Biography Category
Name :
Rene Descartes
Date :
Views :
652
Category :
Birth Date :
31/03/1596
Birth Place :
La Haye in Touraine, France
Death Date :
Not Available
Not Available
[b]The Beginning[/b][br /]
[br /]
Rene Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, at La Haye in Touraine, France. His mother died of tuberculosis soon after his birth. The infant got the disease from her and there was no hope of his survival. But he did come back to life, and for that reason was named Rene - Renatius - reborn.[br /]
[br /]
Rene Descartes was the fourth child in a family belonging to the social class of noblesse de robe, below the nobility itself, yet above the bourgeoisie. His father, Joachim Descartes, was a counselor at Rennes in the neighboring province of Brittany, and the young Rene hardly ever got to see him. It was his grandmother and a nurse who brought him up. Even as a child, Rene pestered his father with questions about the reasons of things and their causes. This precocious curiosity in Rene amused his father very much, and he fondly called him ‘his little philosopher’.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Education[/b][br /]
[br /]
At the age of eight, Rene Descartes was sent to the Jesuit College at La Fleche, where he studied for eight years. His mentor here was Father Charlet, a distant relative and distinguished scholar, whom he called his ‘second father’.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes impressed his teachers at school with his mental alertness and voracious reading. Because of his delicate health, his teachers allowed him to stay in bed till late in the mornings. This was to become his lifelong habit, and he once said that the only way to do good work in mathematics was by not waking up early in the morning[br /]
[br /]
During the first five years, Descartes studied Latin, Greek, French, music and acting. He also learnt riding and fencing. In the sixth year at school, he studied Aristotelian Logic and Moral Philosophy. He then studied Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy in the seventh year, and in the final year Metaphysics, chiefly the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes was utterly disappointed with the education at school because the contradictory theories of his textbooks left him with only doubts and uncertainties. The only consolation for him was Mathematics because only it had certainties owing to the self-evidence of its reasoning.[br /]
[br /]
Yet, this very Jesuit education became the starting point and whetstone for Descartes. It prepared him to later challenge everything that the Jesuits and the Church stood for. ‘In the Temple were forged the hammers which destroyed the Temple’. But he did remain a devout catholic all his life.[br /]
[br /]
On leaving school, young Descartes took two major decisions. The first was to abandon the study of books, and instead to study ‘the book of the world’ by traveling. The second was to make studies within his self to discover the truth. The subsequent pattern of his life, nomadic restlessness interspersed with periods of total solitude, was dictated by these two decisions.[br /]
[br /]
At seventeen, Descartes went to Paris for two years to acquaint himself with the social life there. But he was indifferent to women and found social life boring. As a devoted mathematician, he took to gambling seriously for quite sometime in order to figure out a way to break the casino bank. Later, he retired to a secluded retreat in the Faubourg St. Germain, a suburb of Paris to work on geometry.[br /]
[br /]
After his stay in Paris, Descartes was forced to take up law at the University of Poitiers. He received a degree in civil and canon law after two years of study. Then he broke the family tradition by relinquishing the profession of law. His father declared that of all his children, only Rene had disappointed him by planning to take up the doubtful status of a writer, and that he was only fit to be bound in calf-skin.[br /]
[br /]
[b]The Preparation[/b][br /]
[br /]
Having completed his formal education, Descartes went to Holland in 1617 and joined the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau, then stationed at Breda, as an unpaid officer. This marked the beginning of his life as a wanderer. These were periods of undisturbed meditation for him, rather than of military adventures.[br /]
[br /]
Once while walking through the streets of Breda, he saw placard in Dutch. He asked the first passer-by he came across to translate it for him. On the placard was a challenge to solve a certain mathematical problem. Descartes was able to solve the puzzle and this led to a close friendship with the stranger, who turned out to be scientist Isaac Beeckman, the head of the Dutch College at Dort. Beeckman introduced him to the latest developments in mathematics.[br /]
[br /]
In 1619, with the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, he joined the army of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria to fight against the army of Frederick V, the Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia. Later on, one of his closest friends happened to be Frederick’s daughter Princess Elizabeth.[br /]
[br /]
In the morning of November 10, while he was stationed at the winter quarters of the Bohemian army at Neuberg, he shut himself in a ‘stove’ (a specially heated room in old-fashioned Bavarian houses) to escape cold. There he dreamt of a new philosophy, a unitary universal science that would link all possible human knowledge together into an all-embracing wisdom. This dream was a turning point for the way he envisioned knowledge.[br /]
[br /]
In 1621, he joined the Imperial Army in Hungary as an officer and this was his last experience of military life. It was followed by travels in Germany and Holland. He returned to France the next yearned to live in Brittany and Paris. He sold off the property he had inherited from his mother and invested the money in bonds. This, together with the money that he inherited from his father later, provided him with a sufficient and steady income to live on. He also spent a year in Italy.
