DESCARTES, REN

born March 31, 1596, La Haye, Touraine, Fr. died Feb. 11, 1650, Stockholm, Swed. Latin Renatius Cartesius French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher who has been called the father of modern philosophy. He radically distinguished between the mind, which he perceived as indubitable, and the body (or matter in general), which he explained on the basis of purely mechanistic principles. The axiom Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is his most famous formulation. An exceptionally intelligent boy, Descartes was sent at the age of eight to the newly opened Royal College at La Flche, where for 10 years he received a Jesuit education, revealing a marked inclination toward mathematics. In 1616 he took a degree in law at the University of Poitiers. In 1618 Descartes joined the army of the Prince of Orange in Holland, where he met Isaac Beekman, who exposed him to many recent developments in mathematics. After a period of travel, he joined for a time the army of the Duke of Bavaria in 1619, in the early stages of the Thirty Years' War. It was in March of that year that he first described the idea of a unitary universal science that would link all possible human knowledge together into an all-embracing wisdom. On November 10, according to Descartes, a visionary dream revealed the nature of this science more clearly. Interpretation of this episode has remained controversial. Descartes's life continued to remain peripatetic until 1628, when he moved to Holland, where he was to live, except for short absences, until 1649. During this period in Holland he composed the works that made him famous in his own time and influenced succeeding ages. The Discours de la mthode (1637; Discourse on Method), his most widely read work, sets forth four rules for the pursuit of knowledge: to accept nothing as true unless clearly recognized as such; to solve problems systematically by analyzing them part by part; to proceed from simple to more complex considerations; and to review everything thoroughly to make sure that nothing has been omitted. In addition, the Discourse presents the metaphysical foundations of his doctrine. The universal application of doubt it describes culminates in the self-evident certainty (cogito ergo sum) from which all his philosophical propositions derive. The Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641; Meditations on First Philosophy) further develops the metaphysical doctrine of the Discourse. The Principia philosophiae (1644; Principles of Philosophy) attempts to give a logical account of all natural phenomena in one single system of mechanical principles. Les Passions de l'me (1649; Passions of the Soul) outlines his ethical views. In September 1649 Descartes left Amsterdam to serve as instructor to Queen Christina of Sweden. He died the following winter of complications from a severe chill. born March 31, 1596, La Haye, Touraine, Fr. died February 11, 1650, Stockholm, Swed. Latin Renatius Cartesius French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. Because he was one of the first to oppose scholastic Aristotelianism, he has been called the father of modern philosophy. He began by methodically doubting knowledge based on authority, the senses, and reason, then found certainty in the intuition that, when he is thinking, he exists; this he expressed in the famous statement I think, therefore I am. He developed a dualistic system in which he distinguished radically between mind, the essence of which is thinking, and matter, the essence of which is extension in three dimensions. Descartes's metaphysical system is intuitionist, derived by reason from innate ideas, but his physics and physiology, based on sensory knowledge, are mechanistic and empiricist.