What Were Rene Descartes Accomplishments

Content

Biography
Birth and childhood
Youth and the beginning of his philosophical ideas
Residence in Holland
Soapbox on the Method
Metaphysical meditations
Death
Philosophy
Educational activity for all
Method to guide reason
Doubt-based method
What elements brand y'all doubt?
Beginning truth
Substances
Ideas
Plays
The globe, treated of light
Soapbox on the method
Written in french
First part
2nd role
3rd part
Quaternary part
5th part
Part 6
Metaphysical meditations
Contributions and inventions in the philosophical and scientific field
The way of conceiving and treating philosophical study changed
The res cogitans and the extensive res
Contributed physical theories
The cientific method
Male parent of geometry
Creator of the exponent method
Development of the Cartesian Police
Introduction of letters in mathematics
Theory of equations
References

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, whose most notable contributions are the development of geometry, a new scientific methodology, the Cartesian Police or his contribution to modern philosophy.

Although he was a armed services human and studied law, Descartes' true passions were oriented towards understanding the problems of mathematics and those concerning the field of philosophy. These concerns were so deep that afterward dedicating his entire life to this field, their assay fabricated him the begetter of modern philosophy.

His contributions were diverse, equally well every bit transcendental for many disciplines, then much so that to this 24-hour interval they continue to be significant, such every bit his Philosophical essays, which contemplate the analysis of 4 sections.

In these sections you tin can report his dissertations on geometry, eyes, geometry, meteors, and finally - in addition to his greatest contribution -, Soapbox on the Method.

His writings contemplate more inquiries, as well of great importance, such every bit his well-known Metaphysical Meditations.

Biography

Birth and childhood

Descartes was born in La Haye in Touraine, France, on March 31, 1596. When he was ane year onetime, his female parent Jeanne Brochard died while trying to give nascency to another kid who also died. I was and so in accuse of his begetter, his maternal grandmother and a nurse.

In 1607, somewhat belatedly due to his fragile health, he entered the Imperial Henry-Le-Grand Jesuit College at La Flèche, where he learned mathematics and physics, including the piece of work of Galileo.

After graduating in 1614, he studied 2 years (1615-16) at the University of Poitiers, obtaining a Baccalaureate and License in Canon and Civil Law, in accordance with his father's wishes that he become a lawyer. After he moved to Paris.

Youth and the beginning of his philosophical ideas

Due to his ambition to be a military homo, in 1618 he joined every bit a mercenary the Protestant Army of the Dutch States in Breda, nether the command of Maurice of Nassau, where he studied military engineering.

Together with Isaac Beeckman, a philosopher who profoundly influenced him, he worked on free fall, catenary, conic section and fluid static, developing the belief that information technology was necessary to create a method that closely related mathematics and physics.

From 1620 to 1628 he traveled through Europe spending time in Bohemia (1620), Hungary (1621), Frg, Holland, and France (1622-23). He also spent fourth dimension in Paris (1623), where he got in touch with Marin Mersenne, an important contact that kept him related to the scientific world for many years.

From Paris he traveled through Switzerland to Italia, where he spent fourth dimension in Venice and Rome. After he returned to France again (1625).

He renewed his friendship with Mersenne and Mydorge, and met Girard Desargues. His domicile in Paris became a coming together identify for philosophers and mathematicians.

Residence in The netherlands

In 1628, tired of the bustle of Paris, his business firm full of people and the life of a traveler, he decided to settle where he could work in confinement. He thought a lot about choosing a land suited to his nature and chose Holland.

He longed to be in a quiet place where he could work away from the distractions of a city like Paris, but yet have access to the facilities of a city. It was a skilful decision that seems not regretted.

Soon afterward settling in Holland, he began work on his start nifty treatise on physics, Le Monde or Traité de la Lumière. He wrote to Mersenne in October 1629:

[The fundamentals of physics] is the subject that I accept studied more than than any other and on which, thank God, I accept not completely wasted my time. At least I think that I accept found how to bear witness metaphysical truths in a more than obvious fashion than the proofs of geometry, in my opinion, that is: I don't know if I will be able to convince others of it. During my first ix months in this country I did not work at annihilation else.

