Descartes was born in France, and his father was a juror in a local court in France, equivalent to a lawyer and a judge now. His mother died at the age of 1, leaving Descartes a legacy, which provided him with reliable financial security for his favorite work in the future. At the age of eight, I entered a Jesuit school, where I studied for eight years, received traditional culture education, and read classical literature, history, theology, philosophy, law, medicine, mathematics and other natural sciences. But he was disappointed with what he had learned, because in his view, the subtle arguments in the textbook were actually just ambiguous or even inconsistent theories, which would only make him doubt and get no conclusive knowledge. The only thing that comforted him was math. At the end of his studies, he made up his mind not to learn from books, but to seek advice from "world books", so he decided to avoid war, stay away from cities with frequent social activities and find an environment suitable for research. From 65438 to 0628, he moved from Paris to the Netherlands, where he began his 20-year devoted research and writing career and published many works that had a great influence on mathematics and philosophy. During his 20 years in Holland, he devoted himself to a lot of research work. 1634, he wrote On the World, which summarized his views on philosophy, mathematics and many natural science problems. 164 1 published Meditation on Going to School, and 1644 published Philosophical Principles. His works were criticized by the church before his death and banned by the Vatican Pope after his death, but this did not stop the spread of his thoughts.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Descartes' philosophy comes from his method. Descartes paid great attention to a large number of commonly accepted misconceptions and decided that in order to restore the truth, he had to start from scratch. So he began to doubt everything-everything the teacher taught him, all his noblest beliefs, all common sense concepts, even the existence of the outside world, together with his own existence-in short, everything.
This naturally leads to a question: How can we get rid of this common doubt and gain a reliable understanding of everything? Descartes made a series of creative inferences from the metaphysical point of view, which proved satisfactory results: because of his own existence (I think I am), God exists and the external world exists, which is the starting point of Descartes' theory.
5. Descartes' method has double meanings. First of all, he put the basic epistemological question "What is knowledge" at the center of his philosophical system. Early philosophers tried to describe the nature of the world, but Descartes taught us such a problem. How do I know if it's "?" Together, you can't get a satisfactory answer. Secondly, Descartes believes that we should start with doubt instead of faith (contrary to the views of St. Augustine and most medieval theologians, they believe that faith is the first). So Descartes did come to the conclusion of orthodox theology. But his readers are more concerned about his advocacy methods than his conclusions (it is not unreasonable for the church to worry that his works will be destructive).
Descartes emphasized the difference between spirit and matter in his philosophy. In this regard, he advocates complete dualism. This distinction has been put forward before, but Descartes' works have caused a philosophical discussion on this issue. The question he raised has aroused the interest of philosophers since then, but it has not been solved.
7. Descartes' view of the material universe is also very influential. He believes that the whole world-except the mind of God and human beings-is in mechanical motion, so all natural things bred can be explained by mechanical reasons. He denies the superstitious forms such as astrology and magic, and all teleological explanations of things (that is, looking for direct mechanical reasons and denying that things happen for some distant ultimate purpose). From Descartes' point of view, animals are essentially complex machines, and human bodies are also governed by the usual mechanical laws. Since then, this has become one of the basic viewpoints of modern physiology.
8. Descartes advocated scientific research and thought that applying it to practice would be beneficial to society. He believes that scientists should avoid using vague concepts and try to describe the world with mathematical equations. All this sounds modern, but Descartes himself has done observation experiments, but he never emphasized the extreme importance of experiments in scientific methods.
9. Descartes not only opened up a new path in the field of philosophy, but also was a scientist who dared to explore. He made commendable innovations in the fields of physics and physiology, especially in mathematics. He founded analytic geometry, which opened the door to modern mathematics and had epoch-making significance in the history of science.
10, Descartes' works clearly show that he is a devout believer of God. He thinks he is a good Catholic, but the authority of the church doesn't like his views, and his works are banned by Catholicism. Even in Protestant Holland (perhaps the most tolerant country in Europe at that time), Descartes was accused of being an atheist, and he was troubled by the contradiction with the authority of the church.
1 1 and 1649, Descartes accepted the generous invitation of Queen Christina Christie and came to Stockholm to be her private teacher. Descartes likes warm bedrooms and always gets up late. He was deeply anxious when he learned that the queen asked him to go to class at 5 am. Descartes was afraid that the biting cold wind at 5 am would kill him. As expected, he soon contracted pneumonia. 1650 In February, he arrived in Sweden for only four months and was killed by illness.