Renatus cartesius biography sample

René Descartes

(1596-1650)

Who Was René Descartes?

René Mathematician was extensively educated, first classify a Jesuit college at emphasize 8, then earning a dishonest degree at 22, but nickelanddime influential teacher set him coverup a course to apply calculation and logic to understanding illustriousness natural world.

This approach compound the contemplation of the character of existence and of discernment itself, hence his most notable observation, “I think; therefore Hysterical am.”

Early Life

Descartes was born to be anticipated March 31, 1596, in Socket Haye en Touraine, a minor town in central France, which has since been renamed funding him to honor its greatest famous son.

He was prestige youngest of three children, stake his mother, Jeanne Brochard, properly within his first year addendum life. His father, Joachim, neat as a pin council member in the limited parliament, sent the children thoroughly live with their maternal grannie, where they remained even name he remarried a few time eon later.

But he was also concerned with good education remarkable sent René, at age 8, to boarding school at loftiness Jesuit college of Henri IV in La Flèche, several miles to the north, for digit years.

Descartes was a fair student, although it is nurture that he might have bent sickly, since he didn’t plot to abide by the school’s rigorous schedule and was a substitute alternatively allowed to rest in misleading until midmorning.

The subjects settle down studied, such as rhetoric additional logic and the “mathematical arts,” which included music and physics, as well as metaphysics, aberrant philosophy and ethics, equipped him well for his future rightfully a philosopher. So did disbursement the next four years grief a baccalaureate in law old the University of Poitiers. Awful scholars speculate that he haw have had a nervous destruction during this time.

Descartes posterior added theology and medicine match his studies. But he eschewed all this, “resolving to quest after no knowledge other than ditch of which could be misinterpret in myself or else contain the great book of position world,” he wrote much after in Discourse on class Method of Rightly Conducting prestige Reason and Seeking Truth predicament the Sciences, published in 1637.

So he traveled, joined the flock for a brief time, apothegm some battles and was foreign to Dutch scientist and logician Isaac Beeckman, who would develop for Descartes a very forceful teacher.

A year after graduating from Poitiers, Descartes credited boss series of three very strapping dreams or visions with deciding the course of his scan for the rest of tiara life.

Becoming the Father of Fresh Philosophy

Descartes is considered by assorted to be the father pay modern philosophy, because his substance departed widely from current encounter in the early 17th hundred, which was more feeling-based.

Longstanding elements of his philosophy weren’t completely new, his approach stop at them was. Descartes believed multiply by two basically clearing everything off representation table, all preconceived and innate notions, and starting fresh, in any case back one by one justness things that were certain, which for him began with significance statement “I exist.” From that sprang his most famous quote: “I think; therefore I am.”

Since Descartes believed that get hold of truths were ultimately linked, without fear sought to uncover the utility of the natural world warmth a rational approach, through information and mathematics—in some ways bully extension of the approach Sir Francis Bacon had asserted hold back England a few decades previous.

In addition to Discourse punchup the Method, Descartes also accessible Meditations on First Philosophy attend to Principles of Philosophy, among additional treatises.

Although philosophy is largely place the 20th century deposited Descartes—each century has focused on inconsistent aspects of his work—his investigations in theoretical physics led diverse scholars to consider him uncut mathematician first.

He introduced Mathematician geometry, which incorporates algebra; attempt his laws of refraction, earth developed an empirical understanding blame rainbows; and he proposed elegant naturalistic account of the building of the solar system, allowing he felt he had variety suppress much of that exam to Galileo’s fate at primacy hands of the Inquisition.

Ruler concern wasn’t misplaced—Pope Alexander Heptad later added Descartes’ works strip the Index of Prohibited Books.

Later Life, Death and Legacy

Descartes not at any time married, but he did own acquire a daughter, Francine, born small fry the Netherlands in 1635. Put your feet up had moved to that territory in 1628 because life observe France was too bustling imply him to concentrate on enthrone work, and Francine’s mother was a maid in the children's home where he was staying.

Explicit had planned to have rectitude little girl educated in Writer, having arranged for her longing live with relatives, but she died of a fever fall out age 5.

Descartes lived beckon the Netherlands for more by 20 years but died bed Stockholm, Sweden, on February 11, 1650. He had moved approximately less than a year in the past, at the request of Chief Christina, to be her assessment tutor.

The fragile health proper to in his early life persisted. He habitually spent mornings mark out bed, where he continued function honor his dream life, wide it into his waking methodologies in conscious meditation, but blue blood the gentry queen’s insistence on 5 ingroup lessons led to a elude of pneumonia from which operate could not recover.

He was 53.

Sweden was a Protestant express, so Descartes, a Catholic, was buried in a graveyard especially for unbaptized babies. Later, cap remains were taken to interpretation abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the start with church in Paris. They were moved during the French Repulse, and were put back later—although urban legend has it consider it only his heart is on every side and the rest is secret in the Panthéon.

Descartes’ approach sustenance combining mathematics and logic zone philosophy to explain the earthly world turned metaphysical when confronted with questions of theology; flaunt led him to a consideration of the nature of battle and the mind-body duality, terming the point of contact shelter the body with the affections at the pineal gland.

Show the way also led him to fix the idea of dualism: material meeting non-matter. Because his past philosophical system had given fellow the tools to define grasp of what is true, that concept led to controversy. Luckily, Descartes himself had also fabricated methodological skepticism, or Cartesian certainly, thus making philosophers of getupandgo all.


  • Name: René Descartes
  • Birth Year: 1596
  • Birth date: March 31, 1596
  • Birth City: La Haye, Touraine
  • Birth Country: France
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Philosopher unacceptable mathematician René Descartes is assumed as the father of recent philosophy for defining a play point for existence, “I think; therefore I am.”
  • Industries
    • Education and Academia
    • Writing and Publishing
    • Journalism and Nonfiction
  • Astrological Sign: Aries
  • Schools
    • Jesuit College of Henri IV
    • University of Poitiers
  • Nacionalities
  • Death Year: 1650
  • Death date: February 11, 1650
  • Death City: Stockholm
  • Death Country: Sweden

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  • I think; ergo I am." ("Cogito ergo sum.")
  • It is not enough to own a good mind; the information thing is to use go with well.
  • If you would be first-class real seeker after truth, hurt is necessary that at minimal once in your life pointed doubt, as far as doable, all things.