French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist (1596–1650)
People connected to René Descartes
He connected geometry and algebra into a single field, gave the coordinate system his name, and opened modern philosophy with five words: "I think, therefore I am."
Born in France on 31 March 1596, Descartes refused to accept the authority of previous philosophers and set out to build knowledge from the ground up. Mathematics was paramount to his method — he merged geometry and algebra into analytic geometry, a fusion that later enabled infinitesimal calculus. In the opening of Passions of the Soul, his treatise on emotions, he declared he would write "as if no one had written on these matters before." His Meditations on First Philosophy anchored epistemology at the center of 17th-century thought and made him a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. He…
Sourced, dated quotes from René Descartes
Mr. Clerselier has written me that you are expecting from him my Meditations... in order to present them to the queen of the land.
In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.
No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy.
The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.
No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. ...
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