[br /]
Disturbed too often by friends who would call on him before he was up, he left Paris in 1628 to accompany the mathematician and military engineer Gerard Desargues to the siege of La Rochelle.[br /]
[br /]
In the November of the same year, Descartes had a famous confrontation with Chandoux in Paris. Chandoux claimed that science could only be based on probabilities. This skeptical view was rooted in the religious crisis then simmering in Europe. Descartes argued with mathematical finesse that only certainty could serve as a basis for knowledge, and that he had a method for attaining certainty. This so impressed Cardinal de Berulle, the leader of the Catholic reaction against Calvinism, that he urged Descartes to fully develop his system.[br /]
[br /]
Later in the year, Descartes moved to Holland because he had an inkling of the opposition that his ideas, still in their formative stage, would take shape. The freedom of speculation available in Holland made its intellectual climate electric with controversial ideas. Therefore, Holland had become the international refuge of rebellious minds. Though Descartes spent practically all the remainder of his life in Holland, he changed his residence twenty-four times in the next twenty years. He usually took up residence near a University or a library. Only during the last five years did he stay at one place, Egmond-Binnen.
Descartes never married. He took a Dutch servant girl, Helen, as his mistress in 1634. He had a natural daughter, Francine, by her. Francine died at the age of five in 1640. This was the greatest sorrow of his life.[br /]
[br /]
In 1629, Descartes wrote an outline of his methodology in Rules for the Direction of Mind, but it was never published in his lifetime. He elaborated his revolutionary method of investigation in his most famous work Discourse on Method with three appendices Optics, Meteorology and Geometry published in 1637. This book was revolutionary not only in its contents, but also in the way it was written. It was written in readily intelligible French, and not in Latin, in a captivating, first person style. Earlier in 1633, Descartes had to abandon plans of publishing The World in which he tried to give a comprehensive theory of the universe using his new methodology due to the condemnation of Galileo by the Church. It was published only after his death. He made use of some of the material of this book in the appendices to Discourse on Method. A further elaboration of his philosophy was published as Meditations on First Philosophy with Objections and Replies in 1641. The most complete statement of Descartes’ mature philosophy, The Principles of Philosophy, was published in 1644.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes, in his search for a universal–mechanism, undertook the study of subjects as varied as mathematics, physics, astronomy, anatomy, physiology, psychology, embryology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, theology and meteorology. He dedicated the last decade of his life almost entirely to science and came up with several brilliant ideas, though some of them were proved wrong later. It was he who suggested to the French mathematician Blaise Pascal the experiment that proves the pressure of air on all objects. But he did not believe in the existence of vacuum; he said it existed only in Pascal’s head.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Criticism[/b][br /]
[br /]
In doing his work, Descartes had no wish to antagonize the Church and play the role of a martyr. Yet, he could never compromise on what he considered to be the truth. Though he tried to present his ideas in a softened garb, he had to face severe criticisms from various quarters. The fear behind all the accusations against him was that once the supremacy of reason is established, it would not be long before the very existence of God is questioned.[br /]
[br /]
In 1641, after the publication of Meditations on First Philosophy, the rector of the University of Utrecht, Gisbert Voetius, accused Descartes of atheism and tried to persuade the city magistrates to ban his philosophy. The city magistrates of Utrecht summoned Descartes to appear before them. Descartes refused, and a judgment was passed against him. Due to the intervention of the French ambassador and the Prince of Orange, the magistrates had to be satisfied with a decree forbidding any public argument for or against Descartes’ ideas.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes was accused of Plagiarism, the belief that the will is equally free to choose to do good and to do evil by the authorities at Leyden in 1647. It resulted in a decree forbidding the discussion of his philosophy.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes published Notes against a Programme in 1648 in response to a pamphlet written anonymously by Professor Henricus Regius. When Regius published his Foundations of Physics, Descartes accused him of plagiarizing and distorting the material from his unpublished papers.[br /]
[br /]
Though the Jesuits were tolerant of the iconoclastic ideas of Descartes in the earlier period, in fact they had even protected him at times, they withdrew their support later, and in 1667 they were the ones instrumental in having his works placed on the Church’s Index of Prohibited books.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Recognition[/b][br /]
[br /]
In spite of the barbs that he had to face, Descartes came to be recognized as one of the most profound thinkers of the century. The greatest minds of the period eagerly sought his company. He was interviewed by Frans Burman at Egmond-Binnen and Conversations with Burman was published in 1648.
[br /]
[br /]
King Louis XIV of France awarded Descartes a pension in 1647 in honor of his discoveries. But he never actually received the pension, probably because he never lived in France after that. In 1648, Montmor offered Descartes a country house near Paris with a revenue of 3000 to 4000 livres. Descartes refused the offer, as he was afraid this would make him Montmor’s domestic.[br /]
[br /]
Since 1643, Descartes and Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia had been writing to each other, and they struck a close friendship. The questions raised by her in her letters, especially those concerned with the interaction between body and mind are dealt with in the book Passions of the Soul published in 1649.
Queen Christina of Sweden got into correspondence with Descartes through Chanut, the French ambassador at Stockholm. So impressed was she with Descartes’ philosophy that she sent him forceful invitations to have him at her court. She even sent an admiral once to invite him over to Sweden, and later a warship to fetch Descartes. After initial reluctance, Descartes agreed and left for Stockholm in 1649.[br /]
[br /]
[b]The Finale[/b][br /]
[br /]
The Queen wanted Descartes to teach her philosophy. Though this was the only obligation he had at her court, she could spare time for lessons only at five in the morning. He used to say ‘Men’s thoughts freeze during winter months’. His health deteriorated due to the unaccustomed early rising in the cold of Swedish winter.
