Continental Rationalism, Experience, and Experiment

Rationalism is often criticized for placing too much confidence in the ability of reason
alone to know the world. The extent to which one finds this criticism justified depends
largely on ones view of reason. For Hume, for instance, knowledge of the world of
matters of fact is gained exclusively through experience; reason is merely a faculty for
comparing ideas gained through experience; it is thus parasitic upon experience, and
has no claim whatsoever to grasp anything about the world itself, let alone any special
claim. For Kant, reason is a mental faculty with an inherent tendency to transgress the
bounds of possible experience in an effort to grasp the metaphysical foundations of the
phenomenal realm. Since knowledge of the world is limited to objects of possible
experience, for Kant, reason, with its delusions of grasping reality beyond those limits,
must be subject to critique.
Sometimes rationalism is charged with neglecting or undervaluing experience, and with
embarrassingly having no means of accounting for the tremendous success of the
experimental sciences. While the criticism of the confidence placed in reason may be
defensible given a certain conception of reason (which may or may not itself be
ultimately defensible), the latter charge of neglecting experience is not; more often than
not it is the product of a false caricature of rationalism
Descartes and Leibniz were the leading mathematicians of their day, and stood at the
forefront of science. While Spinoza distinguished himself more as a political thinker,
and as an interpreter of scripture (albeit a notorious one) than as a mathematician,
Spinoza too performed experiments, kept abreast of the leading science of the day, and
was renowned as an expert craftsman of lenses. Far from neglecting experience, the
great rationalists had, in general, a sophisticated understanding of the role of experience
and, indeed, of experiment, in the acquisition and development of knowledge. The fact
that the rationalists held that experience and experiment cannot serve as foundations
for knowledge, but must be fitted within, and interpreted in light of, a rational epistemic
framework, should not be confused with a neglect of experience and experiment.

a. Descartes

One of the stated purposes of Descartes Meditations, and, in particular, the hyperbolic
doubts with which it commences, is to reveal to the mind of the reader the limitations of
its reliance on the senses, which Descartes regards as an inadequate foundation for
knowledge. By leading the mind away from the senses, which often deceive, and which
yield only confused ideas, Descartes prepares the reader to discover the clear and
distinct perceptions of the pure intellect, which provide a proper foundation for genuine
knowledge. Nevertheless, empirical observations and experimentation clearly had an
important role to play in Descartes natural philosophy, as evidenced by his own private
empirical and experimental research, especially in optics and anatomy, and by his
explicit statements in several writings on the role and importance of observation and
experiment.
In Part 6 of the Discourse on the Method, Descartes makes an open plea for assistance
both financial and otherwise in making systematic empirical observations and
conducting experiments. Also in Discourse Part 6, Descartes lays out his program for
developing knowledge of nature. It begins with the discovery of certain seeds of truth
implanted naturally in our souls (CSM I, 144). From them, Descartes seeks to derive the
first principles and causes of everything. Descartes Meditations illustrates these first
stages of the program. By seeds of truth Descartes has in mind certain intuitions,
including the ideas of thinking, and extension, and, in particular, of God. On the basis of
clearly and distinctly perceiving the distinction between what belongs properly to
extension (figure, position, motion) and what does not (colors, sounds, smells, and so
forth), Descartes discovers the principles of physics, including the laws of motion. From
these principles, it is possible to deduce many particular ways in which the details of the
world might be, only a small fraction of which represent the way the world actually is. It
is as a result of the distance, as it were, between physical principles and laws of nature,
on one hand, and the particular details of the world, on the other, that, for Descartes,
observations and experiments become necessary.
Descartes is ambivalent about the relationship between physical principles and
particulars, and about the role that observation and experiment play in mediating this
relationship. On the one hand, Descartes expresses commitment to the ideal of a science
deduced with certainty from intuitively grasped first principles. Because of the great
variety of mutually incompatible consequences that can be derived from physical
principles, observation and experiment are required even in the ideal deductive science
to discriminate between actual consequences and merely possible ones. According to the

