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Descartes founded a school of rationalist philosophy called Cartesianism.  After being educated in [[France]] and spending time in the military service from 1618 to 1619, he spent most of his creative life in [[Holland]] (1625 - 1649) before entering the service of Queen Christiana of Sweden shortly before his death.<ref>The New American Desk Encyclopedia, Penguin Group, 1989</ref>

Descartes founded a school of rationalist philosophy called Cartesianism.  After being educated in [[France]] and spending time in the military service from 1618 to 1619, he spent most of his creative life in [[Holland]] (1625 - 1649) before entering the service of Queen Christiana of Sweden shortly before his death.<ref>The New American Desk Encyclopedia, Penguin Group, 1989</ref>

To write his famous ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', Descartes locked himself in a room and thought about existence, arriving at the conclusion that he, as a thinking person, must exist, because even if existence is a delusion, there must be someone to be deluded. However, he was still not sure that the things he perceived exist as well. He used a variant of [[Anselm]]'s proof of the existence of [[God]] to decide that perhaps he wasn't deluded, and perhaps things did exist after all. He thought the [[soul]] lived in the pineal gland, and when someone does something, it's just an accident because the brain doesn't control the body, God does. This "god-robot" theory of consciousness got him into arguments with [[Hobbes]]. He also used God and a demon in attempts to justify his sense-perceptions and why they were perceived to be as they seemed rather than as something different, which is related to Berkeley's [[idealism]] in the sense that it is the mind which has the ideas of objects, but conforms to the 'two-world' theory of [[John Locke]].

To write his famous ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', Descartes locked himself in a room and thought about existence, arriving at the conclusion that he, as a thinking person, must exist, because even if existence is a delusion, there must be someone to be deluded. However, he was still not sure that the things he perceived exist as well. He used a variant of [[Anselm]]'s proof of the existence of [[God]] to decide that perhaps he wasn't deluded, and perhaps things did exist after all. He thought the [[soul]] lived in the pineal gland, and when someone does something, it's just an accident because the brain doesn't control the body, God does. He also used God and a demon in attempts to justify his sense-perceptions and why they were perceived to be as they seemed rather than as something different, which is related to Berkeley's [[idealism]] in the sense that it is the mind which has the ideas of objects, but conforms to the 'two-world' theory of [[John Locke]].

Descartes' most widely read work is his Discourse on Method (in French, "Discours de la methode"), published in 1637. There Descartes sets forth four rules for discovering knowledge:

Descartes' most widely read work is his Discourse on Method (in French, "Discours de la methode"), published in 1637. There Descartes sets forth four rules for discovering knowledge: