BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON RENÉ DESCARTES

René Descartes, known in Latin as Cartesius original: "Cartesius", was born in 1596 at La Haye Now known as Descartes, Indre-et-Loire, in honor of the philosopher., near Loches (Indre-et-Loire); the son of a counselor to the parliament of Rennes, he completed his studies at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, where he distinguished himself through a precocious talent for philosophy and the exact sciences. In 1617, after a somewhat stormy youth, yielding to the requests of his father, he took up the profession of arms and served for four years in the army of the Duke of Nassau and that of the Duke of Bavaria.

Descartes subsequently traveled through Germany, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; he then went to Rome and returned to Paris in 1626. After assisting at the siege of La Rochelle A major military engagement between French royal forces and the Huguenots., he renounced his military career and, resolved to devote himself entirely to meditation, he withdrew to Holland. There he lived in seclusion, residing by turns in Amsterdam, The Hague, Leiden, and the "delightful solitude" of Egmont.

In 1637, he published in Leiden his immortal Discourse on the Method, in which he established the foundations of a new philosophy based upon methodical doubt. In 1641, his book of Meditations appeared, which was followed, in 1644, by the Principles of Philosophy. He had worked on a treatise on light, based on the system of Copernicus The heliocentric model placing the sun at the center of the universe., which he abandoned upon hearing news of the condemnation of Galileo—not out of a conviction that he was in error, but out of considerations of prudence. His orthodoxy, however, was not beyond reproach; for in 1666, at the time of the transfer of his remains to the Church of Sainte-Geneviève The site of the current Panthéon in Paris., a superior order forbade Father Lallemand from delivering his funeral oration. The Discourse on the Method, published alongside the Geometry, the Dioptrics, and the Meteors, drew upon its author the opposition of Catholic and Protestant theologians; the latter proved themselves no less relent- The text breaks off here; the catchword "achar-" refers to "acharnés," meaning "relentless" or "fierce."