Descartes and some scientific contributions

Abstract

In this article we will discuss the importance of René Descartes to Modern Science. Although he has contributed to the development of analytic geometry, the coordinate plane and the calculus theory, his contributions are not only limited to mathematics evolution. Newton, Pascal, Leibniz, Malebranche and Kant, the latest a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, were influenced by him. Through his ambitious project of Mathesis Universalis, he could also contribute to the modern scientific method. This method, being recognized as methodical doubt, which is the way used for his conquests, exposed in Dioptrics, Meteors and Geometry. The project presented in the work entitled Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, it is considered by important philosophers of science such as Butterfield (1959)¹⁰ and Downs (1969)⁴ as being very relevant to the modern intellectual evolution. Even Auguste Comte comes to revere such philosopher and Einstein (1981),²⁵ who had a group of studies in this philosophical area, does the same. Descartes stands as a great thinker and as a large modern scientific anchor, not only for having systematized and having presented the importance of the method of a science understood as necessary and universal, but also especially because he demonstrated such procedure to be useful and in favor of modern technical and having signed up to our days.