BACKROUND INFORMATION
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“Father of modern philosophy”
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Promoting mechanistic sciences
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Descartes was a philosopher and scientist
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Came from a fairly rich family
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Mainly doctors and lawyers
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Oldest brother; Pierre, died soon after birth
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His mother passed away after renes birth
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The three surviving children were raised by their grandmother and their father remarried
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From france originally
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He studied several subjects
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Studied “mathematical arts” as well as liberal arts at La fleche
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1615-16 he earned a degree in law at the university of poiters
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He may have suffered (1614-15) from a nervous breakdown although little is known about the years between 1614-1618
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He met isaac Beeckman in the netherlands
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Very big influence
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Reinvigorated descartes love of science and philosophy
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While in the army of maximilian of bavaria he dreamt of a new method of scientific inquiry
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inspired , he started working on rules for the direction of the mind.
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He began contact with father marin Mersenne
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He had a daughter
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The mother was a maid who used to clean his house
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His daughter died of a fever at the age of five
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Descartes continued to work on books and completed textbook versions of some of his publications
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He moved to the netherlands and then to sweden (upon invitation of the queen)
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He published Meditations
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This caused a lot of controversy
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He was charged with opposing aristotle and the christian faith
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This was all due to a misunderstanding
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He ended up publishing two letters explaining the misunderstanding
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1639-42
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He moved to sweden and died there of pneumonia 1650
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His work influenced scientific philosophy
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Boosted the idea of the new scientific problems
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