Shane Partridge
Solar System Cosmos
Rene Decartes - French Philospher and Mathematician.
31st March 1596 to 11th February 1650.
Rene Decartes - French Philosopher, Mathematician and Writer who spent most of his life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the Father of Modern Philosophy, and much subsequent Western Philolophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most University Philosophy Departments.
Decartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian Coordinate System - allowing reference to a point in space as a set of numbers, and allowing Algebraic Equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a Two Dimensional Coordinate System (conversely, shapes to be describes as equations) - was named after him.
He is credited as the Father of Analytical Geometry, the bridge between Algebra and Geometry, crucial to the discovery of Infinitesimal Calculus and Analysis. Decartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution and has been described as an example of a Genius. He refused to accept the authority of previous previous Philosophers, and refused to trust his own senses.
Decartes frequently set his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, a treatise on the early modern version of what is commonly called emotions, Decartes goes as far as to assert that he will write on this topic "as if no one had written on these matters before". Many elements of his philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th Century, or in early Philosophers like Augustine.
In his natural Philosophy, he differs from the schools on two major points : First he rejects the splitting of Corporeal Substance into matter and form; sesond, he rejects any appeal to final ends - divine or natural - in explaining natural phenomena.
In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of Gods act of Creation.
Decartes laid the foundation for 17th-century continental Rationism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the Empiricist School of Thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Decartes were all well versed in Mathematics as well as Philosophy, and Decartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well. His best known Philosophical Statement is "Cognito ergo Sum" (I think, therefore I am), found in part IV of Discourse on the Method ( Written in French 1637).
Rene Decartes (right) with Queen Christina of Sweden (left)
Decartes continued to Publish Works concerning Mathematics and Philosophy for the rest of his life. In 1641 he published a metaphysics work, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy), written in latin and thus addressed to the learned. It was followed, in 1644, by Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy), a kind of synthesis of the Meditations and the Discourse. In 1643, Cartesian Philosphy was condemned at the University of Utrecht, and Decartes began (through Alfonso Polloti, an Italian general in Dutch service) a long correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, devoted mainly to moral and psychological subjects.
Death.
Rene Decartes was a guest at the house of Pierre Chanut, less than 500 meters from Tre Kronor in Stockholm. (There Chanut and Decartes made observations with a Torricellian Barometer, a tube with mercury. Challenging Blaise Pascal Decartes took the first set of barometric readings in Stockholm to see if atmospheric pressure could be used in forcasting weather. Decartes has been invited by Christina, Queen of Sweden to organise a new scientific academy, and tutor her in his ideas of love. She was interested and stimulated Decartes to publish the "Passions of the Soul", a work based on his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth. The lessons appear to have begun after her birthday, early in the morning at 5.00am in her hardly heated and draughty castle and three times a week. Soon it became clear they did not like each other; she did not like his Mechancial Philosophy, he did not appreciate here interest for Ancient Greek. On 15th January Decartes had seen Christina only four or five times. On 1st February Decartes caught a cold. His illness quickly turned into a serious respiratory infection. The cause of death on 11th February 1650 was according to Chanut pneumonia.
Mathematical Legacy.
A Cartesian Coordinates Graph, using his invented x and y axes.
One of Decartes most enduring legacies was his development of the Cartesian or analytic geometry, which uses alegbra to describe geometry. He "Invented the Convention of representing unknowns in equations by x, y, and z, and knowns by a, b, and c ". He also "pioneered the standard notation" that use superscripts to show the powers or exponents; for example, the 4 used in x^4 to indicate squaring of squaring. He was the first to assign a fundamental place for algebra in our system of knowledge, and believed that algebra was a method to automate or mechanize reasoning, particularly about abstract, unknown quantities. European Mathematics had previously viewed geometry as a more fundamental form of Mathematics, serving as the foundation of Algebra.