[br /]
[br /]
In 1650, Chanut became seriously ill, and Descartes, in taking care of him, he himself became sick. Descartes caught pneumonia from him on February 1 and died on February 11.[br /]
[br /]
Since Descartes was a Catholic, and Sweden a Protestant country, he was buried in a cemetery reserved for un-baptized children. In 1667, his remains were taken to Paris and buried in the Church of St. Genevieve-du-Mont. During the French Revolution, his remains were disinterred for burial in the Pantheon among the great French thinkers. His tomb is now in the church of St. Germain-des-Pres.[br /]
[br /]
The inscription Descartes chose for his tombstone was[br /]
‘Bene qui latuit, bene visit’ [br /]
He who hid well, lived well.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
Rene Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, at La Haye in Touraine, France. His mother died of tuberculosis soon after his birth. The infant got the disease from her and there was no hope of his survival. But he did come back to life, and for that reason was named Rene - Renatius - reborn.[br /]
[br /]
Rene Descartes was the fourth child in a family belonging to the social class of noblesse de robe, below the nobility itself, yet above the bourgeoisie. His father, Joachim Descartes, was a counselor at Rennes in the neighboring province of Brittany, and the young Rene hardly ever got to see him. It was his grandmother and a nurse who brought him up. Even as a child, Rene pestered his father with questions about the reasons of things and their causes. This precocious curiosity in Rene amused his father very much, and he fondly called him ‘his little philosopher’.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Education[/b][br /]
[br /]
At the age of eight, Rene Descartes was sent to the Jesuit College at La Fleche, where he studied for eight years. His mentor here was Father Charlet, a distant relative and distinguished scholar, whom he called his ‘second father’.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes impressed his teachers at school with his mental alertness and voracious reading. Because of his delicate health, his teachers allowed him to stay in bed till late in the mornings. This was to become his lifelong habit, and he once said that the only way to do good work in mathematics was by not waking up early in the morning[br /]
[br /]
During the first five years, Descartes studied Latin, Greek, French, music and acting. He also learnt riding and fencing. In the sixth year at school, he studied Aristotelian Logic and Moral Philosophy. He then studied Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy in the seventh year, and in the final year Metaphysics, chiefly the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes was utterly disappointed with the education at school because the contradictory theories of his textbooks left him with only doubts and uncertainties. The only consolation for him was Mathematics because only it had certainties owing to the self-evidence of its reasoning.[br /]
[br /]
Yet, this very Jesuit education became the starting point and whetstone for Descartes. It prepared him to later challenge everything that the Jesuits and the Church stood for. ‘In the Temple were forged the hammers which destroyed the Temple’. But he did remain a devout catholic all his life.[br /]
[br /]
On leaving school, young Descartes took two major decisions. The first was to abandon the study of books, and instead to study ‘the book of the world’ by traveling. The second was to make studies within his self to discover the truth. The subsequent pattern of his life, nomadic restlessness interspersed with periods of total solitude, was dictated by these two decisions.[br /]
[br /]
At seventeen, Descartes went to Paris for two years to acquaint himself with the social life there. But he was indifferent to women and found social life boring. As a devoted mathematician, he took to gambling seriously for quite sometime in order to figure out a way to break the casino bank. Later, he retired to a secluded retreat in the Faubourg St. Germain, a suburb of Paris to work on geometry.[br /]
[br /]
After his stay in Paris, Descartes was forced to take up law at the University of Poitiers. He received a degree in civil and canon law after two years of study. Then he broke the family tradition by relinquishing the profession of law. His father declared that of all his children, only Rene had disappointed him by planning to take up the doubtful status of a writer, and that he was only fit to be bound in calf-skin.[br /]
[br /]
[b]The Preparation[/b][br /]
[br /]
Having completed his formal education, Descartes went to Holland in 1617 and joined the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau, then stationed at Breda, as an unpaid officer. This marked the beginning of his life as a wanderer. These were periods of undisturbed meditation for him, rather than of military adventures.[br /]
[br /]
Once while walking through the streets of Breda, he saw placard in Dutch. He asked the first passer-by he came across to translate it for him. On the placard was a challenge to solve a certain mathematical problem. Descartes was able to solve the puzzle and this led to a close friendship with the stranger, who turned out to be scientist Isaac Beeckman, the head of the Dutch College at Dort. Beeckman introduced him to the latest developments in mathematics.[br /]
[br /]
In 1619, with the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, he joined the army of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria to fight against the army of Frederick V, the Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia. Later on, one of his closest friends happened to be Frederick’s daughter Princess Elizabeth.[br /]
[br /]
In the morning of November 10, while he was stationed at the winter quarters of the Bohemian army at Neuberg, he shut himself in a ‘stove’ (a specially heated room in old-fashioned Bavarian houses) to escape cold. There he dreamt of a new philosophy, a unitary universal science that would link all possible human knowledge together into an all-embracing wisdom. This dream was a turning point for the way he envisioned knowledge.[br /]
[br /]
In 1621, he joined the Imperial Army in Hungary as an officer and this was his last experience of military life. It was followed by travels in Germany and Holland. He returned to France the next yearned to live in Brittany and Paris. He sold off the property he had inherited from his mother and invested the money in bonds. This, together with the money that he inherited from his father later, provided him with a sufficient and steady income to live on. He also spent a year in Italy.