ideal of deductive science, however, observation and experiment should be used only to
facilitate the deduction of effects from first causes, and not as a basis for an inference to
possible explanations of natural phenomena, as Descartes makes clear at one point
his Principles of Philosophy (CSM I, 249). If the explanations were only possible, or
hypothetical, the science could not lay claim to certainty per the deductive ideal, but
merely to probability.
On the other hand, Descartes states explicitly at another point in the Principles of
Philosophy that the explanations provided of such phenomena as the motion of celestial
bodies and the nature of the earths elements should be regarded merely as hypotheses
arrived at on the basis of a posteriori reasoning (CSM I, 255); while Descartes says that
such hypotheses must agree with observation and facilitate predictions, they need not in
fact reflect the actual causes of phenomena. Descartes appears to concede, albeit
reluctantly, that when it comes to explaining particular phenomena, hypothetical
explanations and moral certainty (that is, mere probability) are all that can be hoped
for.
Scholars have offered a range of explanations for the inconsistency in Descartes
writings on the question of the relation between first principles and particulars. It has
been suggested that the inconsistency within the Principles of Philosophy reflects
different stages of its composition (see Garber 1978). However the inconsistency might
be explained, it is clear that Descartes did not take it for granted that the ideal of a
deductive science of nature could be realized. Moreover, whether or not Descartes
ultimately believed the ideal of deductive science was realizable, he was unambiguous
on the importance of observation and experiment in bridging the distance between
physical principles and particular phenomena. (For further discussion, see Ren
Descartes: Scientific Method.)

Descartes distinguishes between three kinds of ideas: adventitious (adventitiae),

factitious (factae), and innate (innatae). As an example of an adventitious idea,
Descartes gives the common idea of the sun (yellow, bright, round) as it is perceived
through the senses. As an example of a factitious idea, Descartes cites the idea of the sun
constructed via astronomical reasoning (vast, gaseous body). According to Descartes, all

ideas which represent true, immutable, and eternal essences are innate. Innate ideas,
for Descartes, include the idea of God, the mind, and mathematical truths, such as the
fact that it pertains to the nature of a triangle that its three angles equal two right angles.
By conceiving some ideas as innate, Descartes does not mean that children are born
with fully actualized conceptions of, for example, triangles and their properties. This is a
common misconception of the rationalist doctrine of innate ideas. Descartes strives to
correct it inComments on a Certain Broadsheet, where he compares the innateness of
ideas in the mind to the tendency which some babies are born with to contract certain
diseases: it is not so much that the babies of such families suffer from these diseases in
their mothers womb, but simply that they are born with a certain faculty or tendency
to contract them (CSM I, 304). In other words, innate ideas exist in the mind
potentially, as tendencies; they are then actualized by means of active thought under
certain circumstances, such as seeing a triangular figure.
At various points, Descartes defends his doctrine of innate ideas against philosophers
(Hobbes, Gassendi, and Regius, inter alia) who hold that all ideas enter the mind
through the senses, and that there are no ideas apart from images. Descartes is relatively
consistent on his reasons for thinking that some ideas, at least, must be innate. His
principal line of argument proceeds by showing that there are certain ideas, for example,
the idea of a triangle, that cannot be either adventitious or factitious; since ideas are
either adventitious, factitious, or innate, by process of elimination, such ideas must be
innate.
Take Descartes favorite example of the idea of a triangle. The argument that the idea of
a triangle cannot be adventitious proceeds roughly as follows. A triangle is composed of
straight lines. However, straight lines never enter our mind via the senses, since when
we examine straight lines under a magnifying lens, they turn out to be wavy or irregular
in some way. Since we cannot derive the idea of straight lines from the senses, we
cannot derive the idea of a true triangle, which is made up of straight lines, through the
senses. Sometimes Descartes makes the point in slightly different terms by insisting that
there is no similarity between the corporeal motions of the sense organs and the ideas
formed in the mind on the occasion of those motions (CSM I, 304; CSMK III, 187). One
such dissimilarity, which is particularly striking, is the contrast between the
particularity of all corporeal motions and the universality that pure ideas can attain

