"We can only look for evidence in science, and if we look for evidence from elsewhere, then we have reason to doubt everything, especially material things." — Descartes
"Do you believe in fairy tales?" "You can choose to believe" - Zhang Dongsheng, Zhu Chaoyang
Recently, because of the popularity of "The Hidden Corner", many people have begun to pay attention to the story about the heart-shaped line told to the students by Zhang Dongsheng, the math teacher in the play. I don't know how many people have heard of this story, do you think it is true or not?
In fact, many people in China even if they have not heard of the story of Descartes and the princess, always have to see an advertisement, here is not an advertisement, a certain age mountain mineral water filmed a very beautiful, but many people do not understand the advertisement, in fact, there is a poignant love story behind the advertisement, and this is about Descartes and the princess.
The ad refers to an incident that took place on the streets of Stockholm in 1650:
There are two versions of this story, the romantic version and the cruel version that Zhang Dongsheng said.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > which one you are willing to believe is your choice, but the reality is up to you. </h1>
The scientific community calls this story a "man-made legend," or Descartes and his heart-shaped curve.
Because the characters in the story can be found in history, that is, the storyline is basically all fabricated.
And there is only one thing in the story that is true, that is, Descartes, who never married in his life, did die because of this "princess".
Descartes
In reality, Descartes came from an extraordinary background, the family property is still there, his father is a member of the Brittany council, even if he is half a nobleman, even if Descartes does not work all his life, he will not go to the streets, so the story of the street encounter between the down-and-out mathematician and the princess will not happen from the beginning. Because of the premature birth, Descartes was frail and sickly from an early age, so one of his habits was to sleep more every day, and after a long time, he developed the habit of lying in bed, so some people called him "the philosopher who thinks in bed".
"I despise you who get up before 11 o'clock, and I despise you who go out at 3:31."
This is a parody of the philosopher, and the first half of the sentence speaks of Descartes.
It is also this habit of "lying in bed" that laid the groundwork for his death...
Later, Descartes thought that staying at home was always unpleasant, and began to march towards the world, to put it bluntly, to travel around the world, while observing the world and immersing himself in the study of things that interested him, which is not the day that rich people think of???
Descartes' footprints throughout the European continent, after which we will talk about his story with the "princess", in the well-known classic story, it is recorded that in 1950, the 52-year-old Descartes met the 18-year-old princess, but in reality, the family is already 24 years old.
According to the Oxford General Reader - Descartes and Wikipedia, in 1649, Descartes accepted the invitation of Queen Christina of Sweden to come from the Netherlands to Stockholm, Sweden, to teach philosophy lessons to the Queen as a court teacher.
Queen Drottning Kristina was born in 1626, and Christina was succeeded to the throne at the age of 6, and the story between Descartes and Christina is actually another tragedy:
There is no story between this queen and Descartes, but in Descartes' life there was a princess named Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was as intelligent as Descartes, proficient in six Chinese, interested in mathematics, astronomy and physics, because of the same interest, the princess had a strong interest in Descartes, and then fell into the worship of Descartes and could not extricate herself, a bit like a little girl chasing stars now, frantically writing letters to Descartes, and Descartes was appreciated by the talented Princess Miaoling, and also felt that it was an extremely pleasant thing, and was very willing to discuss with him, but even if the friendship between the two was real, there was no rumor about love. It's more like the relationship between idols and fans.
So returning to Descartes' life, the ending is indeed a tragedy.
But no matter which story, which version, the indispensable one is the "r=a(1-sinθ)" heart line.
Similarly, there is no evidence that the "heart curve" was invented by Descartes.
The first italian mathematician to propose the "heart curve" was in 1741, nearly a century after Descartes' death, because the heart curve was written not using a Cartesian coordinate system, but a polar coordinate system, which began to be known to the scientific community in the later Newtonian era.
Polar coordinate system: any point in the plane is connected to the origin, and the length of this line segment is called the polar diameter r; there is also an angle θ in the direction of the polar diameter and the horizontal to the right, which is called the polar angle.
Given a point, a polar diameter r and a polar angle θ can always be found, so (r, θ) can be used to represent a point on the coordinate plane.
This approach is obviously different from Descartes' Cartesian coordinate system, where the polar coordinate equation does not represent the relationship between the horizontal and vertical coordinates x and y of a point, but rather the relationship between the polar diameter r and the polar angle θ.
In addition to this, Descartes, as the first philosopher to pay special attention to the basis (or evidence) of knowledge in the context of modern thought and culture, believed that "precision and certainty" were the supreme and necessary qualities of scientific knowledge, and thus made "reliable and systematic knowledge based on unquestionable first principles" the goal of his lifelong efforts.
Although the stories surrounding him now are true and false, his contributions to the world are real, and "I think, therefore I am" is Descartes' most classic philosophical proposition.
Descartes' four rules of thinking can be encouraged together:
Anything that I don't explicitly recognize, I don't accept as true.
Each of the difficult problems I have examined has been divided into sections to the extent possible and necessary in order to resolve them one by one.
I think in order, starting with the simplest and easiest object to recognize, rising little by little until I recognize the most complex object.
In any case, it is necessary to examine it as comprehensively as possible, to review it as generally as possible, and to be sure that nothing has been missed.
The benefit of Descartes' approach to problems is that it can help a person to understand the past and the present, and think more precisely.
Descartes' philosophy began with skepticism, and finally the objective world has reliability, and many of the world's great arguments begin with skepticism, such as the Chinese "Am I dreaming or is it real?" "Born "Zhuang Zhou Mengdi",
Even with so many doubts, Descartes began to say firmly: "Even if God is deceiving me, as long as I think that I am being deceived, then I must exist!" In short, the actions I am thinking about are eternal. And as long as I think about it, I can realize that it exists.
"Je pense, donc je suis" – I knew I was
"I am" is a more solid existence than anything else. Since then, Descartes's philosophical system has a solid foundation, which is what a philosopher needs to think about, and if you examine the so-called truth of the world a little, you will find that it is often not as natural as you think.
Original text, figure network