Rene Descartes (31 March 1596-11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who is widely considered to be the father of modern western philosophy. His most famous philosophical statement is Cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"), a refutation of those who doubt human existence.
Biography[]
Rene Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, Kingdom of France on 31 March 1596, and he spent the years 1629 to 1649 in the Dutch Republic after serving in Maurice of Nassau's Dutch States Army during the Dutch Revolt. His 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy discarded all things that were not certain and tried to establish what could be known for sure. He also rejected splitting the corporeal substance into matter and form, rejected any appeal to final ends, fathered analytical geometry, insisted on the absolute freedom of God's act of creation. Descartes was one of the intellectual representatives of the "Dutch Golden Age" and the Scientific Revolution, and he died in Stockholm, Sweden in 1650 at the age of 54.