when conjoined to form necessary truths. Descartes makes this point in clear terms to
Regius:
I would like our author to tell me what the corporeal motion is that is capable of forming
some common notion to the effect that things which are equal to a third thing are equal
to each other, or any other he cares to take. For all such motions are particular, whereas
the common notions are universal and bear no affinity with, or relation to, the motions.
(CSM I, 304-5)
Next, Descartes has to show that the idea of a triangle is not factitious. This is where the
doctrine of true and immutable natures comes in. For Descartes, if, for example, the
idea that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles were his own
invention, it would be mutable, like the idea of a gold mountain, which can be changed
at whim into the idea of a silver mountain. Instead, when Descartes thinks about his
idea of a triangle, he is able to discover eternal properties of it that are not mutable in
this way; hence, they are not invented (CSMK III, 184).
Since, therefore, the triangle can be neither adventitious nor factitious, it must be
innate; that is to say, the mind has an innate tendency or power to form this idea from
its own purely intellectual resources when prompted to do so.
Descartes insistence that there is no similarity between the corporeal motions of our
sense organs and the ideas formed in the mind on the occasion of those motions raises a
difficulty for understanding how any ideas could be adventitious. Since none of our
ideas have any similarity to the corporeal motions of the sense organs even the idea of
motion itself it seems that no ideas can in fact have their origin in a source external to
the mind. The reason that we have an idea of heat in the presence of fire, for instance, is
not, then, because the idea is somehow transmitted by the fire. Rather, Descartes thinks
that God designed us in such a way that we form the idea of heat on the occasion of
certain corporeal motions in our sense organs (and we form other sensory ideas on the
occasion of other corporeal motions). Thus, there is a sense in which, for Descartes, all
ideas are innate, and his tripartite division between kinds of ideas becomes difficult to
maintain.
Perhaps Descartes clearest and most well-known statement of mathematics role as
paradigm appears in the Discourse on the Method:

Those long chains of very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers customarily use
to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, had given me occasion to suppose that
all the things which can fall under human knowledge are interconnected in the same
way. (CSM I, 120)
However, Descartes promotion of mathematics as a model for philosophy dates back to
his early, unfinished work, Rules for the Direction of the Mind. It is in this work that
Descartes first outlines his standards for certainty that have since come to be so closely
associated with him and with the rationalist enterprise more generally.
In Rule 2, Descartes declares that henceforth only what is certain should be valued and
counted as knowledge. This means the rejection of all merely probable reasoning, which
Descartes associates with the philosophy of the Schools. Descartes admits that according
to this criterion, only arithmetic and geometry thus far count as knowledge. But
Descartes does not conclude that only in these disciplines is it possible to attain
knowledge. According to Descartes, the reason that certainty has eluded philosophers
has as much to do with the disdain that philosophers have for the simplest truths as it
does with the subject matter. Admittedly, the objects of arithmetic and geometry are
especially pure and simple, or, as Descartes will later say, clear and distinct.
Nevertheless, certainty can be attained in philosophy as well, provided the right method
is followed.
Descartes distinguishes between two ways of achieving knowledge: through experience
and through deduction [] [W]e must note that while our experiences of things are
often deceptive, the deduction or pure inference of one thing from another can never be
performed wrongly by an intellect which is in the least degree rational [] (CSM I, 12).
This is a clear statement of Descartes methodological rationalism. Building up
knowledge through accumulated experience can only ever lead to the sort of probable
knowledge that Descartes finds lacking. Pure inference, by contrast, can never go
astray, at least when it is conducted by right reason. Of course, the truth value of a
deductive chain is only as good as the first truths, or axioms, whose truth the deductions
preserve. It is for this reason that Descartes method relies on intuition as well as
deduction. Intuition provides the first principles of a deductive system, for Descartes.
Intuition differs from deduction insofar as it is not discursive. Intuition grasps its object
in an immediate way. In its broadest outlines, Descartes method is just the use of
intuition and deduction in the orderly attainment and preservation of certainty.

In subsequent Rules, Descartes goes on to elaborate a more specific methodological

