Rene descartes biography mathematics form

Born on March 31, , René Descartes was born in La Haye, France (subsequently renamed for him, Descartes). Descartes lost his mother when he was thirteen, who died in childbirth. With his father Joachim, a lawyer, living in Châtteleraut, René spent his early years, together with his older sister Jeanne and his older brother Pierre with his grandmother, Jeanne Sain Brochard in La Haye. Shortly thereafter he relocated to the house of his great uncle, Michel Ferrand, a lawyer and Counselor of the King in Chätterlaut. Sometime in or , Descartes took up studies at the Jesuit College of La Fleche, remaining there for some sju or eight years. His course of study was not untypical for the time: French, Greek and Latin, Ancient Poetry, Cicero and rhetoric, several years of philosophy (logic, morals, physics and metaphysics), followed by several years of mathematics.

About the education he received at the hands of the learned Jesuits, where he had distinguished himself as a most able studen

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René Descartes

René Descartes (March 31, – February 11, ), also known as Cartesius, worked as a philosopher and mathematician. While most notable for his groundbreaking work in philosophy, he has achieved wide fame as the inventor of the Cartesian coordinate system, which influenced the development of modern calculus.

Descartes, sometimes called the founder of modern philosophy and the Father of Modern Mathematics, ranks as one of the most important and influential thinkers in modern western history. He inspired both his contemporaries and later generations of philosophers, leading them to form what we know today as continental rationalism, a philosophical position in 17th and 18th century Europe.

Often regarded as the first "modern" thinker for providing a philosophical ramverk for the natural sciences as these began to develop, Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true

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From the Classroom: Rene Descartes: Man of Math and God, by Student Vera Swem

René Descartes: Man of Math and God

By Vera Swem

René Descartes was a mathematician and philosopher who lived during the s in France. He was born in in the Touraine region of France, where his father was an educated lawyer. His mother died in childbirth, so he was mostly raised by his grandmother. The Protestant Reformation had recently occurred in Europe 50 years before his birth. Descartes is most famous for connecting two fields of math together, geometry and algebra. He also spent much of his life arguing and writing about the existence of man in a world created by God.

A Christian who wasn’t afraid to ask hard questions about God and man, Descartes was part of a philosophical movement called Continental Rationalism, which was an attempt to understand the connection between the human mind and reality, without relying solely on the Bible. His most famous book was the Principia Philosophia. De