Publisher's Synopsis
A Note on Descartes' life and works. Rene Descartes, the father of modern western philosophy was born in Touraine on 31st March, in the year 1696. His background reveals his father as a provincial government official as well as a landholder. He lost his mother, only at the age of one year. Descartes started his education at the leading Jesuit Academy, La Fleche, from where he acquired a sound knowledge, in traditional Aristotelian scholastic philosophy and developed a deep admiration for clarity and distinctness in acquiring any kind of knowledge. Later, he pursued law at the university of Poitiers. Initially, after completing his study, in the year 1616, he travelled extensively to Europe as a volunteer, at first in Dutch and later in the Bavarian army. In the year 1618, he developed a friendship with a Dutch scientist, Issac Beeckman, under whose guidance and influence he started to do a good deal of creative work in Physics and Mathematics. In 1619, he produced a complete work on universal science of nature according to modern mathematical and mechanical principles. It seems that a dramatic series of dreams on the evening of 10th November,