In 1633, this work was almost finished when the news that Galileo was condemned to business firm arrest reached him. He decided not to risk publishing the work and ultimately chose to do it only in part, after his death.

Discourse on the Method

Descartes was pressured past his friends to publish his ideas and, although he was adamant near not publishing Le Monde, wrote a treatise on science nether the championship Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences (Discourse on the Method).

Three appendices to this work were La Dioptrique, Les Météores, and La Géométrie. The treatise was published at Leiden in 1637 and Descartes wrote to Mersenne saying:

The play Discourse on Method (1637) describes what Descartes considers a more satisfactory means of acquiring knowledge than that of Aristotle's logic. Just mathematics, co-ordinate to Descartes, is true, and so everything must be based on mathematics.

In the iii essays that back-trail the Discourse, he illustrated his method of using reason in the search for truth in scientific discipline.

Metaphysical meditations

In 1641 Descartes published Metaphysical meditations in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated.

This work is characterized by the employ of methodical incertitude, a systematic procedure of rejecting as false all types of beliefs in which he has ever been or could have been deceived.

Death

Descartes never married, but had a girl, Francine, born in the Netherlands in 1635. He had planned to educate the girl in France, just died of a fever at the historic period of 5.

Descartes lived in kingdom of the netherlands for more than 20 years but died in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 11, 1650 after suffering a bout of pneumonia at the age of 53. He had moved there less than a year earlier, at the request of Queen Cristina, to be her philosophy tutor.

Philosophy

Descartes is considered the first thinker of modernity, given that thank you to his conceptions rationalism as a doctrine took its start steps.

In the context in which Descartes lived, proposing a new philosophy corresponded to a revolutionary and quite daring action, since proposing his proposal implied questioning medieval philosophy.

For Descartes, the realism on which the philosophy in force at the time was based was somewhat naive, since he considered real what was perceived.

Descartes explains that, by obtaining knowledge about something, we are really obtaining our idea well-nigh said noesis, and that in guild to know and then if said knowledge is real, it is necessary to analyze it and discover absolute certainties.

Educational activity for all

Part of Descartes'due south conception of teaching was based on the fact that everyone had the right to be educated and to have access to knowledge. In fact, he believed that there were no greater or lesser intelligences, but different ways of approaching knowledge.

The notion of knowledge that is inherited was non uniform with the arguments of Descartes, who considered that what was true was everything that was very articulate to reason, and that other knowledge imparted past an authorization figure was not necessarily truthful.

In this same context, he showed himself as a defender of the right that human being beings accept to think for ourselves and to have liberty in terms of written report.

Method to guide reason

Descartes idea that it is necessary for cognition to be obtained through a specific method, which volition favor obtaining the purest possible truth. The steps in this method are as follows:

-Evidence, which refers to the elements so authentic that there is no style to doubtfulness them.

-Analysis, which has to practise with breaking downwards each concept into much smaller parts, and so that they can exist studied and evaluated in particular and depth.

-Synthesis, a point at which information technology is sought to construction the cognition in question, starting with the less complex elements.

-Enumeration, which consists of reviewing the work washed over and over again, every bit many times equally possible, in lodge to exist sure that no element has been forgotten.

The bases of this method are plant in mathematics, which in plow corresponds to the blueprint par excellence that is associated with any reasoning of a scientific nature.

Doubt-based method

Descartes sought to approach the absolute truth of the globe and of things through a method based on doubt. This procedure responds to consider faux all those elements or arguments that present at least something doubtful in their structures.

This incertitude should not be considered every bit a reflection of skepticism, since it is a question of a methodical nature, ever with the intention of getting as close to the truth as possible.

According to Descartes, if the certainty near a knowledge is not absolute and so doubt arises and said cognition becomes imitation, considering only true knowledge is free from whatever doubt.

What elements make you lot doubt?

Descartes points out that at that place are three main elements that are capable of generating doubts. The first element is made upwards of the senses.

