The world remembers René Descartes for his two major seminal philosophical works, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1637 and 1641, respectively. In addition to this, he accomplished the world-changing marriage of algebra and geometry with his Cartesian coordinate system, allowing any function or equation to be expressed in terms of lines and curves twining around his x and y axes.
Descartes’ philosophy, born in the midst of the bloody Thirty Years’ War – the heart-breaking religious wars (1618-1648) between Catholics and Protestants – sought to establish absolute certainty. Continue reading