Plane As The Nose On Descartes's Face

$Mathematicians$

René Descartes is born March 31, 1596, at La Haye near Tours, France. He is the youngest of three children. His mother dies shortly after his birth. He is a physically weak child, and as a result, his father delays his entry into formal education until he is eight years old. He is a naturally inquisitive child, and questions everything. He enters school, a Jesuit college in La Flèche. In school the rector lets him stay in bed as long as he likes, due to his weak health. This gives him plenty of time to think about life and other things. He receives a classical education.

He leaves school at the age of eighteen with some of his friends. He sets out to experience the world. After a while, he tires of his friends and decides to join the army. He studies under Prince Maurice of Orange in Breda, Holland. He leaves the service of Prince Maurice presumably because it doesn't offer enough action. He then goes to Germany and enlists under the Elector of Bavaria who is waging war against Bohemia. While in this service, Descartes ``finds himself".

On the night of November 10, 1619, he has three dreams which change his life. It is insinuated by his biographer, Baillet, that Descartes is drunk when goes to sleep that night. (Descartes states he is not drunk and hasn't touched alcohol in three months prior to this night.) In the first dream, Descartes is blown by evil winds from the security of a church or college toward a third party which the wind cannot budge or shake. In the second dream, he observes a terrible storm through scientific eyes and notices that once the storm is seen for what it really is, it can do him no harm. In the third dream, Descartes is reciting a poem of Ausonius which begins with the line ``What way of life shall I follow?". Descartes awakes with enthusiasm and feels that the key to the true foundation of all the sciences has been revealed to him.

He continues to be a soldier after this dream and fights in the battle of Prague. Eventually, he returns to Paris, and then visits Rome. After this he fights once more with the Duke of Savoy, and again later with the King of France at the siege of La Rochelle. Descartes spends some time traveling around Holland. Descartes has not published anything yet, and withholds the publication of Le Monde, his first book, because of the Catholic church's treatment of Galileo. Le Monde contained a great deal of support for the Coppernican system. Instead he decides it should be published after his death. Finally, at the age of forty-one, Descartes is convinced to publish his Discours de la méthode por bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans le sciences or Discourse on the Method of rightly conducting the Reason and seeking Truth in the Sciences. The date is June 8, 1637. (It won't be another eighteen years before La Géométrie is released as separate book, being that it is originally one of three appendices to the Discourse).

Later in 1641, Descartes becomes the tutor of Princess Elizabeth. In 1646, Descartes is living in Egmond, Holland and is recruited to teach Queen Christine of Sweden in 1649. The winter of 1649 is extremely harsh and Queen Christine is extremely vigorous. She makes Descartes meet her at 5 am everyday. Due to the weather and the rigors of the queen, Descartes contracts an inflamation of the lungs and dies on February 11, 1650, nearly fifty four years old.(Bell, p35-55).