[br /]
Disturbed too often by friends who would call on him before he was up, he left Paris in 1628 to accompany the mathematician and military engineer Gerard Desargues to the siege of La Rochelle.[br /]
[br /]
In the November of the same year, Descartes had a famous confrontation with Chandoux in Paris. Chandoux claimed that science could only be based on probabilities. This skeptical view was rooted in the religious crisis then simmering in Europe. Descartes argued with mathematical finesse that only certainty could serve as a basis for knowledge, and that he had a method for attaining certainty. This so impressed Cardinal de Berulle, the leader of the Catholic reaction against Calvinism, that he urged Descartes to fully develop his system.[br /]
[br /]
Later in the year, Descartes moved to Holland because he had an inkling of the opposition that his ideas, still in their formative stage, would take shape. The freedom of speculation available in Holland made its intellectual climate electric with controversial ideas. Therefore, Holland had become the international refuge of rebellious minds. Though Descartes spent practically all the remainder of his life in Holland, he changed his residence twenty-four times in the next twenty years. He usually took up residence near a University or a library. Only during the last five years did he stay at one place, Egmond-Binnen.
Descartes never married. He took a Dutch servant girl, Helen, as his mistress in 1634. He had a natural daughter, Francine, by her. Francine died at the age of five in 1640. This was the greatest sorrow of his life.[br /]
[br /]
In 1629, Descartes wrote an outline of his methodology in Rules for the Direction of Mind, but it was never published in his lifetime. He elaborated his revolutionary method of investigation in his most famous work Discourse on Method with three appendices Optics, Meteorology and Geometry published in 1637. This book was revolutionary not only in its contents, but also in the way it was written. It was written in readily intelligible French, and not in Latin, in a captivating, first person style. Earlier in 1633, Descartes had to abandon plans of publishing The World in which he tried to give a comprehensive theory of the universe using his new methodology due to the condemnation of Galileo by the Church. It was published only after his death. He made use of some of the material of this book in the appendices to Discourse on Method. A further elaboration of his philosophy was published as Meditations on First Philosophy with Objections and Replies in 1641. The most complete statement of Descartes’ mature philosophy, The Principles of Philosophy, was published in 1644.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes, in his search for a universal–mechanism, undertook the study of subjects as varied as mathematics, physics, astronomy, anatomy, physiology, psychology, embryology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, theology and meteorology. He dedicated the last decade of his life almost entirely to science and came up with several brilliant ideas, though some of them were proved wrong later. It was he who suggested to the French mathematician Blaise Pascal the experiment that proves the pressure of air on all objects. But he did not believe in the existence of vacuum; he said it existed only in Pascal’s head.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Criticism[/b][br /]
[br /]
In doing his work, Descartes had no wish to antagonize the Church and play the role of a martyr. Yet, he could never compromise on what he considered to be the truth. Though he tried to present his ideas in a softened garb, he had to face severe criticisms from various quarters. The fear behind all the accusations against him was that once the supremacy of reason is established, it would not be long before the very existence of God is questioned.[br /]
[br /]
In 1641, after the publication of Meditations on First Philosophy, the rector of the University of Utrecht, Gisbert Voetius, accused Descartes of atheism and tried to persuade the city magistrates to ban his philosophy. The city magistrates of Utrecht summoned Descartes to appear before them. Descartes refused, and a judgment was passed against him. Due to the intervention of the French ambassador and the Prince of Orange, the magistrates had to be satisfied with a decree forbidding any public argument for or against Descartes’ ideas.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes was accused of Plagiarism, the belief that the will is equally free to choose to do good and to do evil by the authorities at Leyden in 1647. It resulted in a decree forbidding the discussion of his philosophy.[br /]
[br /]
Descartes published Notes against a Programme in 1648 in response to a pamphlet written anonymously by Professor Henricus Regius. When Regius published his Foundations of Physics, Descartes accused him of plagiarizing and distorting the material from his unpublished papers.[br /]
[br /]
Though the Jesuits were tolerant of the iconoclastic ideas of Descartes in the earlier period, in fact they had even protected him at times, they withdrew their support later, and in 1667 they were the ones instrumental in having his works placed on the Church’s Index of Prohibited books.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Recognition[/b][br /]
[br /]
In spite of the barbs that he had to face, Descartes came to be recognized as one of the most profound thinkers of the century. The greatest minds of the period eagerly sought his company. He was interviewed by Frans Burman at Egmond-Binnen and Conversations with Burman was published in 1648.
[br /]
[br /]
King Louis XIV of France awarded Descartes a pension in 1647 in honor of his discoveries. But he never actually received the pension, probably because he never lived in France after that. In 1648, Montmor offered Descartes a country house near Paris with a revenue of 3000 to 4000 livres. Descartes refused the offer, as he was afraid this would make him Montmor’s domestic.[br /]
[br /]
Since 1643, Descartes and Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia had been writing to each other, and they struck a close friendship. The questions raised by her in her letters, especially those concerned with the interaction between body and mind are dealt with in the book Passions of the Soul published in 1649.
