Rene Descartes (Rene Descartes) was born in 1596 in a gentleman family in the town of Lahe (now called Lahe-Descartes) at the junction of the provinces of Turan and Boisdou in western France. His father was a Brittany. Provincial Senator.When he was one year old, his mother died while giving birth to the fifth child, and his father married a woman from the province of Brittany. The old couple lived in Rennes in the province of Brittany for a long time.René Descartes lost his mother's love and father's care since he was a child. This may be one of the reasons why he was withdrawn by nature. In addition to his frail body, it had a profound impact on his life.Even so, he became the founder of modern European philosophy (Bacon in England can be said to be the herald of modern European philosophy, although this view is controversial to some people), and the pride of the French, of course, is due to his Because of his hard work and studious all his life, but most importantly, I think it is inseparable from the fact that he walked out of his study and went to the society to accept the influence of the times when he was young.

We know that the situation in Western Europe in the seventeenth century was in an era when the feudal social system was beginning to collapse, and the emerging capitalist social system was emerging, and modern science was on the rise. Apocalypse theology could no longer explain the achievements of natural science, and monopolized the entire medieval school of thought. Philosophy has become a loathsome thing.All of these had a huge impact on the young Descartes. When he was eight years old (1604), he was sent to Lavrai School, one of the most famous schools in Europe at that time, founded by King Henry IV of France and run by Jesuit priests, where he studied Latin, Greek, Poetics, physics, mathematics, logic, ethics, metaphysics, and more.The education given to him by the Jesuit priests was comprehensive and advanced at the time, which laid a solid foundation for his lifelong academic career.Of course, in terms of religious education, the Jesuit priests never let him down, and he always regarded himself as a faithful Catholic throughout his life. Even after he lived in the Protestant country Netherlands for a long time, he still Proudly proclaiming "I'm a Catholic with French blood in my veins".

Descartes was awarded the degree of Master of Laws in 1616.Although he has learned a lot of book knowledge, he is not satisfied. He wants to go out and learn "the big book of the world".By chance, it coincided with the outbreak of a war against Spanish colonial rule by several provinces in the northern Netherlands (that is, the Netherlands). France was an ally of the Netherlands, and the allied army was led by Prince Maurice de Nassau. In 1618, the 22-year-old Descartes, like many aristocratic youths at the time, took a servant and went to the Netherlands at his own expense to join the army and became an officer. In 1619, Descartes broke away from the army of the Protestant Denassau, and participated in the war against the King of Bohemia by the Catholic Legion of the Duke of Bavaria.He didn't seem to have fought in the field, but he took the opportunity of joining the army to travel to many places.After leaving the army, he traveled around again, almost all of Germany including Czechoslovakia at that time.He has been to Hungary, Austria, Bohemia, Denmark, England, and later to Switzerland, Italy, and finally settled in the Netherlands.During his travels, he met many famous scientists, who gave him a lot of inspiration and help.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, although Europe was still under totalitarian feudal rule, and scholasticism still controlled philosophical thought, natural science had initially broken free from the shackles of religion and gradually embarked on the road to development. It was created and gradually popularized in terms of use.Galileo built an astronomical telescope in 1611, and for the first time saw many celestial images previously invisible to the naked eye, further confirming Copernicus' heliocentric theory.Kepler discovered three laws of planetary motion.Harvey created the theory of blood circulation, which greatly advanced medicine, anatomy and physiology.Most of Descartes' friends are scientists, such as Beeckman and Mersenne are famous physicists and mathematicians, and Huyghens is a mathematician and physicist. ,astronomer.Descartes himself has studied physics, optics, astronomy, mechanics, medicine, anatomy, etc., and is most famous for his achievements in mathematics. It is he who used algebra to geometry and invented analytic geometry.From 1629 to 1633, he summarized the results of his natural science research in these years and began to write "On the World" (including "On Light" and "On Man"), in which he intends to explain step by step All phenomena in nature, such as the formation of planets, weight, tides, the human body, etc.But in 1633, Galileo was imprisoned by the Inquisition for promoting Copernicus' heliocentric theory and advocating that the earth revolves around the sun, and Descartes was frightened.Finally, he did not dare to publish "On the World", and it was not published until twenty-seven years after Descartes' death. In 1648 he wrote a description of the human body, which was published in 1664 by his friend Claire Israel under the title On the Formation of the Fetus. "On Man" and "On the Formation of the fetus" are both books on physiology.In these two books, he completely regards the human body as a machine. The internal organs of a person are like the gears and springs in a clock. The nerves are transmitted to the brain, and the "animal spirit" (also called "animal soul") is informed in the pineal gland, and the animal spirit issues orders to deal with it.

