Who Was Descartes?

Descartes is considered one of the founders of the modern theory of knowledge and the creator of a dualistic metaphysics. This is why books about Descartes are usually written by historians of philosophy. When historians of mathematics write about Descartes, they confine themselves to interpreting a particular aspect of Descartes’ work. The mathematical aspect of Descartes’ work thus becomes a kind of ornament to the work of a thinker whose life struggle occurred in the field of philosophy. Nevertheless, if we want to understand Descartes, we must remember that he was, perhaps, one of the most influential mathematicians of all time, someone like Euclid, Newton, Euler, Cantor, Frege, Hilbert or Turing. Therefore, the task of anyone who wants to deal seriously with Descartes is at least once to engage in a meditation in which everything previously learned about Descartes is discarded in an effort to come to a clear idea of the nature of his mathematical talent.