Rene Descartes Research Paper

Descartes (1596-1650) was a rationalist. He was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He was born in a small town in La Haye located in France. He attended the newly opened Jesuit college of La Fleche at the age of eight (Hallman 238). Descartes believed that knowledge of the world can be gained by the

In order to understand Descartes’ way of thinking, it is crucial to note his education. He received a sufficient education in mathematics and science which led to his rejection of scholastic philosophy. He was not only taught about old philosophers such as Plato and Epictetus, but there was a recent philosopher [according to his time] named Montaigne who was a

Descartes is able to examine ideas and gain knowledge form them. Innate ideas mean they are present at birth, in other words we are implanted with certain ideas at our creation. He often uses ‘innate ideas’ to explain the mind’s original programming. “An infant’s mind is programmed with the rules of logic. Consider as an example the valid rule, modus ponens. Let P and Q stand for variables… the rules states that, if P then Q is true and P is true, then it follows that Q is true. We know that we are programmed with this rule because young children, who have never studied logic and have never entertained the rule, when given an argument in which the variables above are replaced by actual sentences, are able to intuit the validity of the argument.” Descartes believed our minds are programmed with eternal truths, “Whatever comes into existence must have been brought into existence by something else.” He also discovers that the idea of God is only part of his initial programming but also that God, operating through secondary sources such as his parents, is the programmer.

Claude Debussy was one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. His music pioneered new genres, and he was considered the father of impressionistic music. To understand Claude Debussy and his music, it is important to take a look at his early life and what effect that may have had on his character and influences. His early life had great influence on his musicality and musicianship, specifically his song set Quatre Chansons de Jeunesse.

Galileo Galilei was an astronomer, physicist, engineer and mathematician during the renaissance period in Italy. He was born in Italy, Pisa in 1564, and died in 1642 at age 77. Galileo was influential in supporting the Copernican Theory, which suggested that the earth revolved around the sun, and that the earth was not in fact the centre of the universe. He also developed the telescope, and discovered moons orbiting Jupiter, which are now name after him in his honour, the Galilean moons.

Alexandre de Beauharnais was born on May 28, 1760. He was the first husband of Joséphine Tascher de La Pagerie as of 1779, and the grandfather of Napoleon III, a distinguished figure during the French Revolution. Alexandre was also a father to Eugéne de Beauharnais and Hortense, who later was the mother of Napoleon III and the queen of Holland.

Who is Galileo Galilei? Astronomer. Galileo’s most common attribute is his work as an astronomer, refining the newly invented telescope, discovering moons, and proving the accepted model of Aristotelian cosmology wrong, while providing empirical evidence of Copernican Heliocentrism reinventing astronomy forever. Early in the 1600’s Galileo discovers the relatively new invention from the Netherlands called the telescope, and promptly builds his own, improving on the design, increasing the magnification, and the clarity of the image. The earlier versions of Galileo's telescopes had a magnification of 8x to around 10x magnification but through time, he continually refined the design eventually getting to around 30x magnification. Though Galileo was more than likely not the first to gaze into the heaven with a telescope, he was one of the very first to do

Descartes vs Hume First, we must ask ourselves, what is knowledge? Knowledge can be anything we desire if you can believe it. Whether it be facts, information, and/or skills acquired by experience or education.

Galileo Galilei was an Italian scientist born on the 15th of February 1564 in Pisa, Italy. Galileo had a great passion for science, his main areas being physics, astronomy, mathematics and engineering. Galileo is often referred to as the “father of modern observational astronomy” and the “father of modern science”.

Descartes was born the second child in a family of two sons and one daughter on March 31, 1596 in France. He contracted tuberculosis from his mother who died from the disease just days after his birth. At the age of eight he was sent to a Jesuit school and was educated in

Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564. He was the oldest son of Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia di Cosimo Ammannati. When Galileo was about eight years old, his family moved to Florence, where generations of the Galilei family had lived. In his early to middle teens, Galileo attended a monastery school located around Vallombrosa. In 1581, Galileo enrolled at the University of Pisa to pursue a career in medicine. He soon discovered his passion for mathematics and decided to switch his education for mathematics and philosophy. However, in 1585, Galileo left the University of Pisa with no degree. He taught math subjects in Florence and Siena in private lesson sessions for a couple years. During the same time as his private teachings, he created a new form of hydrostatic balance to weigh smaller things, and wrote a book

Descartes declares that he will only accept ideas that he can absolutely affirm, but accepts the existence of God without adequately proving it. This inadequacy undermines his declared project of defining the world in terms of established ideas. He does not sufficiently prove the idea of God, yet bases so much on it. When he later discusses physical bodies, intellect, and mathematical concepts, the reader cannot forget that everything he writes is based on the shaky foundation of the Christian God, and finds his

Following his departure from La Fleche, Descartes spent the following four years at the University of Poitiers. He graduated from Poitiers with a degree in civil and canon law. Soon after graduation Descartes enlisted in the Bavarian army, to travel, rather than to do combat. He traveled abroad for the next eight years before finally settling in Holland. Descartes chose Holland because he felt that the atmosphere there provided him with intellectual liberty, which in turn produced a creative flow of ideas 3. He chose to live in a small chateau in isolation except for a few servants. This chateau served him well because it was a rather quiet place where he could evolve his ideas systematically. He spent much of his time strolling through his garden and reflecting. At his chateau in Holland, Descartes devoted nearly all of his time to philosophy and mathematics.

Rene Descartes was a philosopher of the 17th century. He had this keen interest in the search for certainty. For he was unimpressed with the way philosophy is during their time. He mused that nothing certain was coming forth from all the philosophical ideologies. He had considered that the case which philosophy was in was due to the fact that it was not grounded to something certain. He was primarily concerned with intellectual certainty, meaning that something that is certain through the intellect. Thus he was named a rationalist due to this the line of thought that he pursued. But in his work in the meditation, his method of finding this certainty was skeptical in nature; this is ‘the methodic doubt’.

The next couple of years found him relocated all around Europe until he settles in Paris in 1626. In the five years from when he left the army until his alighting in Paris, Descartes had devoted his life to the study of pure mathematics. There, in Paris, Descartes would live for two years until Cardinal de Berulle, founder of the Oratorians, urged on Descartes the duty of “devoting his life to the examination of truth.” (Wilkins, D.). Now 1628, Descartes moved again, this time to Holland, to secure himself from interruption. He would spend the next twenty years in Holland, focusing on philosophy and mathematics.