Questions tagged [descartes]

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
2 votes
2 answers
169 views

Was René Descartes an arrogant man?

In a Youtube Video by author AnotherRoof, the author described Descartes as an "arrogant" person who is right, quoting the sentence "I think, therefore I am". However when I am ...
cr001's user avatar
  • 159
0 votes
0 answers
202 views

Was not chess notation an earlier sort of Cartesian Coordinates?

I realize modern algebraic notation is fairly new but for as long as there have been recorded chess games, every square I think was referred to using two coordinates, in old descriptive notation a ...
releseabe's user avatar
  • 1,111
4 votes
1 answer
636 views

Exact source that Descartes had observed that $V-E+F=2$ for planar graphs

In recent literature, I have read that René Descartes had observed that $V-E+F=2$ for planar graphs. Is there any image of that page of book or article of Descartes? Seeing real page that contains the ...
C.F.G's user avatar
  • 171
0 votes
0 answers
74 views

Which was the first coordinate system? And why was it used?

I've been researching the motivation behind the invention of the Cartesian Co-ordinate system. But I was wondering, which coordinate system was the first to be invented? Was it the Spherical Co-...
user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
113 views

Fourth powers and quartic equations before Descartes

How did mathematicians interpret quartic equations and fourth powers before Descartes propose to perform elementary arithmetic on line segments? I ask this because it seems strange to me that ...
Renan Mezabarba's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
326 views

Did Descartes leave solving the quintic as an exercise to his readers?

In this document by Jim Brown it is claimed (on Section 3, pg 5) that: [Descartes] believed that all polynomials of degree $>4$ could be solved with the same methods as had been applied to the ...
ZKG's user avatar
  • 211
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

Historically, how did René Descartes's works affect the invention of calculus?

When the "Cartesian coordinate system" was discovered By René Descartes, Algebra and Geometry were connected. How exactly did that affect Newton and Leibniz in the invention of what we know ...
Ammar Bamhdi's user avatar
20 votes
1 answer
4k views

Why did Rene Descartes go to Sweden?

The year before he died, mathematician Rene Descartes accepted an invitation to tutor the brilliant 19-year old Queen Christina of Sweden (some thirty years younger). He apparently died from the ...
Tom Au's user avatar
  • 2,154