Co-ordinate to Descartes, this is considering there are many everyday situations in which it is evident that reality shows something and the senses show something different, based on the aforementioned chemical element.

At this indicate he mentions as examples the fact that some geometric shapes such as circles and squares seem to have some characteristics at a altitude and others dissimilar when approaching, or the fact that a stick inserted in the water seems broken when information technology really is not.

Based on this, Descartes believed that all knowledge that was obtained through the senses was fake.

The 2nd element that generates doubts is the fact of not being able to differentiate betwixt being awake or asleep. That is, how do we know if we are awake or dreaming?

For Descartes, a scientific discipline that does non raise doubts is mathematics, although he thought that it is possible that we have been created to be wrong. Therefore, he introduces the third reason for doubt, which is the being of a very intelligent and powerful evil being, whose function is to provoke the mistake, whom I call Demiurge.

Descartes warns that in order to overcome all these doubtful reasons, it is necessary that the certainty about a noesis be absolute.

First truth

Taking into account the higher up, Descartes states his popular first truth: "I call up, therefore I am", according to which he tries to reflect that the activity of thinking constitutes, at the same time, an elimination of doubt.

This is so because doubt in itself can be considered thought, and information technology is not possible to dubiety thought.

Substances

Descartes states that there are truly three types of substances. The first is an infinite and perfect substance, which is God.

The 2nd is what he calls thinking, which corresponds to reason, as well called soul. This substance is immaterial and not corporeal.

The third is the all-encompassing call, which includes material beings or matter. In this section Descartes recalls that information technology is not really possible to determine the specific characteristics of this matter, as these are subject to the perceptions of each individual.

However, it establishes that it is possible to consider this matter taking into business relationship its extension; therefore this substance is chosen all-encompassing.

Ideas

For Descartes at that place are unlike types of ideas, which are those that comprise the information that makes upwards knowledge. He determined the existence of three types:

-Facts, which are what reason generates without any external reference.

-Adventices, which are those that are generated in response to external stimuli that nosotros receive through the senses. Information technology is about all those ideas linked to everything that is outside of thought.

-Innate, which are those that are proper to reason, to the indicate that they have not been generated, merely simply have always been there.

Descartes indicates that innate ideas are linked to the formal sciences, since they are considered irrefutable, evident facts and, therefore, are considered as truthful knowledge.

On the other hand, adventitious ideas are those that fill the sciences related to the natural world. To give legitimacy to this cognition, Descartes indicates that we must realize that there is an innate thought always nowadays in the thought of human being beings, and it is the idea of God.

Then, only based on the existence of God is it possible to consider that adventitious ideas and, therefore, natural sciences, are elements that can be considered truthful.

Plays

In life, Descartes published nine dissimilar works, and four works were published after his death.

The world, treated of calorie-free

This volume was titled in French Traité du monde et de la lumière and it was written between 1629 and 1633. Descartes raises topics as various as biology, physics, cosmology, metaphysics, and fifty-fifty mechanical philosophy, a notion that was in forcefulness in the seventeenth century.

The full general ground of the book is found in the theory proclaimed by Copernicus according to which the planets - the Earth included - revolved around the Dominicus, unlike what the geocentric theory proposed, according to which it was the Earth that was in the center of the universe.

Because the Inquisition condemned Galileo for heresy, Descartes decided not to publish this book yet, for fear of being charged every bit well. The full text ended up being published in 1677.

Discourse on the method

The full title of this book is Discourse on the method for conducting 1's ain reason well and seeking the truth in science, translated from French Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences.

Information technology is the most of import work of Descartes and ane of the first texts of modern philosophy, in which he portrays autobiographical aspects and other elements that led him to the philosophical method that he raises.

Its first publication was anonymous and occurred in 1637. Descartes' starting time intention was for this book to be a prologue to three essays written past him, entitled Dioptric, Geometry YMeteors.

Written in french

The fact that the piece of work was written in French is relevant, since at that time the accepted tendency was to write this blazon of philosophical text in Latin. Descartes preferred to use French so that more than people had access to his work, since only a minority understood Latin.

