The Geometry of René Descartes
by René Descartes
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The great work that founded analytical geometry. Included here is the original French text, Descartes' own diagrams, together with the definitive Smith-Latham translation. "The greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences." -- John Stuart Mill.Tags
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Voracious_Reader A firm basis in Euclid and conics will help with understanding Descartes work.
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Book I: discusses construction of certain geometric figures using instruments, compares basic elements of geometry to basic operations in arithmetic; Book II: proves that the set of curved figures described by the range of 3rd order equations is limited to the known set of surfaces (circle, ellipse, hyperbola, parabola); also makes references to his own Dioptrique; Book III: "But it is not my purpose to write a large book. I am trying rather to include much in a few words.... I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also as to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave others the pleasure of discovery."
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Best known for the quote from his Meditations de prima philosophia, or Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), "I think therefore I am," philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes also devoted much of his time to the studies of medicine, anatomy and meteorology. Part of his Discourse on the Method for Rightly Conducting One's Reason and show more Searching for the Truth in the Sciences (1637) became the foundation for analytic geometry. Descartes is also credited with designing a machine to grind hyperbolic lenses, as part of his interest in optics. Rene Descartes was born in 1596 in La Haye, France. He began his schooling at a Jesuit college before going to Paris to study mathematics and to Poitiers in 1616 to study law. He served in both the Dutch and Bavarian military and settled in Holland in 1629. In 1649, he moved to Stockholm to be a philosophy tutor to Queen Christina of Sweden. He died there in 1650. Because of his general fame and philosophic study of the existence of God, some devout Catholics, thinking he would be canonized a saint, collected relics from his body as it was being transported to France for burial. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- The Geometry of René Descartes
- Original title
- La Geometrie
- Original publication date
- 1637
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 290
- Popularity
- 110,544
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.45)
- Languages
- 5 — English, French, German, Latin, Polish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 4