Queen Christina of Sweden got into correspondence with Descartes through Chanut, the French ambassador at Stockholm. So impressed was she with Descartes’ philosophy that she sent him forceful invitations to have him at her court. She even sent an admiral once to invite him over to Sweden, and later a warship to fetch Descartes. After initial reluctance, Descartes agreed and left for Stockholm in 1649.[br /]
[br /]
[b]The Finale[/b][br /]
[br /]
The Queen wanted Descartes to teach her philosophy. Though this was the only obligation he had at her court, she could spare time for lessons only at five in the morning. He used to say ‘Men’s thoughts freeze during winter months’. His health deteriorated due to the unaccustomed early rising in the cold of Swedish winter.
[br /]
[br /]
In 1650, Chanut became seriously ill, and Descartes, in taking care of him, he himself became sick. Descartes caught pneumonia from him on February 1 and died on February 11.[br /]
[br /]
Since Descartes was a Catholic, and Sweden a Protestant country, he was buried in a cemetery reserved for un-baptized children. In 1667, his remains were taken to Paris and buried in the Church of St. Genevieve-du-Mont. During the French Revolution, his remains were disinterred for burial in the Pantheon among the great French thinkers. His tomb is now in the church of St. Germain-des-Pres.[br /]
[br /]
The inscription Descartes chose for his tombstone was[br /]
‘Bene qui latuit, bene visit’ [br /]
He who hid well, lived well.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[b]RENE DESCARTES [ 1596-1650 ][/b][br /]
[br /]
Rene Descartes ( Latin: Renatius Cartesius ), the founder of modern philosophy and one of the creators of seventeenth century science, liberated philosophical thought from the confines of tradition bound medieval philosophy divorced from observation and practice. Descartes started a new era in the history of ideas by writing in the vernacular. Instead of writing in Latin, which was the language of the learned, he wrote in an easy, non-pedantic and accessible French. This made knowledge dangerously open to all. The Cartesian trust in reason stirred the mind of Europe. Reason began to have an exalted position not only in science, but also in art, literature and life. It was he who ushered in the age of reason. He fastidiously believed in the enlightenment aspect of knowledge. He made sure that such knowledge bubbled in his works, be it philosophy or science.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
Rene Descartes ( Latin: Renatius Cartesius ), the founder of modern philosophy and one of the creators of seventeenth century science, liberated philosophical thought from the confines of tradition bound medieval philosophy divorced from observation and practice. Descartes started a new era in the history of ideas by writing in the vernacular. Instead of writing in Latin, which was the language of the learned, he wrote in an easy, non-pedantic and accessible French. This made knowledge dangerously open to all. The Cartesian trust in reason stirred the mind of Europe. Reason began to have an exalted position not only in science, but also in art, literature and life. It was he who ushered in the age of reason. He fastidiously believed in the enlightenment aspect of knowledge. He made sure that such knowledge bubbled in his works, be it philosophy or science.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[b]1596[/b]
Born on March 31, at La Haye in Touraine, France.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1604 [/b]Sent to the Jesuit College at La Fleche at the age of eight years.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1612 [/b]Having completed his schooling, spent the next two years in Paris studying
geometry.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1614 [/b]Joined the University of Poitiers to study law[br /]
[br /]
[b]1616 [/b]Received a degree in civil and canon law.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1617 [/b]Joined the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau, then stationed at Breda in Holland, as an unpaid officer. Became a close friend of Professor Isaac Beeckman, who introduced him to the latest developments in mathematics.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1618 [/b]Wrote his first work Compendium Musicae, a small treatise on music.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1619 [/b]With the coming of the Thirty Years’ War, joined the army of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria.On November 10, at Neuberg, in a dream, he had the vision of a unified scientific system of knowledge based on Mathematics [br /]
[br /]
[b]1621 [/b]Joined the Imperial Army in Hungary, followed by travels in Germany and Holland.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1622 [/b]Returned to France to live in Brittany and Paris.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1623 [/b]Sold off the property he had inherited from his mother and this provided him with enough income to live on.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1628 [/b]Accompanied the mathematician and military engineer Gerard Desargues to the siege of La Rochelle. In November, Descartes had a famous confrontation with Chandoux in Paris which impressed Cardinal de Berulle. Later in the year, Descartes moved to Holland.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1629 [/b]Drafted Rules for the Direction of Mind. Started working on The World.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1633 [/b]Abandoned plans of publishing The World when he learnt of the condemnation of Galileo by the Church.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1634 [/b]Took a Dutch servant girl, Helen, as his mistress.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1635 [/b]Descartes’ natural daughter, Francine, was born.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1637 [/b]Published anonymously his most famous work Discourse on Method with three appendices Optics, Meteorology and Geometry in French.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1640 [/b]Descartes’ daughter, Francine, died at the age of five.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1641 [/b]The first edition of Meditations on First Philosophy was published together with the first six sets of Objections and Replies in Latin. The rector of the University of Utrecht, Gisbert Voetius, accused Descartes of atheism.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1642 [/b]The second edition of Meditations on First Philosophy was published with all the seven sets of Objections and Replies.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1643 [/b]The city magistrates of Utrecht banned any public argument for or against Descartes’ ideas. Descartes began a long and voluminous correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1644 [/b]The Principles of Philosophy, written in Latin, was published.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1647 [/b]The French translations of Meditations on First Philosophy and The Principles of Philosophy were published. Descartes suggested to the French mathematician Blaise Pascal the experiment that proves the pressure of air on all objects. The authorities at Leyden accused Descartes of Plagiarism and forbid the discussion of his philosophy. King Louis XIV of France awarded Descartes a pension in honor of his discoveries.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1648 [/b]Descartes was interviewed by Frans Burma leading to the publication of Conversations with Burma. Published Notes against a Programme in response to a pamphlet by Henricus Regius, accusing him of plagiarizing and distorting his work.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1649 [/b]Descartes left for Stockholm on the invitation of Queen Christina of Sweden.