program, which involves reducing complicated matters step by step to simpler,
intuitively graspable truths, and then using those simple truths as principles from which
to deduce knowledge of more complicated matters. It is generally accepted by scholars
that this more specific methodological program reappears in a more iconic form in
the Discourse on the Method as the four rules for gaining knowledge outlined in Part 2.
There is some doubt as to the extent to which this more specific methodological
program actually plays any role in Descartes mature philosophy as it is expressed in
the Meditations and Principles (see Garber 2001, chapter 2). There can be no doubt,
however, that the broader methodological guidelines outlined above were a permanent
feature of Descartes thought.
In response to a request to cast his Meditations in the geometrical style (that is, in the
style of Euclids Elements), Descartes distinguishes between two aspects of the
geometrical style: order and method, explaining:
The order consists simply in this. The items which are put forward first must be known
entirely without the aid of what comes later; and the remaining items must be arranged
in such a way that their demonstration depends solely on what has gone before. I did try
to follow this order very carefully in my Meditations [] (CSM II, 110)
Elsewhere, Descartes contrasts this order, which he calls the order of reasons, with
another order, which he associates with scholasticism, and which he calls the order of
subject-matter (see CSMK III, 163). What Descartes understands as geometrical
order or the order of reasons is just the procedure of starting with what is most
simple, and proceeding in a step-wise, deliberate fashion to deduce consequences from
there. Descartes order is governed by what can be clearly and distinctly intuited, and by
what can be clearly and distinctly inferred from such self-evident intuitions (rather than
by a concern for organizing the discussion into neat topical categories per the order of
subject-matter)
As for method, Descartes distinguishes between analysis and synthesis. For Descartes,
analysis and synthesis represent different methods of demonstrating a conclusion or set
of conclusions. Analysis exhibits the path by which the conclusion comes to be grasped.
As such, it can be thought of as theorder of discovery or order of knowledge. Synthesis,
by contrast, wherein conclusions are deduced from a series of definitions, postulates,

and axioms, as in Euclids Elements, for instance, follows not the order in which things
are discovered, but rather the order that things bear to one another in reality. As such, it
can be thought of as the order of being. God, for example, is prior to the human mind in
the order of being (since God created the human mind), and so in the synthetic mode of
demonstration the existence of God is demonstrated before the existence of the human
mind. However, knowledge of ones own mind precedes knowledge of God, at least in
Descartes philosophy, and so in the analytic mode of demonstration the cogito is
demonstrated before the existence of God. Descartes preference is for analysis, because
he thinks that it is superior in helping the reader to discover the things for herself, and
so in bringing about the intellectual conversion which it is the Meditations goal to
effectuate in the minds of its readers. According to Descartes, while synthesis, in laying
out demonstrations systematically, is useful in preempting dissent, it is inferior in
engaging the mind of the reader.
Two primary distinctions can be made in summarizing Descartes methodology: (1) the
distinction between the order of reasons and the order of subject-matter; and (2) the
analysis/synthesis distinction. With respect to the first distinction, the great Continental
rationalists are united. All adhere to the order of reasons, as we have described it above,
rather than the order of subject-matter. Even though the rationalists disagree about how
exactly to interpret the content of the order of reasons, their common commitment to
following an order of reasons is a hallmark of their rationalism. Although there are
points of convergence with respect to the second, analysis/synthesis distinction, there
are also clear points of divergence, and this distinction can be useful in highlighting the
range of approaches the rationalists adopt to mathematical methodology.

Intelligibility and the Cartesian Circle

The most important rational principle in Descartes philosophy, the principle which
does a great deal of the work in generating its details, is the principle according to which
whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived to be true is true. This principle means that
if we can form any clear and distinct ideas, then we will be able to trust that they
accurately represent their objects, and give us certain knowledge of reality. Descartes
clear and distinct ideas doctrine is central to his conception of the worlds intelligibility,
and indeed, it is central to the rationalists conception of the worlds intelligibility more
broadly. Although Spinoza and Leibniz both work to refine understanding of what it is
to have clear and distinct ideas, they both subscribe to the view that the mind, when

directed properly, is able to accurately represent certain basic features of reality, such as
the nature of substance.
For Descartes, it cannot be taken for granted from the outset that what we clearly and
distinctly perceive to be true is in fact true. It is possible to entertain the doubt that an
all-powerful deceiving being fashioned the mind so that it is deceived even in those
things it perceives clearly and distinctly. Nevertheless, it is only possible to entertain this
doubt when we are not having clear and distinct perceptions. When we are perceiving
things clearly and distinctly, their truth is undeniable. Moreover, we can use our
capacity for clear and distinct perceptions to demonstrate that the mind was not
fashioned by an all-powerful deceiving being, but rather by an allpowerfulbenevolent being who would not fashion us so as to be deceived even when
using our minds properly. Having proved the existence of an all-powerful benevolent
being qua creator of our minds, we can no longer entertain any doubts regarding our
clear and distinct ideas even when we are not presently engaged in clear and distinct
perceptions.
Descartes legitimation of clear and distinct perception via his proof of a benevolent God
raises notorious interpretive challenges. Scholars disagree about how to resolve the
problem of the Cartesian circle. However, there is general consensus that Descartes
procedure is not, in fact, guilty of vicious, logical circularity. In order for Descartes
procedure to avoid circularity, it is generally agreed that in some sense clear and distinct
ideas need already to be legitimate before the proof of Gods existence. It is only
in another sense that Gods existence legitimates their truth. Scholars disagree on how
exactly to understand those different senses, but they generally agree that there is some
sense at least in which clear and distinct ideas are self-legitimating, or, otherwise, not in
need of legitimation.
That some ideas provide a basic standard of truth is a fundamental tenet of rationalism,
and undergirds all the other rationalist principles at work in the construction of
rationalist systems of philosophy. For the rationalists, if it cannot be taken for granted in
at least some sense from the outset that the mind is capable of discerning the difference
between truth and falsehood, then one never gets beyond skepticism.