From this utilise of French, this linguistic communication began to exist considered equally the platonic medium for the assay and dissertation of philosophical questions.

The Discourse on the method It is made up of six dissimilar parts:

First part

It corresponds to an autobiography, focused specifically on questioning all the cognition that Descartes had acquired upward to that moment.

In this section Descartes questions the method used so far and emphasizes the importance of approaching the mathematical method, since he considers that mathematics is the nigh exact science that exists.

This part ends by affirming that there is only 1 manner to find the absolute truth, and it is within each person.

Second part

In this section, Descartes speaks of the fact that the sciences are not the source of what he calls true knowledge, since these take been thought and created by individuals with different opinions and conceptions of things.

Then, he concludes that the true path to knowledge must exist traced through reason itself, and non through the approaches that others have had towards that knowledge.

In this sense, for Descartes it is essential that each individual accept a solid basis on what is true and what is non, and for this he proposes a method based on doubt. It is here where he lists the iv steps that make up the method to guide reason, set out above.

3rd part

This section is very important, since it places what Descartes proposed in a context that tin give even more than solidity to the arguments based on the method.

Descartes indicates that methodical incertitude must be present in every arroyo to knowledge; Yet, he establishes at the same time that it is essential to have a morality that he calls conditional, through which he can guide his actions and his life in general.

This moral had to be based on several essential elements. The offset of these was that this morality had to respond to the customs and laws of the state of origin, moderate opinions were those that should have the greatest force and religion should ever be present.

On the other manus, Descartes argues that individuals should evidence compactness both in terms of arguments that were considered true, and those that were doubtful in nature. For Descartes, consistency is a fundamental element.

Finally, he points out that it is necessary to exist willing to modify your opinions instead of waiting for the globe to be the ane to alter. For this philosopher, human beings have no power over anything, except over our ain thoughts.

Descartes' conditional morality was based on his endless intention to apply the method in everything he did, also as to work on reason and thought.

Fourth part

This chapter corresponds to the central area of Descartes's book, and in this it is appreciated how he develops the concept of methodical doubt; he begins to doubt all the elements, with the intention of seeing if it is possible to arrive at real and true knowledge.

Information technology is in the middle of this process that Descartes reaches his start principle of "I call up, therefore I am", when he realizes that while he doubts, he is thinking.

Also in this section he talks virtually God and presents several arguments that, according to him, testify the existence of this higher existence. One of the arguments put frontwards is that, if man beings know that our nature is imperfect, it is because nosotros have somehow known what is perfect, which is God.

Likewise, it establishes that there must have been a creator, because imperfect human beings, merely with notions of the perfect, we would have created ourselves perfect.

For Descartes, the fact of recognizing that God exists implies also recognizing that the world exists; that is, God becomes the guarantor that, in reality, the earth around u.s. does exist.

Something interesting about this argument is that, despite the fact that Descartes considers the effigy of God as something perfect and superior, at the same time he recognizes that information technology is the responsibility of human beings and no i else to cultivate reason and recognize the truth of what it is non.

Fifth part

In this section of the book, Descartes develops a bit of cosmogony and focuses on calorie-free equally a fundamental element.

Every bit stated, the light is produced by the Sun, then information technology is transmitted past the sky, subsequently it is reflected by the planets and is finally the object of adoration of the human being.

From this notion of calorie-free, he links it with man, in a way that he considers information technology to be the central element of life.

In relation to other forms of life, it is in this section where he differentiates betwixt human beings and animals based on rationality.

Descartes states that animals practise not have the ability to reason, unlike men. Also, there are besides differences regarding the soul; Although Descartes indicates that both human beings and animals accept souls, he as well says that animals are junior to man beings.

For Descartes, the soul of human beings is immortal and unrelated to the trunk, unlike what happens with animals.

Role six

In the last section of the Discourse on the method Descartes analyzes what is the truthful scope that an investigation tin take in the scientific field. He reasons that the fact that science progresses implies that dissimilar benefits are generated for societies.

At the same time, it establishes that for there to be true progress in the surface area of science it is necessary that the experiences of various individuals be disclosed.

