Rene Descartes Essay, Research Paper

Rene` Descartes was born in La Haye, Touraine(a former province

of France) March 31, 1596. He spent all of his childhood in France.

His father was a minor nobleman and counsillor of the Parliament of

Brittany, his title was noblesse de la robe. Descartes mother was not

as prominate as her husband but she was quite wealthy. The

nationality of both his parents is French. His religion was Roman

Catholic.

In 1606 at the age of eight Descartes enrolled in the Jesuit

college of La Fleche in Anjou, to study mathematics and Scholastic

philosophy, which was used to understand Christian doctrine. Upon

leaving school Descartes studied law at Poitiers University until

graduation in 1616 but he never attempted to practice law outside

school. He spent years wandering through Europe until he finally

settled in the Netherlands in 1618 where he joined the services of

Prince Maurice who was the leader of the UP of the Netherlands. He

make a trek to Italy in 1623 until 1624 and then he went to France and

stayed four years until 1628. When Descartes was in France focused

his studies on philosophy and the development of optics. Then after

selling all his property in France he moved to the Netherlands and to

such cities as Amsterdam and Leiden.

Rene` Descartes never had paying jobs he mainly did volunteer

work and received nothing in return for his work. For means to live

on Descartes received property from his mother which he turned around

and sold for 27,000 liveries. Some time after that he inherited

property for his father which he kept.

Descartes developed of an optical machine that would grind

non-spherical lenses for spectacles etc.

Descartes philosophy was sometimes called Cartesianism it carried

him into false reasons of a number of physical phenomena. While

Descartes was studying optics it led him to the discovery of the basic

law of reflection.

Descartes was often called the father of modern philosophy. He

tried to justify philosophy by using science and mathematics. Before

Descartes people used scholasticism, which was based on comparing the

views of recognized authorities. He rejected the method I quote: In

our search for the direct road to truth, we should busy ourselves with

no object about which we cannot attain a certitude equal to that of

the demonstrations of arithmetic and geometry. Which made him

determine to hold nothing true until he had established grounds for it

being true. While Descartes was in the Netherlands he published his

first work Philosophical Essays. The work focused on four subjects

geometry, optics, meteors, and Discourse on Method which is philosophy

speculations. while Descartes was in the Netherlands he formed a

friendship with the princess Elizabeth Stuart of Bohemia. Sometime

during the winter of 1649 Descartes was instructed to go to Stockholm

Sweden to give Queen Christina tutoring in philosophy. Then in 1650

while still Stockholm the severity of the winter caused him to get

pneumonia and die.

analytic geometry was introduced by Rene Descartes in 1637.

Analytic geometry is most commonly applied to the representation of

Equations involving two of three variables as curves in two or three

dimensions or surfaces in three dimensions, which allows problems in

algebra to be answered in geometry and problems in geometry to be

solved by algebra. The techniques of analytic geometry have been

generalized to four or more dimensions and have been combined with

other forms of geometry.

Rene Descartes was the first mathematician to use the last

letters of the alphabet to assign unknown qualities and the first

letters to designate known ones. He also invented the method of

indices(x)to express the powers of numbers. He also expressed the

Descartes rule of sign for finding the number of positive and negative

roots for any algebraic equation.

Descartes was a great man and he did many things in his life

including philosophy, science, mathematics. All of these subjects are

important say for instance math he made may contributions to

mathematics but some of them were minor and some were major but no

matter what they all impacted mathematics in some way most mathematics

today would not be complete if someone didn t make contributions.

Many things wouldn t be possible if not for him many of the activities

we do today are related to Descartes not only in the mathematical

sense but in the philosophy, and science sense. So in conclusion my

personal opinion of Descartes and how important is he to mathematics

and the world, he is a very large part of it and very important to it.

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