Rene Descartes is important in two fields, math and philosophy. He was one of the earliest modern philosophers to try and defeat philosophical skepticism. In mathematics he provided Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz much of the basis for their calculus. While he is very well known for his philosophical works, I’ll be focusing mostly on his life, and his works on mathematics.
Rene Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, France in March of 1596, to Jeanne and Joachim Brochard. His mother died when Descartes was a mere one year old, and his father was a member of parliament in La Haye. At the age of ten he entered the Jesuit College of La Fleche between the years of 1606 and 1614. After his studies there he proceeded to go to the University of Poiters and earn a baccalauréat (allowing for further studies at university) and his licence in law in 1616. This was mainly done because his father wanted him to become a lawyer. In his autobiographical and philosophical publication Discourse on the Method he states that he entirely abandoned the study of letters. He wanted no knowledge other than what could be found through self discovery, or through books around the world. He spent the rest of his youth travelling and visiting leaders and armies of foreign countries and figuring out ways to profit (mentally, not financially) from the experiences. In 1618 he travelled to Holland to serve in Prince Maurice of Nassau’s army. With that army he went to Germany.
Dutch Mathematician Isaac Beeckman was one of the major influences on Descartes. He would pose number problems with him, to stimulate his mind. He wrote his first work of any substance in 1628, entitled Regulae, or Rules for the Direction of the Mind. It was not actually published until 1701.
As mentioned earlier, Descartes provided groundwork for Newton and Leibniz through his Discourse on the method. This is monumental in the fact that this groundwork was simply an example in Discourse, and not a focal point of the work. His most enduring legacy? The Cartesian coordinate system which is most commonly used for graphing equations, and plotting lines. He is also the father of standard notation, which uses superscripts to represent powers and exponents indicating squaring, cubing, or higher powers.
Descartes died of pneumonia in Stockholm, Sweden shortly before the publication of his final manuscript, Passions of the Soul.
Descartes died of pneumonia in Stockholm, Sweden shortly before the publication of his final manuscript, Passions of the Soul.
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment