Rene Descartes

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René Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye, France, which has been renamed after him, Descartes. He was the baby out of his three siblings. His mom named Jeanne Brochard had died before he turned one year old. His father, Joachim Brochard, a council member in the provincial parliament, sent his kids to live with their grandmother. The father left them with the grandmother while he himself remarried and enjoyed the bliss of not having children under his feet. He still was a stickler for a good education and having a legacy so he sent 8 year old Rene to the Jesuit college of Henri IV where he stayed until he was 15. After studying logic, rhetoric, musical arts, and astronomy he moved onto the University of Poitiers, where he worked on his baccalaureate in law for the next four years. His father planned on his prestigious son to become a lawyer and make it into politics just like him. Although, during his school years he had several influential teachers in his logic and mathematics classes. Soon after he declared he didn’t want to learn from anything except from himself or “the great book of the world” which he had written in Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. After obtaining his degree, men back in those days, had to either join the church or the army. Rene joined the army and saw a few battles as a nobleman. While in the army there were geometrical problems given to the world which at that time was like trying to divide pi by itself over 1 or something to that effect. Well he could solve these impossible equations within a few hours, and after realizing his mathematical genius he decided being in the army was beneath him, but he stayed for a while longer to app... ... middle of paper ... ...perfection. c. There must be as much reality in the cause of any idea as in the idea itself (the principle of cause and effect). d. Therefore, the idea we have of infinite perfection originated from a being with infinite perfection, and this being is God”(3). He goes even further to say that God is a completely pure and a good creator and cannot deceive. Descartes creates an Evil demon to be the deceiver of humanity because God cannot deceive. Works Cited (1) Http://mathforum.org/cgraph/history/fly.html. Drexel University School of Education. Web. 19 Mar. 2014 (2) "René Descartes." 2014. The Biography Channel website. Mar 18 2014, 09:07 http://www.biography.com/people/ren%C3%A9-descartes-37613. (3) Fieser, James, and Norman Lillegard. "7." A Historical Introduction to Philosophy: Texts and Interactive Guides. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 339. Print.

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