Published the book Passions of the Soul.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1650 [/b]Descartes caught pneumonia on February 1 from Chanut and died on February 11. He was buried in Sweden. [br /]
[br /]
[b]1667 [/b]The Church placed the works of Descartes on the Index of Prohibited Books.
Descartes’ remains were taken to Paris from Sweden and buried in the Church of St. Genevieve-du-Mont. During the French Revolution, his remains were disinterred for burial in the Pantheon, among the great French thinkers.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
Born on March 31, at La Haye in Touraine, France.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1604 [/b]Sent to the Jesuit College at La Fleche at the age of eight years.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1612 [/b]Having completed his schooling, spent the next two years in Paris studying
geometry.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1614 [/b]Joined the University of Poitiers to study law[br /]
[br /]
[b]1616 [/b]Received a degree in civil and canon law.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1617 [/b]Joined the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau, then stationed at Breda in Holland, as an unpaid officer. Became a close friend of Professor Isaac Beeckman, who introduced him to the latest developments in mathematics.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1618 [/b]Wrote his first work Compendium Musicae, a small treatise on music.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1619 [/b]With the coming of the Thirty Years’ War, joined the army of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria.On November 10, at Neuberg, in a dream, he had the vision of a unified scientific system of knowledge based on Mathematics [br /]
[br /]
[b]1621 [/b]Joined the Imperial Army in Hungary, followed by travels in Germany and Holland.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1622 [/b]Returned to France to live in Brittany and Paris.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1623 [/b]Sold off the property he had inherited from his mother and this provided him with enough income to live on.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1628 [/b]Accompanied the mathematician and military engineer Gerard Desargues to the siege of La Rochelle. In November, Descartes had a famous confrontation with Chandoux in Paris which impressed Cardinal de Berulle. Later in the year, Descartes moved to Holland.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1629 [/b]Drafted Rules for the Direction of Mind. Started working on The World.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1633 [/b]Abandoned plans of publishing The World when he learnt of the condemnation of Galileo by the Church.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1634 [/b]Took a Dutch servant girl, Helen, as his mistress.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1635 [/b]Descartes’ natural daughter, Francine, was born.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1637 [/b]Published anonymously his most famous work Discourse on Method with three appendices Optics, Meteorology and Geometry in French.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1640 [/b]Descartes’ daughter, Francine, died at the age of five.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1641 [/b]The first edition of Meditations on First Philosophy was published together with the first six sets of Objections and Replies in Latin. The rector of the University of Utrecht, Gisbert Voetius, accused Descartes of atheism.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1642 [/b]The second edition of Meditations on First Philosophy was published with all the seven sets of Objections and Replies.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1643 [/b]The city magistrates of Utrecht banned any public argument for or against Descartes’ ideas. Descartes began a long and voluminous correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1644 [/b]The Principles of Philosophy, written in Latin, was published.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1647 [/b]The French translations of Meditations on First Philosophy and The Principles of Philosophy were published. Descartes suggested to the French mathematician Blaise Pascal the experiment that proves the pressure of air on all objects. The authorities at Leyden accused Descartes of Plagiarism and forbid the discussion of his philosophy. King Louis XIV of France awarded Descartes a pension in honor of his discoveries.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1648 [/b]Descartes was interviewed by Frans Burma leading to the publication of Conversations with Burma. Published Notes against a Programme in response to a pamphlet by Henricus Regius, accusing him of plagiarizing and distorting his work.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1649 [/b]Descartes left for Stockholm on the invitation of Queen Christina of Sweden.
Published the book Passions of the Soul.[br /]
[br /]
[b]1650 [/b]Descartes caught pneumonia on February 1 from Chanut and died on February 11. He was buried in Sweden. [br /]
[br /]
[b]1667 [/b]The Church placed the works of Descartes on the Index of Prohibited Books.
