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René Descartes ( / deɪˈkɑːrt / day-KART or UK: / ˈdeɪkɑːrt / DAY-kart; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt] ⓘ; [note 3] [11] 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) [12] [13] [14] : 58 was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was ...
The World, also called Treatise on the Light ( French title: Traité du monde et de la lumière ), is a book by René Descartes (1596–1650). Written between 1629 and 1633, it contains a nearly complete version of his philosophy, from method, to metaphysics, to physics and biology . Descartes espoused mechanical philosophy, a form of natural ...
Snell's law (also known as the Snell–Descartes law, the ibn-Sahl law, [1] and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air.
Mind–body problem. René Descartes ' illustration of mind–body dualism. Descartes believed inputs were passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit. The mind–body problem is a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and ...
In geometry, Descartes' theorem states that for every four kissing, or mutually tangent, circles, the radii of the circles satisfy a certain quadratic equation. By solving this equation, one can construct a fourth circle tangent to three given, mutually tangent circles. The theorem is named after René Descartes, who stated it in 1643.
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin philosophia naturalis) is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science . From the ancient world (at least since Aristotle) until the 19th century, natural philosophy was the common term for the study ...
Fermat's principle, also known as the principle of least time, is the link between ray optics and wave optics. Fermat's principle states that the path taken by a ray between two given points is the path that can be traveled in the least time. First proposed by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1662, as a means of explaining the ...
Rainbow. A colorful rainbow and ring-billed gull. A rainbow is an optical phenomenon caused by refraction, internal reflection and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a continuous spectrum of light appearing in the sky. [1] The rainbow takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. [2]