Rene Descartes Biography

Rene Descartes is born at La Haye en Touraine to Joachim Descartes and Jeanne Brochard.

Descartes enters the Jesuit College Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Fleche.

Descartes completes his studies at La Fleche after receiving a broad Jesuit education.

Descartes enters the University of Poitiers to study canon and civil law.

Descartes receives degrees in canon and civil law from the University of Poitiers.

Descartes joins the forces of Prince Maurice of Nassau while living at Breda.

Descartes lived in Breda while serving as a military volunteer in Prince Maurice's forces.

Descartes writes the Compendium of Music for Beeckman, applying mathematical ratios to harmony.

Descartes meets Isaac Beeckman, who renews his interest in mathematics and natural philosophy.

Descartes met Isaac Beeckman in Breda and renewed his commitment to mathematical investigation.

Descartes completed a short treatise explaining musical consonance through numerical relationships.

Descartes leaves military service and begins several years of travel through Europe.

Descartes wrote to Beeckman about mathematical methods and problems developed during their Breda collaboration.

Descartes writes to Beeckman about mathematical problems later developed in The Geometry.

Descartes experiences celebrated dreams that he interprets as revealing a unified method of knowledge.

Descartes sells inherited property, securing income that supports his independent studies.

Descartes establishes contact with Marin Mersenne, who circulates his ideas among European scholars.

Descartes leaves Paris and settles in the Netherlands to pursue research with greater privacy.

Descartes develops an unfinished work setting out rules for orderly and reliable reasoning.

Descartes develops studies of vision, lenses and light that later appear in The Dioptrics.

Descartes works in Amsterdam on The World, a mechanistic account of nature and cosmology.

Descartes moves to Deventer and discusses his physics with the scholar Henry Reneri.

Descartes develops a mechanistic account of human physiology in the Treatise on Man.

Descartes prepares The World for publication as a comprehensive statement of his natural philosophy.

Descartes withholds The World after learning that Galileo has been condemned for supporting heliocentrism.

Descartes becomes the father of Francine, whose mother is Helene Jans.

Henry Reneri begins teaching ideas derived from Descartes's natural philosophy at Utrecht.

Descartes moves to Leiden while arranging publication of the Discourse on the Method.

Establishes analytic geometry through coordinates and symbolic algebra.

Publishes a method connecting algebraic equations with geometric curves.

Descartes connects algebra and geometry in ways that strongly influence later mathematical analysis.

Descartes presents thought itself as evidence of the thinker's existence.

Descartes publishes the Discourse on the Method in French with three accompanying scientific essays.

Descartes gives a mathematical treatment of refraction in his published work on optics.

The Discourse presents disciplined doubt as a means of seeking secure foundations for knowledge.

The Dioptrics presents Descartes's account of light, vision, lenses and refraction.

The Geometry demonstrates how algebraic equations can be used to solve geometrical problems.

The Meteorology applies mechanical explanations to rainbows, clouds, winds and other atmospheric phenomena.

Descartes begins composing the Meditations on First Philosophy as a foundation for the sciences.

Descartes returns to Leiden to supervise preparation of the Meditations for publication.

Descartes's daughter Francine dies during childhood, causing him profound personal grief.

Descartes uses systematic doubt to question beliefs derived from sensation and ordinary experience.

Descartes presents metaphysical arguments intended to secure the possibility of reliable scientific knowledge.

The first Latin edition of the Meditations on First Philosophy is published in Paris.

The Meditations distinguishes thinking mind from extended matter and reshapes later metaphysical debate.

Descartes argues that the certainty of thinking establishes the existence of the thinking self.

A second edition adds further objections and Descartes's replies to his philosophical critics.

The Utrecht authorities restrict public teaching of Cartesian philosophy amid theological controversy.

Descartes begins corresponding with Princess Elisabeth about mind-body interaction, ethics and the passions.

Descartes dedicates the Principles of Philosophy to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia.

Descartes publishes the Principles of Philosophy as a systematic presentation of metaphysics and natural philosophy.

Descartes completes a working draft explaining emotions through the union of mind and body.

Descartes publishes a defence of his philosophy against positions associated with Henricus Regius.

Descartes accepts Queen Christina's invitation and travels to Stockholm to join her court.

Descartes publishes The Passions of the Soul, his major study of emotion and moral psychology.

Rene Descartes dies in Stockholm after a severe respiratory illness, aged fifty-three.

The unfinished Rules for the Direction of the Mind is published long after Descartes's death.

Descartes's unfinished Rules for the Direction of the Mind appears in a posthumous collection.