Descartes’ remains were taken to Paris from Sweden and buried in the Church of St. Genevieve-du-Mont. During the French Revolution, his remains were disinterred for burial in the Pantheon, among the great French thinkers.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[b]Compendium Musicae[/b][br /]
[br /]
Descartes wrote his first work Compendium Musicae, a small treatise on music in 1618.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Rules for the Direction of mind[/b][br /]
[br /]
Descartes composed an incomplete and roughly drafted treatise on methodology, Rules for the Direction of Mind, in 1629. Possibly never intended for publication, it was published posthumously in 1701.[br /]
[br /]
In this book, he rejects the scholastic view that there are as many kinds of knowledge as knowable objects. He asserts that all knowledge is of one kind only since it can be acquired only by using the human mind. He rejects the syllogistic reasoning of scholastic philosophy as useless for the discovery of truth; in its place he proposes the analytic mode of reasoning.[br /]
[br /]
[b]The World[/b][br /]
[br /]
Descartes started working on The World in 1629 and almost completed the draft by 1633, but he abandoned plans of having it published when he heard of the condemnation of Galileo by the Catholic Church for his advocacy of the Copernican theory. His book also endorsed this theory of earth’s movement around the sun. Only a few fragments of this book could be found, and these were published after his death.[br /]
[br /]
In this book, Descartes planned to unite all his scientific results to give a comprehensive physical theory of the Universe. This scientific work was a set of interconnected propositions based on a unitary strand of premises and argumentation.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Discourse on Method[/b][br /]
[br /]
Descartes published anonymously his most famous work Discourse on Method with three appendices Optics, Meteorology and Geometry in 1637. This book was revolutionary not only in its contents, but also in the way it was written. It was written in French, and not in Latin, in a captivating, first person style.[br /]
[br /]
The first three sections of this book demonstrate the four rules of the Cartesian Method. The fourth section introduces the Cartesian doubt and outlines the metaphysical foundations of Cartesian doctrine. The mind-matter dualism is also introduced here.[br /]
[br /]
The three appendices were added to the Discourse to demonstrate the efficacy of his methodology by applying these principles to three scientific problems. In the first appendix Optics, the laws of refraction are formulated. The second appendix, Meteorology, attempts a scientific explanation of the weather, including that of the rainbow. The last appendix, Geometry, lays the foundation of modern analytic geometry by introducing the Cartesian coordinates and, by using algebraic notation to deal with geometrical problems.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Meditations on first Philosophy[/b][br /]
[br /]
The first edition of Meditations on First Philosophy was published together with the first six sets of Objections and Replies in 1641. The book was in Latin and was dedicated to the Dean of the Sacred Faculty of Theology of Paris i.e. the Sorbonne. Its second edition was published with all the seven sets of Objections and Replies in 1642.[br /]
[br /]
This work is a more of an elaborate development of the metaphysical foundations of Cartesian doctrine. It includes critical opinions of philosophers and theologians such as Hobbes, Gassendi and Arnauld, and replies of Descartes to their objections.[br /]
[br /]
[b]The Principles of Philosophy[/b][br /]
[br /]
The most complete statement of Descartes’ mature philosophy, The Principles of Philosophy, written in Latin, was published in 1644. It was dedicated to Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Frederick V against whose army he had fought as a young Bavarian army officer.[br /]
[br /]
The first part of this book explains Cartesian metaphysics, the second details the principles of Cartesian physics, the third explains the Universe using these principles of physics, and the fourth part deals with a variety of terrestrial phenomena. There is a total rejection of spiritual notions in the scientific explanations of the latter three parts.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Passions of the soul[/b][br /]
[br /]
There was a voluminous correspondence between Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Descartes. The questions raised in her letters are dealt with in the book Passions of the Soul published in 1649. This book deals with the problems of the interaction of body and soul. It is a combination of psychology, philosophy and ethics, and contains Descartes’ theory of two-way causal interaction via the pineal gland.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
Descartes wrote his first work Compendium Musicae, a small treatise on music in 1618.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Rules for the Direction of mind[/b][br /]
[br /]
Descartes composed an incomplete and roughly drafted treatise on methodology, Rules for the Direction of Mind, in 1629. Possibly never intended for publication, it was published posthumously in 1701.[br /]
[br /]
In this book, he rejects the scholastic view that there are as many kinds of knowledge as knowable objects. He asserts that all knowledge is of one kind only since it can be acquired only by using the human mind. He rejects the syllogistic reasoning of scholastic philosophy as useless for the discovery of truth; in its place he proposes the analytic mode of reasoning.[br /]
[br /]
[b]The World[/b][br /]
[br /]
Descartes started working on The World in 1629 and almost completed the draft by 1633, but he abandoned plans of having it published when he heard of the condemnation of Galileo by the Catholic Church for his advocacy of the Copernican theory. His book also endorsed this theory of earth’s movement around the sun. Only a few fragments of this book could be found, and these were published after his death.[br /]
[br /]
In this book, Descartes planned to unite all his scientific results to give a comprehensive physical theory of the Universe. This scientific work was a set of interconnected propositions based on a unitary strand of premises and argumentation.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Discourse on Method[/b][br /]
[br /]
Descartes published anonymously his most famous work Discourse on Method with three appendices Optics, Meteorology and Geometry in 1637. This book was revolutionary not only in its contents, but also in the way it was written. It was written in French, and not in Latin, in a captivating, first person style.[br /]
[br /]
The first three sections of this book demonstrate the four rules of the Cartesian Method. The fourth section introduces the Cartesian doubt and outlines the metaphysical foundations of Cartesian doctrine. The mind-matter dualism is also introduced here.[br /]
[br /]
