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    Rene Descartes Eng

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    zaknjige122
    René Descartes was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He is often called the "father of modern philosophy" and is credited with developing Cartesian geometry and analytical geometry, which uses algebra to describe geometry. He believed that science and mathematics could be used to explain everything in nature and saw the universe as a giant mathematically designed engine. Some of his most important works included Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. He made seminal contributions to fields like optics, physics, and mathematics that helped lay the foundations for calculus and further scientific advancement.

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    Rene Descartes Eng

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    zaknjige122
    134 views2 pages
    René Descartes was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He is often called the "father of modern philosophy" and is credited with developing Cartesian geometry and analytical geometry, which uses algebra to describe geometry. He believed that science and mathematics could be used to explain everything in nature and saw the universe as a giant mathematically designed engine. Some of his most important works included Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. He made seminal contributions to fields like optics, physics, and mathematics that helped lay the foundations for calculus and further scientific advancement.

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    René Descartes was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He is often called the "father of modern philosophy" and is credited with developing Cartesian geometry and analytical geometry, which uses algebra to describe geometry. He believed that science and mathematics could be used to explain everything in nature and saw the universe as a giant mathematically designed engine. Some of his most important works included Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. He made seminal contributions to fields like optics, physics, and mathematics that helped lay the foundations for calculus and further scientific advancement.

    Copyright:

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    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    134 views2 pages

    Rene Descartes Eng

    Uploaded by

    zaknjige122
    René Descartes was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He is often called the "father of modern philosophy" and is credited with developing Cartesian geometry and analytical geometry, which uses algebra to describe geometry. He believed that science and mathematics could be used to explain everything in nature and saw the universe as a giant mathematically designed engine. Some of his most important works included Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. He made seminal contributions to fields like optics, physics, and mathematics that helped lay the foundations for calculus and further scientific advancement.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Rene Descartes

    Ren

    Descartes (French

    pronunciation: [ne

    dekat]; Latinized form: Renatus

    Cartesius; adjectival form: "Cartesian";[3] 31 March 1596 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic Descartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system 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. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution and has been described as an example of genius. Biography Ren Descartes was born on March 31st, 1596 in the town of La Haye in the south of France, the son of Joachim Descartes, a Councilor in Parliament and and intellectual who made certain to provide a good learning environment for his son. In 1606, at the age of 8, Ren attended the Jesuit college of Henri IV in La Flche, where he studied literature, grammar, science, and mathematics. In 1614, he left La Flche to study civil and cannon Law at Poitiers. In 1616, he received his baccalaureate and licentiate degrees in Law. Aside from his Law degrees, Descartes also spent time studying philosophy, theology, and medicine. After a short stay in the military, Descartes went on to lead a quiet life, continuing his intellectual pursuits, writing philosophical essays, and exploring the world of science and mathematics. In 1637, he published "geometry", in which his combination of algebra and geometry gave birth to analytical geometry, better known as Cartesian geometry. But the most important contribution Descartes made were his philosophical writings; Descartes, who was convinced that science and mathematics could be used to explain everything in nature, was the first to describe the physical universe in terms of matter and motion, seeing the universe a as giant mathematically designed engine. Descartes wrote three important texts: Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. Ren Descartes had always been a frail individual, and he would usually spend most of his mornings in bed, where he did most of his thinking, fresh from dreams in which he often had his revelations. In his latter years, Descartes had to relocate to Sweden to tutor Queen Christina in philosophy. Unfortunately, the Queen was an

    early riser who wanted her lessons at 5:00 o'clock in the morning. This new schedule did not help Descartes fragile health, and he contracted pneumonia, from which he died on February 11, 1650 at the age of 54.

    Mathematical legacy
    One of Descartes' most enduring legacies was his development of Cartesian or analytic geometry, which uses algebra 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 uses superscripts to show the powers or exponents, for example the 4 used in x4 to indicate squaring of squaring.[37] He was 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 mathematicians had previously viewed geometry as a more fundamental form of mathematics, serving as the foundation of algebra. Algebraic rules were given geometric proofs by mathematicians such as Pacioli, Cardan, Tartaglia and Ferrari. Equations of degree higher than the third were regarded as unreal, because a three dimensional form, such as a cube, occupied the largest dimension of reality. Descartes professed that the abstract quantity a2 could represent length as well as an area. This was in opposition to the teachings of mathematicians, such as Vieta, who argued that it could represent only area. Descartes work provided the basis for the calculus developed by Newton and Leibniz, who applied infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics. His rule of signs is also a commonly used method to determine the number of positive and negative roots of a polynomial. Descartes discovered an early form of the law of conservation of mechanical momentum (a measure of the motion of an object), and envisioned it as pertaining to motion in a straight line, as opposed to perfect circular motion, as Galileo had envisioned it. He outlined his views on the universe in his Principles of Philosophy. Descartes also made contributions to the field of optics. He showed by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known as Descartes's law or more commonly Snell's law, who discovered it 16 years earlier) that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 degrees (i.e., the angle subtended at the eye by the edge of the rainbow and the ray passing from the sun through the rainbow's centre is 42).He also independently discovered the law of reflection, and his essay on optics was the first published mention of this law. Although Descartes was well known in academic circles towards the end of his life, the teaching of his works in schools was controversial. Henri de Roy (Henricus Regius, 15981679), Professor of Medicine at the University of Utrecht, was condemned by the Rector of the University, Gijsbert Voet (Voetius), for teaching Descartes's physics.

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