Unsatisfied with scholastic philosophy and troubled by skepticism of the sort expounded by Montaigne, Descartes soon conceived a comprehensive plan for applying mathematical methods in order to achieve perfect certainty in human knowledge. During a twenty-year period of secluded life in Holland, he produced the body of work that secured his philosophical reputation. Descartes finally presented (in French) his rationalist vision of the progress of human knowledge in the Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa Raison et chercher la Vérité dans les Sciences (Discourse on Method) (1637).
Pierre de Fermat, French Mathematician
Pierre de Fermat was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus. In...