. Descartes
Descartes deploys his clear and distinct ideas doctrine in justifying his most well-known
metaphysical position: substance dualism. The first step in Descartes demonstration of
mind-body dualism, or, in his terminology, of a real distinction (that is, a distinction
between two substances) between mind and body is to show that while it is possible to
doubt that one has a body, it is not possible to doubt that one is thinking. As Descartes
makes clear in the Principles of Philosophy, one of the chief upshots of his
famous cogito argument is the discovery of the distinction between a thinking thing and
a corporeal thing. The impossibility of doubting ones existence is not the impossibility
of doubting that one is a human being with a body with arms and legs and a head. It is
the impossibility of doubting, rather, that one doubts, perceives, dreams, imagines,
understands, wills, denies, and other modalities that Descartes attributes to the thinking
thing. It is possible to think of oneself as a thing that thinks, and to recognize that it is
impossible to doubt that one thinks, while continuing to doubt that one has a body with
arms and legs and a head. So, the cogito drives a preliminary wedge between mind and
body.
At this stage of the argument, however, Descartes has simply established that it is
possible to conceive of himself as a thinking thing without conceiving of himself as a
corporeal thing. It remains possible that, in fact, the thinking thing is identical with a
corporeal thing, in other words, that thought is somehow something a body can do;
Descartes has yet to establish that the epistemological distinction between his
knowledge of his mind and his knowledge of body that results from the hyperbolic doubt
translates to a metaphysical or ontological distinction between mind and body. The
move from the epistemological distinction to the ontological distinction proceeds via the
doctrine of clear and distinct ideas. Having established that whatever he clearly and
distinctly perceives is true, Descartes is in a position to affirm the real distinction
between mind and body.
In this life, it is never possible to clearly and distinctly perceive a mind actually separate
from a body, at least in the case of finite, created minds, because minds and bodies are
intimately unified in the composite human being. So Descartes cannot base his proof for
the real distinction of mind and body on the clear and distinct perception that mind and
body are in fact independently existing things. Rather, Descartes argument is based on
the joint claims that (1) it is possible to have a clear and distinct idea of thought apart

from extension and vice versa; and (2) whatever we can clearly and distinctly
understand is capable of being created by God exactly as we clearly and distinctly
understand it. Thus, the fact that we can clearly and distinctly understand thought apart
from extension and vice versa entails that thinking things and extended things are
really distinct (in the sense that they are distinct substances separable by God).
The foregoing argument relies on certain background assumptions which it is now
necessary to explain, in particular, Descartes conception of substance. In the Principles,
Descartes defines substance as a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no
other thing for its existence (CSM I, 210). Properly speaking, only God can be
understood to depend on no other thing, and so only God is a substance in the absolute
sense. Nevertheless, Descartes allows that, in a relative sense, created things can count
as substances too. A created thing is a substance if the only thing it relies upon for its
existence is the ordinary concurrence of God (ibid.). Only mind and body qualify as
substances in this secondary sense. Everything else is a modification or property of
minds and bodies. A second point is that, for Descartes, we do not have a direct
knowledge of substance; rather, we come to know substance by virtue of its attributes.
Thought and extension are the attributes or properties in virtue of which we come to
know thinking and corporeal substance, or mind and body. This point relies on the
application of a key rational principle, to wit, nothingness has no properties. For
Descartes, there cannot simply be the properties of thinking and extension without
these properties having something in which to inhere. Thinking and extension are not
just any properties; Descartes calls them principal attributes because they constitute
the nature of their respective substances. Other, non-essential properties, cannot be
understood without the principal attribute, but the principal attribute can be
understood without any of the non-essential properties. For example, motion cannot be
understood without extension, but extension can be understood without motion.
Descartes conception of mind and body as distinct substances includes some interesting
corollaries which result from a characteristic application of rational principles and
account for some characteristic doctrinal differences between Descartes and empiricist
philosophers. One consequence of Descartes conception of the mind as a substance
whose principal attribute is thought is that the mind must always be thinking. Since, for
Descartes, thinking is something of which the thinker is necessarily aware, Descartes
commitment to thought as an essential, and therefore, inseparable, property of the mind
raises some awkward difficulties. Arnauld, for example, raises one such difficulty in his

