Descartes, René
Syllabification: (Des·cartes, René)
Pronunciation: /dāˈkärt/
Definition of Descartes, René
- (1596–1650), French philosopher, mathematician, and man of science. He concluded that everything was open to doubt except conscious experience and existence as a necessary condition of this: “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am). In mathematics, he developed the use of coordinates to locate a point in two or three dimensions.