Rene+Descartes;+Life!

Rene Descartes Life!! French Mathematician, Scientist, and Philosopher!!

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He was born in France on March 31, 1596 He died in Stockholm, Sweden on Feburary 11, 1650 Rene's parents where Joachim Descartes and Jeanne Brochard. He had two siblings and two half-siblings.

"His father was a lawyer and magistrate", so the father never really got to see rene. Rene's mother died in May, the year after he was born, so him and his brother and sister, Pierre and Jeanne, were going to be raised by their grandmother in La Haye.

"When he was 10 years old, in 1606, he was sent to the Jesuit college of La Fleche. He was there until 1614, and in 1615 went to the University of Poitiers, and a year later he received his Baccalaureate and License in Canon & Civil Law." (Stanford)

In 1618, at 22, he went into the army of “Prince Maurice of Nassau.” Nobody knows what his exact duties were though “Baillet” says that he would have most likely been in, “the Corps of Engineers.” In that group they used mathematics, “designing a variety of structures and machines aimed at protecting and assisting soldiers in battle.”

He left school in 1612, then he went to Paris to "be introduced" to "the world of fashion." When he was there he started his "schoolboy friendship" with Mersenne, and then he spent two years (1615 and 1616) to study mathematics.

When he was at at Breda, he met Isaac Beeckman, in November, 1618. He taught (like a teacher. Rene and they soon became friends. They had meetings, in one of their meetings Isaac convinced Rene to "devote his studies to a mathematical approach to nature." Beeckman also showed him many of Galileos ideas. In 1629 the Dutch Republic started fighting about wheather Isaac had helped Rene with some of his discoveries. In October 1630, Rene wrote a long and very mean letter, it was meant to "crush Isaac psychologically", in the letter Rene said that he never had been influenced by Isaac. However, this was not the only fight between the 3 of them. But Rene and Isaac kept in touch until Isaac's death in 1637.

Soon after that Rene was interested in the scinece of it. He was also interested in about a **__big__** variety of topics in science. He made a theory of “harmony rooted in the concepts of proportion or ratio.” Which meant that he tied algebra and other concepts together.

After Descartes left the army, in 1619, nobody is absolutely certain about where he was for the next few years. There is some evidence saying that he was in France in 1622. And there is some evidence that between 1623 and 1625 he visited Italy.

In 1628 Descartes left Paris. At this time he seems to have been working on the __Regulae__ annd __Directionem Ingenii__ (Rules for the Direction of the Mind), “a work that he would soo abandon.”

In 1630 he moved to Amsterdam. When he was there he worked on the “Dioptrique (the Optics) and the Meteors (the Meteorology), which were very likely intended to be a part of a larger work, Le Monde (The World).”

In 1632 he moved to Deventer, teach Henry Reneri his physics. “It is also said that during his stay in Deventer that Descartes probably worked on a final draft of the Traite de l'homme (Treatise on Man), which in connection to the Optics and the Meteorology was probably originally intended to be a part of The World.”

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">When__//The// //World//__ //was// ready to be published in 1633, he heard that the Church's "condemnation of Galileo", So then Rene decided to not publish it. In November 1633, Rene wrote a letter to a friend, Mersenne, he explained why he didnt want to publish __//The World//__, he said that he was worried that Galileo would lose his trust in him and not talk to him ever agin. And, although this is something that **everybody** would want to avoid, "some scholars question Descartes's expressed concern, for his living in the Netherlands would have kept him out of reach of Catholic authorities." Even though alot of __//The World//__ has been lost, some of it is still out there somewhere, written in essays attached to the __//Discourse//__ (another of Rene's already published words) and it would be re-published four years later, in 1637. On October 5th, 1637 it was published. However there were only 3 sheets and the sheets only talked about mechanics.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Two months before __Passions__ was published, Rene went on a boat to Stockholm, Sweden. Rene then died in Stockholm of pneumonia.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">La fleche, France.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">This is the house that Rene was born in. Rene Descartes