In today’s world we know a lot about how mathematics work thanks to many great mathematicians, and one of the most well known and important math figures is René Descartes. This man was a great French mathematician and philosopher in the 16th century. Although he had a short life, he did many things, from establishing his own mathematical rules to investigating reports of esoteric knowledge. Descartes had a very eventful early life filled with education. He was born in La Haye (now Descartes), France, but his family life lied South across the Creuse River in Poitou, where Joachim, his father, owned farms and houses in Châtellerault and Poitiers. He was in a relatively wealthy family and inherited nobility after his father passed away. He never …show more content…
In addition, Descartes made clear that all key parts and limits of each problem must be distinctly defined. Along with this mathematical method, René established another even more important rule that people use to this day. René created Descartes’s rule of signs, which in algebra is the rule for finding the maximum number of positive real number solutions/roots in a polynomial equation, based on the frequency that the signs of its real number coefficients change when the terms are placed in numerical order (from highest power to lowest power). For example, this polynomial: x5+ x4 − 2x3+ x2 − 1 = 0 Which changes its sign three times, which means it has at most three positive real solutions. Substituting −x for x finds the maximum number of negative solutions (which is two). This rule is very useful when solving a polynomial because it lets you know when you have found all of the roots and how many you need to find. The fact that it also lets us know how many positive or negative answers there are is very …show more content…
He provided understandings of tree trunks in The World, Dioptrics, Meteorology, and Geometry. He spent his remaining years working on the branches of mechanics (physics), medicine (physiology), and morals. Mechanics are the basis of his physiology and medicine theories, which is the base of his moral psychology. René thought that all living bodies, including the human body, were machines that operated by mechanical principles. In his physiological studies, he dissected animals to show how their parts moved. He argued that animals didn’t think or feel because they had no soul. Because of this belief, he performed vivisections He also described blood circulation but came to an interesting, but wrong, conclusion that heat in the heart expands the veins, causing its expulsion into the veins and arteries. Descartes’ report about all this, L’Homme, et un traité de la formation du foetus (Man, and a Treatise on the Formation of the Foetus), was published in 1664. He is dubbed the father of modern western philosophy and the one who coined the phrase: “I think therefore I