At this point Descartes is undoubtedly the forerunner of the French eighteenth-century materialist Ramétri, who wrote "Man is a Machine". Descartes’ era was the era when Augustine’s scholastic philosophy dominated the academic world. Although Augustine’s philosophy opposed Aristotelian philosophy, it also opposed Aquinas’ philosophy, but in any case, Catholic theology is incompatible with science. compatible.Young Descartes was impressed by the frenetic celebrations held at Lafray College for Galileo's invention of the telescope.Through the astronomical telescope, we can see that the moon is not as flat as the naked eye can see, but uneven mountains and rivers. At the same time, we can also see the satellites of Jupiter, sunspots, and a large number of celestial bodies that have never been seen before.This made the young Descartes rejoice.However, in the past, it was believed that the sky above tens of feet was the heaven where God resides. Now that the earth revolves around the sun, the world is turned upside down. Where are heaven and hell?Where is the personal God who rewards good and punishes evil?Do you advocate atheism?no. Galileo's severe punishment by the Inquisition in 1633 was no different from giving Descartes a serious warning.On July 22 of that year, he wrote to his close friend, Father Mercena, that this event "shocked me so much that I almost decided to burn all my manuscripts, or not to show them to anyone.  … ... I admit that if [the earth moves] is false, so are all the foundations of my philosophy, as they are evidently proved by it, and it is closely connected with my thesis, Take it away and the rest will be in disgrace." Descartes had made up his mind not to publish any more papers; but at the urging of Melcena and other friends he began writing Refractive Optics, Atmospheric Optics in 1635. "Phenomena" and "Geometry", finished in December 1636. Due to the urging of the publisher, a preface was hastily written. method, plus refraction, atmospheric phenomena, and geometry, which are experiments in this method".Because the title of the book is too long, it was shortened to "Talking on Methods" as the preface of the three essays, which was published in 1637.Melsena once advised him to use "Traite" as the title of the book, but Descartes said that the book was just an "Avis" (Avis) and did not dare to call it "Traite", so he finally decided to name it "Discours". .

Descartes settled in Holland in 1628.Before he went to Holland, he had written "Rules for the Guiding Spirit" ("Rules" for short) in Latin.The book was not published until fifty-one years after his death (1701). In 1629 he wrote a pamphlet on metaphysics, which he interrupted before finishing. From November 1639 to March 1640, he wrote one of his major philosophical works "Meditations on First Philosophy, Arguing for the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul" in Latin, but there is no mention of the immortality of the soul in the book , only speaking of the difference between the soul and the body.Melsena persuaded him to change the title of the book, but Descartes did not agree, thinking that this formulation would attract the attention of the Paris Seminary. It was not until the second edition in 1642 that "the soul is immortal" was changed to "the distinction between soul and body". ".After the book was completed, he received six groups of rebuttals from philosophers and theologians, and Descartes responded one by one.Six Meditations and six groups of Rebuttals and Answers were published in 1641.According to Descartes himself, although this book is about metaphysics, all his physical principles are included.

In 1642, Descartes began to use the content of his unpublished "On the World" to write a philosophical encyclopedia dedicated to Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the overthrown King Frederick of Bohemia, published in Latin in 1644 , titled Principles of Philosophy, partly his own and partly translated by others, was published in 1647 in a French translation which he reviewed. "Principles of Philosophy" was originally intended to include six parts: "Principles of Knowledge" (i.e., Principles of Metaphysics), "Principles of Physical Things" (i.e., Principles of Physics), "Heaven", "Earth", "Plant and Animals", In "People", only the first four parts were written in the end, and the last two parts were not written due to lack of materials.

In "Principles of Philosophy", Descartes compares all human knowledge to a tree. The root of the tree is metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches are various sciences.Therefore, contrary to the practice of scholastic philosophy, he first talked about metaphysics. In 1649, "On the Passions of the Soul" was published, dedicated to Princess Elizabeth.This is his last book. At this time, Descartes' philosophical theory had already caused a sensation, but it was finally banned because it was inconsistent with the religious philosophy of the Christian Church, and his books were also banned by the Holy See.Descartes settled in the Netherlands for 21 years, on the one hand for seclusion, but also for refuge.He has moved twenty-four times in Holland and changed thirteen cities, and all his correspondence was forwarded by his friend Melsena in Paris.Bruno's ending and what happened to Galileo in his later years frightened him, because he was not only an opponent of Catholicism in science, but also a rebel in philosophy, the scholastic philosophy used by the church.

Due to repeated invitations from the Queen of Sweden Christina (then twenty years old), Descartes boarded a boat to Sweden on September 1, 1649, and was warmly received by Christina; Violating his habit of going to bed early in the morning, and the Swedish winter climate was too cold, he caught a cold, unfortunately fell ill, and died of pneumonia on February 11, 1650, at the age of fifty-four. translator