Descartes, René (1596–1650)

Abstract

René Descartes is known as the father of modern philosophy. He is also a primary founder of modern mechanistic science, the inventor of analytic geometry that led to the calculus, and a pioneer in vivisection and the psychology of the emotions. His work constitutes a definitive break with the Aristotelian Scholasticism of passive matter and active form, and is foundational to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. His metaphysics consisting of two substances – immaterial mind whose essence is active thinking and material body whose essence is passive extension – has set the foundations and agenda for philosophy and science ever since, from the dualism of mind and body to the monisms of idealism (only the mental exists) and materialism (only bodies exist). The most recent manifestation of the problems set by Descartes is materialist neurophysiology, according to which the mental realm of ideas and sensations is either reduced to material activities in the brain or elevated to epiphenomena that have no causal effect in the deterministic material world.