"Descartes ... complained that Greek geometry was so much tied to figures "that is can exercise the understanding only on condition of greatly fatiguing the imagination." Descartes also deplored that the methods of Euclidean geometry were exceedingly diverse and specialized and did not allow for general applicability. Each theorem required a new kind of proof... What impressed Descartes especially was that algebra enables man to reason efficiently. It mechanizes thought, and hence produces almost automatically results that may otherwise be difficult to establish. ...historically it was Descartes who clearly perceived and called attention to this feature. Whereas geometry contained the truth about the universe, algebra offered the science of method. It is ... paradoxical that great thinkers should be enamored with ideas that mechanize thought. Of course, their goal is to get at more difficult problems, as indeed they do."
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Natural philosophersCatholics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceMathematicians from FrancePhysicists from France
Original Language: English
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Sources
Morris Kline, Mathematics for the Nonmathematician (1967) pp. 255-256.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
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René Descartes
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