DESCARTES

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• DESCARTES (noun)
  The noun DESCARTES has 1 sense:

1. French philosopher and mathematician; developed dualistic theory of mind and matter; introduced the use of coordinates to locate a point in two or three dimensions (1596-1650)

  Familiarity information: DESCARTES used as a noun is very rare.

• DESCARTES (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

French philosopher and mathematician; developed dualistic theory of mind and matter; introduced the use of coordinates to locate a point in two or three dimensions (1596-1650)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Descartes; Rene Descartes

Instance hypernyms:

mathematician (a person skilled in mathematics)

philosopher (a specialist in philosophy)

Derivation:

Cartesian (of or relating to Rene Descartes or his works)

 Context examples 

I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with whom I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

This great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be exploded.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)