple of Girard Desargues, one of the heads of "Academic Par...
Cottingham, John. Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 1-8. 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