Descartes, René, 1596-1650

"René Descartes, también llamado Renatus Cartesius (en escritura latina) (La Haye en Touraine, Turena, 31 de marzo de 1596-Estocolmo, Suecia, 11 de febrero de 1650), fue un filósofo, matemático y físico francés, considerado como el padre de la geometría analítica y de la filosofía moderna, así como uno de los epígonos con luz propia en el umbral de la revolución científica."

"René Descartes (/ˈdeɪˌkɑːrt/; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt]; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; adjectival form: "Cartesian"; 31 March 1596 - 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. He spent about 20 years of his life in the Dutch Republic. Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes's influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system-allowing reference to a point in space as a set of numbers, and allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two- or three-dimensional coordinate system (and conversely, shapes to be described as equations)-was named after him. He is credited as the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, used in the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the scientific revolution. Descartes refused to accept the authority of previous philosophers. He frequently set his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, a treatise on the early modern version of what are now commonly called emotions, Descartes goes so far as to assert that he will write on this topic "as if no one had written on these matters before". He was also suspicious of his own senses: his best known philosophical statement is "Cogito ergo sum" (French: Je pense, donc je suis; I think, therefore I am), found in part IV of Discourse on the Method (1637; written in French but with inclusion of "Cogito ergo sum") and §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (1644; written in Latin). Many elements of his philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the schools on two major points: First, he rejected the splitting of corporeal substance into matter and form; second, he rejected any appeal to final ends-divine or natural-in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God's act of creation. Descartes laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all well-versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well."