Definition of Descartes, René in English:

proper noun

• (1596–1650), French philosopher, mathematician, and man of science.

Aiming to reach totally secure foundations for knowledge, Descartes concluded that everything was open to doubt except his own conscious experience, and his existence as a necessary condition of this: ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am). From this certainty he developed a dualistic theory regarding mind and matter as separate though interacting. In mathematics Descartes developed the use of coordinates to locate a point in two or three dimensions