User:BenJeffery
Hi, I'm Ben Jeffery. I'm in the BCS program with the department of Computer Science. I haven't done algebra in about 9 years, so I may be rusty...
Homework 12
My area of information is computer science. Though there are many applications of calculus (mostly lambda calculus or predicate calculus), an "interesting page of text" would take far more time to write, in a higher level of expertise than I have.
René Descartes
The French polymath René Descartes was one of the most influential people of the last 1000 years. He pioneered areas of mathematics, philosophy, physics, and even had an influence on the then-irrelevant field of psychology. Descartes is most popularly known for his system of coordinates, the Cartesian coordinate system. Legend has it that Descartes was watching a fly walking on his ceiling when he had an epiphany. He realized that the location of that fly could be shown at any point as having a certain distance from the corner of the ceiling. [1] This story may not be true, but it serves as an interesting tale, and an example of how brilliant insights can come from the most innocuous moments.
Descartes wasn't solely a mathematician. In philosophy and anatomy, one of his most endearing, though not enduring, contributions was the concept that the soul (a very common belief at the time) was in fact connected to the body. As the nexus of this connection, he chose the rather peculiar Pineal gland, in the brain. René argued that this gland was the physical location that the soul, a non-corporeal concept, anchored itself to the body.
Despite his occasionally quirky ideas (to be fair, these were mostly a product of the times he lived in), Descartes has had an amazing influence on modern science, and from the Cartesian system that is used today in myriad applications, to his most famous quotation, "Cogito Ergo Sum.", he has shown that creativity, study, and a fresh approach to the world can create a resounding impact.