René Descartes (1596 - 1650) From `A Short Account of the History of Mathematics' (4th edition, 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball. We may consider Descartes as the first of the modern school of mathematics. René Descartes was born near Tours on March 31, 1596, and died at Stockholm on February 11, 1650; thus he was a contemporary of Galileo and Desargues. His father, who, as the name implies, was of good family, was accustomed to spend half the year at Rennes …showed first 75 words of 3477 total…

…showed last 75 words of 3477 total…not only inconsistent with each of Kepler's laws and with the fundamental laws of mechanics, but are also at variance with the laws of nature assumed by Descartes. Still, in spite of its crudeness and its inherent defects, the theory of vortices marks a fresh era in astronomy, for it was an attempt to explain the phenomena of the whole universe by the same mechanical laws which experiment shews to be true on the earth.