Linked from

The 65 pages that link to René Descartes, each with the reason it gives.

• Isaac NewtonRelated: Newton’s account of nature developed amid debate with Cartesian mechanics.

• John LockeCompared with: Locke challenges the rationalist account associated with Descartes by tracing ideas to experience.

• Newton's laws of motionRelated: His ideas formed part of the intellectual setting Newton revised and systematized.

• Scientific RevolutionBroader topic: His mechanical philosophy offered a powerful alternative framework for explaining natural phenomena.

• Dutch RepublicRelated: His residence there is the defining connection between this republic and the concept's gloss.

• EpistemologyRelated: His doubt about perception and the external world set a lasting skeptical challenge.

• RationalismBroader topic: His project made reason a route to certainty despite doubt about the senses.

• Mind–body problemRelated: His account made the distinction between thinking mind and extended matter a defining puzzle.

• Conic sectionRelated: Coordinate methods made conic sections describable through algebraic equations.

• Algebraic geometryRelated: Coordinate geometry made polynomial equations a systematic language for describing curves.

• Philosophical skepticismRelated: His method made skepticism central to early modern debates about certainty.

• MetaphysicsRelated: His mind–body distinction set a lasting agenda for modern metaphysics.

• Blaise PascalCompared with: Their disagreements over vacuum experiments and the relation of faith to reason mark different intellectual approaches.

• DualismRelated: His formulation became the canonical modern version of mind–body dualism.

• Snell's lawRelated: His account helped establish the law in European science and supplied its familiar sine form.

• Baruch SpinozaRelated: Spinoza adopted the ambition of a systematic philosophy while rejecting central Cartesian doctrines.

• Cartesian dualismRelated: He formulated the distinction between thinking mind and extended body.

• Analytic geometryRelated: His name became attached to the coordinate system central to the subject.

• Contact lensRelated: He described an eye-contacting optical device in 1637, though it could not be worn practically.

• Pierre de FermatCompared with: Descartes and Fermat independently developed analytic geometry, though their methods and public reputations differed.

• IntrospectionRelated: His reflections on thought and self-awareness helped establish introspection as a philosophical problem.

• Mathematical notationRelated: His conventions include the familiar use of letters near the end of the alphabet for unknowns.

• FoundationalismRelated: Descartes’ search for indubitable starting points became a landmark foundationalist project.

• SubstanceRelated: His dualism recast substance as independently existing thinking or extended reality.

• Marin MersenneRelated: Mersenne corresponded with Descartes and helped circulate his work among European scholars.

• Mechanical philosophyRelated: His physics made extended matter and mechanical laws central to explaining the world.

• Philosophy of mindRelated: His substance dualism made the mind–body relation a defining philosophical problem.

• Substance dualismRelated: His distinction between thinking mind and extended body became the canonical modern formulation.

• Pierre GassendiCompared with: Gassendi directly challenged Descartes’s claims about innate ideas, certainty, and the nature of matter.

• CartesianismRelated: His arguments and method form the system’s central source.

• HyperbolaRelated: Coordinate methods made hyperbolas expressible through algebraic equations.

• Innate ideasRelated: He argued that some ideas, including the idea of God, are innate.

• Action at a distanceRelated: Cartesian physics rejected empty space and sought contact-based explanations of planetary motion.

• Mind–body dualismRelated: His separation of thinking mind from extended matter became the canonical modern formulation.

• NativismRelated: Descartes made innate ideas central to his account of human knowledge.

• Ontological argumentRelated: Descartes recast the argument through the relation between essence and existence.

• Spherical aberrationRelated: His geometric approach helped frame the problem of focusing rays with curved surfaces.

• François VièteRelated: Descartes advanced the symbolic algebraic tradition Viète had helped establish.

• History of algebraRelated: His methods helped establish analytic geometry and modern equation notation.

• Nicolas MalebrancheRelated: Malebranche adopted Cartesian accounts of mind and matter, then rejected their account of created causation.

• Pappus of AlexandriaRelated: Descartes invoked Pappus’s locus problem when presenting his own approach to geometry.

• Pineal glandRelated: His influential proposal made the gland central to debates about mind and bodily function.

• Substance theoryRelated: His dualism treats thinking mind and extended matter as distinct kinds of substance.

• Algebraic notationRelated: His use of x, y, z for unknowns and a, b, c for knowns became influential.

• Mechanism (philosophy)Related: Descartes explained bodily nature through extended matter and mechanical interactions.

• Four causesRelated: His physics displaced formal and final causes from many natural explanations.

• History of geometryRelated: His algebraic approach linked equations with curves and geometric constructions.

• Justus LipsiusRelated: Descartes encountered a European intellectual culture in which Lipsian Stoicism had renewed interest in self-command.

• Margaret CavendishRelated: Her rejection of a mind–matter divide challenged a central feature of Cartesian philosophy.

• Descartes' rule of signsRelated: Descartes stated the rule in his 1637 work La Géométrie.