Why did Descartes get pneumonia and die young?
Who is this old man? Why was his book banned by the church and ordered to be burned?
He is the French mathematician and philosopher Descartes.
1596 March 3 1 day, Descartes was born into an aristocratic family in Laha, a small town in Toulon, northern France. His father was a local councillor, and his mother died of illness shortly after he was born. He grew up as thin and sick as his mother, and grew up under the care of a nanny.
Descartes listened to his father tell some scientific stories since he was a child, and he liked to get to the bottom of it. So his father affectionately called him a "little philosopher", and later he really became a master of idealist philosophy in Europe. At the age of eight, Descartes entered the best missionary school in Europe founded by King Henry IV. The school environment is elegant, the training is serious, the teaching rules are strict, and the homework is heavy. The school mainly studies theology, church philosophy and mathematics. Descartes studied hard and was a famous top student in the school. But interestingly, he is a king who sleeps late-the headmaster takes care of his infirmity and allows him to sleep until he wants to get up in the morning for class. This formed the habit of thinking in bed in the morning and getting up late. This lifelong bad habit damaged his health and made him worse, so that he could not adapt to the cold of getting up early and died. This is another story.
Because the scholasticism centered on Aristotle's theory is the main teaching content in the school, this has aroused the suspicion and dissatisfaction of Descartes who likes to think independently. Therefore, he believes that studying here "has not gained any benefits, but has found his ignorance more and more."
Descartes graduated from high school with 16 12 and entered the University of Poitiers in Paris. Four years later, at the age of 20, he graduated with honors, obtained a doctorate in law and became a lawyer in Paris.
/kloc-in the 0 th and 7 th centuries, Europe was still under the control of the church, but the development of modern science has begun to show signs, and there have been some tendencies to deviate from religious teachings, with Galileo as the forerunner. Descartes couldn't help feeling the smell, so he was very upset after graduating from college. He once wrote in his memoirs: "I like science since I was a child, because I am convinced that science brings beauty to life clearly and truly, so I study it very diligently." But when I graduated, my view changed completely, and I fell into a confused and wrong state. "In order to explore the true meaning of life, he discussed the development of science at the home of his friend and later mathematician Mei Sen (1588 ~ 1648) in middle school, and read" all kinds of books that he thought were the most interesting and unusual "in his remote residence in Paris.
.......... in this way, the young Descartes got a lot of benefits, accumulated rich experience and benefited for life.
At that time, the social atmosphere was that aspiring people either joined the army or devoted themselves to the church. Descartes' good friend Mei Sen entered the monastery and became a priest. Later, he used this identity more than once to save Descartes from the persecution of the church. Descartes has been in the army for generations. At that time, some young people who were dissatisfied with the French political situation went to the team of Maurice, Duke of Orange, the Netherlands, and Descartes joined the team at 16 17. Another reason why Descartes went abroad was that he wanted to travel around Europe and read "the greatest book in the world".
When it comes to Cartesian coordinate system and analytic geometry, many people know that Descartes invented it. But many people don't know that Descartes devoted himself to mathematical research by accident.
1665438+in may 2007, Descartes' troops were stationed in Brayda, a small town in the south of the Netherlands. One day, Descartes was wandering in the street and saw a group of people around a poster by the roadside, and he also leaned in curiously. The poster was written in Flemish and he couldn't understand it at all. But from people's noisy discussion, he generally recognized that this was an open challenge to solve mathematical problems. His heart itches. How he wishes to solve the problem! This eagerness was discovered by a middle-aged man near him. The middle-aged man took the initiative to ask him in French: "Young man, are you willing to solve these math problems?" "I'd like to try, dear sir, but I can't read this kind of writing." "It's not difficult. I'll translate it for you, if you are willing to answer. " The middle-aged man scanned the young soldier Descartes from top to bottom with suspicious eyes. He saw a kind of confidence in Descartes' flashing eyes, so he quickly translated all the contents of the poster into French and gave it to Descartes.
