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Descartes

[ dā-kärt′ ]
René 1596-1650

French mathematician and philosopher who discovered that the position of a point can be determined by coordinates, a discovery that laid the foundation for analytic geometry.

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The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Cultural definitions for descartes, rené

Descartes, René
[ (day-kahrt) ]

A seventeenth-century French philosopher. He is known for his statement “I think; therefore I am.” Descartes relied on reason to explain the workings of the universe; his ideas are often called “Cartesianism,” after the Latin form of his name.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.