The three appendices were added to the Discourse to demonstrate the efficacy of his methodology by applying these principles to three scientific problems. In the first appendix Optics, the laws of refraction are formulated. The second appendix, Meteorology, attempts a scientific explanation of the weather, including that of the rainbow. The last appendix, Geometry, lays the foundation of modern analytic geometry by introducing the Cartesian coordinates and, by using algebraic notation to deal with geometrical problems.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Meditations on first Philosophy[/b][br /]
[br /]
The first edition of Meditations on First Philosophy was published together with the first six sets of Objections and Replies in 1641. The book was in Latin and was dedicated to the Dean of the Sacred Faculty of Theology of Paris i.e. the Sorbonne. Its second edition was published with all the seven sets of Objections and Replies in 1642.[br /]
[br /]
This work is a more of an elaborate development of the metaphysical foundations of Cartesian doctrine. It includes critical opinions of philosophers and theologians such as Hobbes, Gassendi and Arnauld, and replies of Descartes to their objections.[br /]
[br /]
[b]The Principles of Philosophy[/b][br /]
[br /]
The most complete statement of Descartes’ mature philosophy, The Principles of Philosophy, written in Latin, was published in 1644. It was dedicated to Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Frederick V against whose army he had fought as a young Bavarian army officer.[br /]
[br /]
The first part of this book explains Cartesian metaphysics, the second details the principles of Cartesian physics, the third explains the Universe using these principles of physics, and the fourth part deals with a variety of terrestrial phenomena. There is a total rejection of spiritual notions in the scientific explanations of the latter three parts.[br /]
[br /]
[b]Passions of the soul[/b][br /]
[br /]
There was a voluminous correspondence between Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Descartes. The questions raised in her letters are dealt with in the book Passions of the Soul published in 1649. This book deals with the problems of the interaction of body and soul. It is a combination of psychology, philosophy and ethics, and contains Descartes’ theory of two-way causal interaction via the pineal gland.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
• Cogito, ergo sum.[br /]
I think, therefore I am.[br /]
[br /]
• If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal, we could from that alone, be reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed.[br /]
[br /]
• The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries.[br /]
[br /]
• Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.[br /]
[br /]
• I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.[br /]
[br /]
• Philosophy is a perfect knowledge of all that man can know, as well for the conduct of his life as for the preservation of his health and the discovery of all the arts.[br /]
[br /]
• Good sense is, of all things in the world, the most equally shared : for everyone thinks himself so well provided with it that even those who are most difficult to satisfy in every other way, do not usually desire more of it than they already have.[br /]
[br /]
• I see clearly that there is nothing which is easier for me to know than my own mind.[br /]
[br /]
• …. it is much the same with those who gradually discover truth in the sciences, as with those who when growing rich find less difficulty in making great acquisitions, than they formerly experienced when poor in making acquisitions of much smaller amount.[br /]
[br /]
• Archimedes, in order that he might draw the terrestrial globe out of its place and transport it elsewhere, demanded that only one point should be fixed and immovable; in the same way, I shall have the right to conceive high hopes if I am happy enough to discover one thing only which is certain and indisputable.[br /]
[br /]
• When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.[br /]
[br /]
• It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.[br /]
[br /]
• …. the two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.[br /]
[br /]
• The nature of physical things is much more easily conceived when they are beheld coming gradually into existence, than when they are considered as produced at once in a finished and perfect state.[br /]
[br /]
• Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.[br /]
[br /]
• If you would be real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.[br /]
[br /]
• The chief cause of our errors is to be found in the prejudices of our childhood… principles of which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.[br /]
[br /]
• Traveling is almost like talking with men of other centuries.[br /]
[br /]
• Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
I think, therefore I am.[br /]
[br /]
• If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal, we could from that alone, be reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed.[br /]
[br /]
• The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries.[br /]
[br /]
• Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.[br /]
[br /]
• I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.[br /]
[br /]
• Philosophy is a perfect knowledge of all that man can know, as well for the conduct of his life as for the preservation of his health and the discovery of all the arts.[br /]
[br /]
• Good sense is, of all things in the world, the most equally shared : for everyone thinks himself so well provided with it that even those who are most difficult to satisfy in every other way, do not usually desire more of it than they already have.[br /]
[br /]
• I see clearly that there is nothing which is easier for me to know than my own mind.[br /]
[br /]
• …. it is much the same with those who gradually discover truth in the sciences, as with those who when growing rich find less difficulty in making great acquisitions, than they formerly experienced when poor in making acquisitions of much smaller amount.[br /]
[br /]
• Archimedes, in order that he might draw the terrestrial globe out of its place and transport it elsewhere, demanded that only one point should be fixed and immovable; in the same way, I shall have the right to conceive high hopes if I am happy enough to discover one thing only which is certain and indisputable.[br /]
[br /]
• When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.[br /]
[br /]
• It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.[br /]
[br /]
• …. the two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.[br /]
[br /]
• The nature of physical things is much more easily conceived when they are beheld coming gradually into existence, than when they are considered as produced at once in a finished and perfect state.[br /]
[br /]
• Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.[br /]
[br /]
• If you would be real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.[br /]
[br /]
• The chief cause of our errors is to be found in the prejudices of our childhood… principles of which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.[br /]
[br /]
• Traveling is almost like talking with men of other centuries.[br /]
[br /]
• Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
