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Jesuit College at La Fleche
Rene studies military and govenment issues, the classics, science and math, and the nobility arts. -
Law degree
Rene earns a law degree. Father is expecting him to join parliment, but the minimum age is 27 and Rene is only 20. -
Compendium of Music
Rene journey's to Breda to continue his studies for another 15 months. By the counselling of Isaac Beeckman, one of his professors; he wrote his first surviving work.Compendium of Music
It is one of the earliest attempts to define the dual relationship between the physical and psychological phenomena in music using a mathematical basis.Included in the book, is an unsuccessful mathematical attempt to divide the diapason into seventeen equal semitones. The book was not published until 1650. -
Inventions
Rene invented analytic geometry, a method of solving geometric problems algebraically and algebraic problems geometrically. He also invented a universal method of deductive reasoning, based on mathematics, that is applicable to all the sciences. (Explained later in Discourse on Method (1637) and Rules for the Direction of the Mind). -
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Consisting of 4 rules, they define the direct application of mathematical procedures. With all key notions and the limits of each problem clearly defined. Stated as following: (1) accept nothing as true that is not self-evident, (2) divide problems into their simplest parts, (3) solve problems by proceeding from simple to complex, and (4) recheck the reasoning. The book was not published until 1701. -
Family
Rene's wife/lover Helena Jans, gave birth to a daughter Francine. Francine later died of scarlet fever at the age of 5. -
Discourse on Method's Treaties
Written to before as an accompaniment, they illustrate his method for utilizing reason in the search for truth science. (1)Dioptrics: the law of refraction, (2)Meteorology: explained the rainbow, and (3)Geometry: an explaination of his analytic geometry, which included a perfected system for representing known numerical quantities with a, b, c, unknowns with x, y, z, & squares/cubes/other powers with numerical superscripts, as in x2, x3, making algebraic calculations much easier than before. -
Discourse on Method
Among one of the 1st important modern philosophical works not written in Latin, since Rene wrote in French; illustrating his conception of knowledge.Stated as follows, is his provisional (later final) moral code to use while seeking truth included in the book. (1)obey local customs and laws, (2)make decisions on the best evidence and then stick to them firmly as though they were certain, (3)change desires rather than the world, and (4) always seek truth. -
Basis of Rene's Knowledge
Using this baseline for his knowledge, Rene describes metaphysics corresponds to the roots of the tree(Mediations:1641), physics to the trunk(Discourse & Treaties:1637), and medicine, mechanics, and morals to the branches. All of his works correspond to this baseline. -
Rene's Knowledge Branches
Rene believed that all material bodies, including the human body, are machines that operate by mechanical principles. He argued that, because animals, and therefore humans; have no souls, they do not think or feel; thus, vivisection, which Descartes did, is permitted. Man, and a Treatise on the Formation of the Foetus published in 1664, describes these views in more detail. -
Meditations on First Philosophy, in Which Is Proved the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul.
It is a consolidated piece consisting of objections & replies that mark it as a landmark of cooperative discussion in philosophy and science at a time when dogmatism ruled. Characterized by Descartes’s use of methodic doubt, the book illustrates a systematic procedure of rejecting as though false all types of belief in which one has ever been, or could ever be, deceived. Meaning, if it's not distinct and clear it's wrong. -
Principles of Philosophy
A mix of physics & metaphysics, the book illustrates that a human being is a union of mind and body, two radically dissimilar substances that interact in the pineal gland. A gland that has only 1 function in the brain. Rene argued that each action on a person’s sense organs causes subtle matter to move through tubular nerves to the gland, causing it to vibrate. These vibrations cause emotions in turn causing actions. By altering mental attitudes, we can cause different emotions and thus actions. -
Gassendi and Hobbes
Rene meets Gassendi & Hobbes, then introduces them to Pascal with the suggested experiment of the barometer. A instrument that determines the weight of air (air pressure). -
Passions of the Soul
Despite his previous statement in his 1644 work, Rene argues that most bodily actions are determined by external material causes. -
Rene's Free Will Belief
Based on his religious beliefs and upbringing, Rene believed free will is the sign of God in human nature, and they can be either be praised or blamed according to their use of it. He believed that people are good, only to the extent that they act freely for the good of others and also, that unless people believe in God and immortality, they will see no reason to be moral. -