At that time, Descartes did non concur very much with the publication of his works, because they could exist reverse to the considerations of the masters in theology of the fourth dimension, which for him meant generating debates and contradictions that would atomic number 82 to nothing.

Metaphysical meditations

This book was titled Metaphysical meditations in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated, and was published in 1641, written in Latin.

This work corresponds to the space in which Descartes developed with greater specificity what was raised in the quaternary part of his book Discourse on the method.

Some of the notions that he establishes in this work accept to do with eliminating all doubts at the root, and then as non to go used to them. Information technology also emphasizes recognizing 1's existence equally true, thanks to its outset principle "I think, therefore I exist."

This work besides focuses on recognizing the existence of God as a perfect existence and the superiority that reason must have over the will, which is usually the 1 that approaches fault as it is full of personal judgments.

Contributions and inventions in the philosophical and scientific field

The mode of conceiving and treating philosophical report changed

Prior to his proposal, the dissertations on philosophy were based on the scholastic method.

This methodology consisted only in the comparing of the arguments presented by philosophers recognized or considered as an authority, without taking into consideration any scientific footing.

However, from the formulation that this thinker shows, he established the means to have a unlike path: that of methodical dubiety.

This is based on leaving an outcome that does not remain skeptic - or a tendency according to which in that location is no conventionalities - but simply works to cast doubt on everything and get in at the truths through a method. From there, his important judgement: I think, therefore I be.

The res cogitans and the extensive res

Descartes considered that there were two substances in human beings: a thinking one that he called res cogitans, and another belonging to the realm of the physical, cited asextensive res.

Although this could non be fully demonstrated today every bit a universal truth, information technology undoubtedly paved the way for one of the greatest debates in modernity about the body, the existence of the mistress, and the relationship, or advice, between these two elements.

Contributed physical theories

He tried to give explanations nigh different phenomena in the field of physics, even getting shut to the idea of Copernicus -as regards the heliocentric system-, despite the fact that he later dismissed these proposals, mainly because they are considered by the Cosmic Church equally heresy.

In the aforementioned way, although many of his explanatory attempts were not the most authentic, he was navigating the paths for what would later become one of his almost important contributions: the scientific method.

The cientific method

The evolution of a scientific method, contributed to rid scientific discipline of speculations and vague dissertations and that it was consolidated as such.

The objective was that, past following the necessary steps that contemplated the verification and verification of the reality data, certainty would be reached.

This stems from Descartes'due south conventionalities that the senses could deceive the homo about their environment, and for this reason it was necessary to submit all the necessary aspects through a method that led to the truth.

Father of geometry

Another of his swell contributions was in the field of mathematics, given his inquiries most geometry, since it contributed to the systematization of analytical geometry.

Creator of the exponent method

One of his dandy achievements, and i that persists today, is the employ made to indicate the powers.

This achievement is also due to Descartes, as he created the method of exponents.

Development of the Cartesian Law

Cheers to their contributions, it is possible today to have the so-called Cartesian Law of Signs, which allows deciphering the roots, both negative and positive, inside algebraic equations.

Introduction of letters in mathematics

Due to his research, information technology is as well possible to make apply, in the field of mathematics, of the first letters of the alphabet - when the quantities are known (a, b, c, d) -, and of the last (u, v, due west , 10, y, z), when these are not known.

Theory of equations

Descartes helped develop what is known today as the theory of equations. This was based on the use of the signs that he created to determine the nature of the roots of the given equation.

References

Descartes, R. (2007). The discourse of the method. Maxtor Editorial. Valladolid. Spain.
Morillo, D. (2001). Rene Descartes. Editorial Edaf. Buenos Aires. Argentine republic.
Scott, J. (2016). The scientific work of René Descartes. Rowtledge Library Editions: René Descartes.
Ziccardi, J. (2012). Central Descartes: A applied Guide to the Method and Meditations. Copyright James Ziccardi.
Slowik, E. (2002). Cartesian Spacetime. Descartes ´Physics and the Relational Theory of Space and Motility. Winona Country Academy. Winona. USES.