Rene Descartes

• Pronounced "Ren-ay Day-cart"
• Rene lived in France from 1596 to 1650.
• When he was a kid, his teachers found him really annoying.  He was always asking questions and bugging them for new information.
• As an adult, Rene travelled around the world and saw many new countries, and he fought in several armies. 
• Rene was excellent at math (and he liked it too).  He developed many ideas that are still used by mathematicians and scientists today.
• He was also very interested in how the body worked, and he taught classes on anatomy.
• Rene's most important idea is found in his famous saying "I think, therefore I am!"
• Rene really liked to prove things were true, 100%, beyond any doubt.
• One thing he really wanted to prove was that he was real, and that he existed.
• He realized that if he wasn't really there, there would be no one to do all the thinking he was doing. 
• The fact that he was there to think meant that he was real.
• This sounds pretty silly to some people, but in the 1600's this was big business for philosophy!
• Rene Descartes is now called the "father of modern philosophy" because so many of his ideas made people think about new things.