Rene Descartes Term paper
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Rene Descartes
We may consider Descartes as the first of the modern school of mathematics. Ren Descartes was born near Tours on March 31, 1596, and died at Stockholm on February 11, 1650. His father, who was of good family, was accustomed to spend half the year at Rennes when the local parliament, in which he held a commission as councilor, was in session, and the rest of the time on his family estate of Les Cartes at La Haye. Ren , the second of a family of two sons and one daughter, was sent at the age of eight years to the Jesuit School at La Fl che, and of the admirable discipline and education there given he speaks most highly. On account of his delicate health he was permitted to lie in bed till late in the mornings. This was a custom, which he always followed. When he visited Pascal in 1647 he told him that the only way to do good work in mathematics and to preserve his health was never to allow anyone to make him get up in the morning before he felt inclined to do so.
In appearance, Descartes was a small man with a large head, a prominent nose, and black hair coming down to his eyebrows. His voice was faint. In character he was cold and selfish. Considering the range of his studies he was by no means widely read, and he despised both learning and art unless something genuine could be extracted from it. He never married, and left no descendants, though he had one illegitimate daughter, who died young.
On leaving school in 1612 Descartes went to Paris to be introduced to the world of fashion. Here, through the Jesuits, he made the acquaintance of Mydorge, and renewed his schoolboy friendship with Mersenne, and together with them he devoted the two years of 1615 and 1616 to the study of mathematics. At that time a man of position usually entered either the army or the church; Descartes chose the former profession, and in 1617 joined the army of Prince Maurice of Orange, then at Breda. Walking through the streets he saw a poster in Dutch which excited his curiosity, and stopping the first passer, asked him to translate it into either French or Latin. The stranger, who happened to be Isaac Beeckman, the head of the Dutch College at Dort, offered to do so if Descartes would answer it; the poster being a challenge to the entire world to solve a certain geometrical problem. Descartes worked it out within a few hours, and a warm friendship between him and Beeckman was the result. This unexpected test of his mathematical attainments made the unpleasant life of the army distasteful to him, but under family influence and tradition he remained a soldier, and was persuaded at the commencement of the Thirty Years' War to volunteer under Count de Bucquoy in the army of Bavaria. He continued all this time to occupy his leisure with mathematical studies, and was accustomed to date the first ideas of his new philosophy and of his analytical geometry from three dreams that he experienced on the night of November 10, 1619, at Neuberg, when campaigning on the Danube. He regarded this as the critical day of his life, and one, which determined his whole future.
He resigned his commission in the spring of 1621, and spent the next five years in travel, during most of which time he continued to study mathematics. In 1626 he settled at Paris, ``a little well-built figure, only wearing sword and feather in token of his quality as a gentleman.'' During the first two years there he interested himself in general society, and spent his leisure in the construction of optical instruments; but these pursuits were merely the relaxation of one who failed to find in philosophy that theory of the universe which he was convinced finally awaited him.
In 1628 Cardinal de Berulle, the founder of the Oratorians, met Descartes, and was so impressed by his conversation that he urged on him the duty of devoting his...
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