by Domnall Óg
Home >> I Think. Therefore, I am.
Descartes asked ’ How can I know what really exists?’ He then concluded that if he could think then he must exist because SOMEBODY must be having the thoughts. So, ‘cogito ergo sum’ or ’ I think. Therefore, I am’ became his most memorable contribution to the world of ideas. This was an immense contribution. Up until then, philosophy was based on perception but this new idea was based on deduction.
He also offered an ontological argument of the benevolence of God. Nevertheless in 1663, the Pope banned his works in the Index of Prohibited Books.
He also invented Cartesian Co-ordinates to express three dimensional objects by their x, y and z axes. His work directly lead to the invention of calculus and he invented the notation system of superscript which allowed Einstein to express the powers of exponents as we can see in one of the most famous equation of history : e=mc2
Released under the following licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeriv
You are free to copy, distribute and display the contents of this article but you must give credit to and mention the original author. You are not allowed to use these contents for commercial purposes, and you may not modify them to make any derivative works.
For full licence description, go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.1/es/deed.en
Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2009-02-11 00:01:00 +0100
Copyright (C) ITT (http://www.itt.es) and Planet Lingua (http://www.lingua.es)
We have more weekly letters by Domnall
Poll for this weekly letter
Philosophy is important.
Licencing
You are free to copy, distribute and display the contents of this article but you must give credit to and mention the original author. You are not allowed to use these contents for commercial purposes, and you may not modify them to make any derivative works.
(click the above link for more information)
No comments on this letter (why not add one?)