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Descartes' rule of signs. In mathematics, Descartes' rule of signs, described by René Descartes in his La Géométrie, counts the roots of a polynomial by examining sign changes in its coefficients. The number of positive real roots is at most the number of sign changes in the sequence of polynomial's coefficients (omitting zero coefficients ...
t. e. René Descartes (/ deɪˈkɑːrt / day-KART or UK: / ˈdeɪkɑːrt / DAY-kart; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt] ⓘ; [note 3][11] 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) [12][13]: 58 was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was paramount ...
Atomism. Atomism (from Greek ἄτομον, atomon, i.e. "uncuttable, indivisible") [1][2][3] is a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms. References to the concept of atomism and its atoms appeared in both ancient Greek and ancient Indian philosophical traditions.
Corpuscular theory of light. In optics, the corpuscular theory of light states that light is made up of small discrete particles called "corpuscles" (little particles) which travel in a straight line with a finite velocity and possess impetus. This was based on an alternate description of atomism of the time period.
The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, as distinct from the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the ...
The vortex theory of the atom was a 19th-century attempt by William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) to explain why the atoms recently discovered by chemists came in only relatively few varieties but in very great numbers of each kind. Based on the idea of stable, knotted vortices in the ether or aether, it contributed an important mathematical legacy.
René Descartes, in De homine (1662), claimed that non-human animals could be explained reductively as automata; meaning essentially as more mechanically complex versions of this Digesting Duck. Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of simpler or ...
In the Netherlands, where Descartes had lived for a long time, Cartesianism was a doctrine popular mainly among university professors and lecturers.In Germany the influence of this doctrine was not relevant and followers of Cartesianism in the German-speaking border regions between these countries (e.g., the iatromathematician Yvo Gaukes from East Frisia) frequently chose to publish their ...