René Descartes

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who lived during the 1600s. He was born in 1596 in the town of La Haye en Touraine, in France. Descartes is known for writing about how people can think clearly and study the world in an orderly way. He also worked on mathematics and early science. His ideas were shared through books written in clear steps.

Descartes studied at a school run by the Jesuits, a Catholic teaching group. He later studied law, but he did not work as a lawyer. Instead, he traveled across Europe and spent much time thinking and writing. He believed that knowledge should be built from clear and certain ideas. To do this, he suggested starting with questions that could not easily be doubted.

One of Descartes’s most famous ideas comes from his book Meditations on First Philosophy. In this book, he questioned many beliefs to find what could be known for sure. He wrote the sentence "I think, therefore I am." This sentence means that the act of thinking shows that a person exists. Descartes used this idea as a starting point for his thinking about the mind and the world.

Descartes also made important contributions to mathematics. He helped develop a way to connect algebra and geometry. Algebra is the study of numbers and symbols, while geometry is the study of shapes and space. This system is now called Cartesian coordinates. It uses numbers to show points on a grid with lines called axes. This method helps describe shapes using numbers.

In science, Descartes wrote about how nature works using motion and matter. Matter is anything that takes up space. He believed that physical events could be explained by clear rules, like parts of a machine moving together. He wrote about light, motion, and the human body. His ideas were based on careful thought rather than experiments, which were less common at the time.

René Descartes spent his later years living in the Netherlands and then in Sweden. He moved often to find quiet places to work. Descartes died in 1650 in Stockholm, Sweden. His writings influenced later thinkers in philosophy, mathematics, and science. He is remembered for presenting ideas in a clear, step-by-step way and for helping shape early modern thought.