Objections to Descartes Meditations: presumably there is much going on in the mind of

an infant in its mothers womb of which the infant is not aware. In response to this
objection, and also in response to another obvious problem, that is, that of dreamless
sleep, Descartes insists on a distinction between being aware of or conscious of our
thoughts at the time we are thinking them, and remembering them afterwards (CSMK
III, 357). The infant is, in fact, aware of its thinking in the mothers womb, but it is
aware only of very confused sensory thoughts of pain and pleasure and heat (not, as
Descartes points out, metaphysical matters (CSMK III, 189)) which it does not
remember afterwards. Similarly, the mind is always thinking even in the most
dreamless sleep, it is just that the mind often immediately forgets much of what it had
been aware.
Descartes commitment to embracing the implications however counter-intuitive of
his substance-attribute metaphysics, puts him at odds with, for instance, Locke, who
mocks the Cartesian doctrine of the always-thinking soul in his An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding. For Locke, the question whether the soul is always thinking or
not must be decided by experience and not, as Locke says, merely by hypothesis ( An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter 1). The evidence of
dreamless sleep makes it obvious, for Locke, that the soul is not always thinking.
Because Locke ties personal identity to memory, if the soul were to think while asleep
without knowing it, the sleeping man and the waking man would be two different
persons.
Descartes commitment to the always-thinking mind is a consequence of his
commitment to a more basic rational principle. In establishing his conception of
thinking substance, Descartes reasons from the attribute of thinking to the substance of
thinking on the grounds that nothing has no properties. In this case, he reasons in the
other direction, from the substance of thinking, that is, the mind, to the property of
thinking on the converse grounds that something must have properties, and the
properties it must have are the properties that make it what it is; in the case of the mind,
that property is thought. (Leibniz found a way to maintain the integrity of the rational
principle without contradicting experience: admit that thinking need not be conscious.
This way the mind can still think in a dreamless sleep, and so avoid being without any
properties, without any problem about the recollection of awareness.)

Another consequence of Descartes substance metaphysics concerns corporeal

substance. For Descartes, we do not know corporeal substance directly, but rather
through a grasp of its principal attribute, extension. Extension qua property requires a
substance in which to inhere because of the rational principle, nothing has no
properties. This rational principle leads to another characteristic Cartesian position
regarding the material world: the denial of a vacuum. Descartes denies that space can be
empty or void. Space has the property of being extended in length, breadth, and depth,
and such properties require a substance in which to inhere. Thus, nothing, that is, a void
or vacuum, is not able to have such properties because of the rational principle, nothing
has no properties. This means that all space is filled with substance, even if it is
imperceptible. Once again, Descartes answers a debated philosophical question on the
basis of a rational principle.
Matthew Homan
Email: matthew.homan@cnu.edu
Christopher Newport University
U. S. A.

1.

Si Ren Descartes, ay isang maimpluwensiyang Pranses na pilosopo, matematiko, siyentipiko at

manunulat. Siya ang itinuturing na "Ama ng Makabagong Pilosopiya" at "Ama ng Makabagong
Matematika".Wikipedia

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Ipinanganak: Marso 31, 1596, Descartes, Indre-et-Loire, Pransiya

Namatay: Pebrero 11, 1650, Estokolmo, Sweden
Mga Magulang: Joachim Descartes, Jeanne Brochard
Mga Kapatid: Jeanne Descartes, Pierre Descartes, Anne Descartes,Joachim Descartes
Edukasyon: University of Poitiers (16141616), Prytane National Militaire

8.

Mga Aklat

Tingnan ang 15 + pa
Meditations on First Philosophy
1641
Discourse on the Method
2003
Principles of Philosophy
1644
The Passions of the Soul
1649
Rules for the Direction...
1684