Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes is one of the most important thinkers of the modern era. A pre-eminent French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, he is known as both the “Founder of Modern Philosophy” and the “Father of Modern Mathematics”. As a mathematician, Descartes invented the Cartesian coordinate system, which unified algebra with Euclidean geometry. In philosophy, Descartes was a major figure in 17th century continental rationalism, later advocated by Spinoza and Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought, consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Descartes’ most influential work, Meditations on First Philosophy, has inspired numerous contemporary debates in epistemology and philosophy of mind. There, Descartes is best known for employing methodological skepticism in an attempt to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. Most famously, he established “I think therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum) as a proposition which he could not doubt.