- Discourse on the Method
I think, therefore I am.
René DescartesIn order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.
René Descartes (1644), Principles of Philosophy- René Descartes (1596–1650), 1647 - 1648 Frans Hals | SMK Open (open.smk.dk)
- René Descartes (Wikipedia)
René Descartes (/deɪˈkɑːrt/ or UK: /ˈdeɪkɑːrt/; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt]; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes considered himself a devout Catholic.
- Several versions of Hals’ portrait of Descartes are known, though Hals has painted only one of them and the rest are copies. One of those copies hangs in the Louvre. For a long time, the Louvre thought that they owned the original portrait by Hals, but nowadays the majority of art experts believes that the original is in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there."
René Descartes, Le Discours de la Méthode (1637)