The next day, Descartes excitedly handed the answer to the middle-aged man. The middle-aged people were very surprised after reading it: the ingenious solution and correct calculation showed that Descartes was not shallow in mathematics and was by no means an idle generation. It turned out that this middle-aged man was Beckman (1588 ~ 1637), a famous mathematician and physicist in the Netherlands at that time. He is the dean of Landau College. Descartes read his works a long time ago, but he never got a chance to know him. After that, Descartes began to study mathematics under his guidance. Later, although he did not accept Beckman's invitation, he ended his military career and engaged in professional mathematics research in his own college, but his confidence was inspired by this success, and he had an indissoluble bond with mathematics, and finally made a great contribution. It can be seen that Beckman's "bringing a soul away from science back to the most just and beautiful road" is an accidental opportunity.
However, as an outstanding figure like Descartes, there are also many tragedies in his life, mainly two.
One is that his scientific thoughts were not tolerated by the church at that time. He said, "The starting point of science is methodological doubt", "If we want to pursue the truth, we must doubt everything as much as possible once in our life". But this runs counter to the views of medieval theologians, because they advocate the supremacy of faith, especially the belief in authority like Aristotle in ancient Greece. So the church must be worried that Descartes' works containing new ideas will pose a threat to their rule. So some of Descartes' works could not be published, and some were listed as banned books and burned. These works mainly include Metaphysical Meditation (164 1), On various feelings of the soul (1649), Music Summary (1650) and so on.
In fact, scientific research needs both doubt and belief, which is not only applicable to the scientific field. Doubt without any belief is a tree without roots and water without sources, because it is impossible to doubt one belief unless it is based on another. There is no doubt that faith is like a seriously polluted and poisonous stagnant water, which will not only poison young trees and prevent them from growing into towering trees, but also corrode the seeds of new theories and prevent them from sprouting and growing. However, the great French writer romain rolland (1866~ 1944) put it well: "Doubt and belief are both necessary. Doubt can destroy yesterday's beliefs and open the way for tomorrow's beliefs. " Truth is not afraid of doubt, and it is by no means truth that falls down if it is afraid of doubt or being suspected. The reason why the church opposes the idea of doubting and exploring the truth, or the truth like Heliocentrism of Copernicus, or the persecution of Descartes who discovered the truth, just proves that they don't hold the truth and are afraid of it. However, in order to maintain its own rule, the church tried every means to encircle the truth in the name of "heresy". This is also one of the important reasons why science is struggling. In this case, the persecuted Descartes was lucky not to be burned alive by the Inquisition like Bruno and Servit.
Descartes' second tragedy is that he was ill all his life and didn't change it with good habits and physical exercise like Newton. His habit of sleeping late was formed under the "care" of his former middle school principal, and it didn't change until his death, so that he visited his compatriot Pascal in 1647 and said, "In order to write a good math book, you can't get up too early and get insufficient sleep." This bad habit eventually became an important cause of his death. /kloc-in the winter of 0/649, Descartes was invited by Queen Christina to teach philosophy in Stockholm. At that time, the young, healthy, eccentric and wayward queen asked Descartes to teach her at five o'clock three mornings a week. Descartes, who has the habit of getting up late, is over 50 years old and suffers from bronchitis all the year round. He had to climb into the cold carriage at four o'clock in the morning, braving the biting cold wind in northern Europe and teaching in the palace library without fire. He can't stand the cold and lack of sleep in Scandinavia. He finally caught a cold and 1 1 turned to pneumonia after a week. He died on 1 1 February 1 1, just four months after he took office, at the age of 54.
After Descartes' death, the academic circles under the control of the church ignored his death. Due to the church's prevention, only a few friends buried Descartes and did not make a eulogy according to the church's ban. Only one Belgian newspaper published the story and sarcastically said, "A madman died in Sweden." Even after his death 13 years, the Pope banned his books, and his works were not allowed to be told in universities.
However, due to Descartes' increasingly far-reaching influence on philosophy and mathematics, his On the World was finally published in 1644. 1667, the French government transported his ashes back to China and buried them in the cemetery of French giants in Pandion-Saint Paris Defender and Celebrity Cemetery. 1789 after the French bourgeois revolution, the ashes were placed in the history museum for people to visit. 18 19 moved into the Sacred Heart Church in Saint-Germain, and the words were engraved on the tombstone: Descartes, the first person who struggled and guaranteed rationality since the European Renaissance. The Frenchman finally realized the value of her great son.