![]() 28, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, 1990-1991ĭiscourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology (translated by Paul Olscamp), Bobbs-Merill, Indianapolis, 1965 revised edition, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 2001 The Geometry of Rene Descartes (translated by David Eugene Smith and Marcia Latham), first published by Open Court in 1925 and by Dover in 1954ĭiscourse on the Method, …, The Geometry, in Great Books of the Western World (2 nd edition), vol. However, AB is the unit length therefore BD x BC = BE. Then when DE is constructed parallel to AC, it is found that BD x BC = AB x BE. On of the Latin edition of Descartes’ Geometry, the author demonstrated, in the uppermost illustration, the procedure for obtaining the product of two given line segments, BD and BC. Now the message of Descartes’ Geometry was available to a large reading audience, and it became an influential work, spurring on the development of analytic geometry.įigure 3. Van Schooten published a second edition in 1659, providing even more explanation and commentary. Descartes’ friend and colleague, Florimond de Beaune (1601–1652), contributed an introduction to this edition. In 1649, Frans van Schooten (1615–1660), a Dutch mathematician, published a Latin translation of Descartes’ Geometry, adding his own clarifying explanations and commentaries. Title page of van Schooten’s 1659 Latin edition of Descartes’ Geometry It was written in French, not the language of scholarly communication at the time, and Descartes' writing style was often obscure in its meaning.įigure 2. But Descartes’ La géométrie was difficult to understand and follow. After defining a unit length, Descartes demonstrated procedures for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing line segments and for graphically determining roots of equations. Descartes boasted in his introduction that “Any problem in geometry can easily be reduced to such terms that a knowledge of the length of certain straight lines is sufficient for construction." He then proceeded to show how arithmetic, algebra, and geometry could be combined to solve problems. Frontispiece of 1659 Latin edition of Descartes’ Geometry showing a portrait of the author, René DescartesĪpproximately 100 pages in length, The Geometry was not a large work, but it promised a new approach in mathematical thinking. The last of these, The Geometry, was Descartes’ only published mathematical work.įigure 1. ![]() ![]() La methodé contained three appendices: La dioptrique, Les météories, and La géométrie. In 1637, the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650) published his Discours de la methodé (see the title page) in which he explained his rationalist approach to the interpretation of nature. ![]()
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