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Rene Descartes was born in La Haye, Touraine (France) in March of fifteen ninety-six. During the course of his life, he made many significant contributions to the progress of science, because of these achievements, he is known as the father of modern philosophy. He was a distinguished physicist, physiologist, astronomer, meteorologist, and mathematician. But he is most well known one of the most highly original philosophers of modern times. His practice was to dismiss the works of Aristotle, and start with a fresh approach. He was a skeptic to say the least, he doubted everything, and his goal was to uncover all the layers of assumed truths in order to find the definite truths. In the fashion of Socrates, Decartes recognized how little he did know, and tried not to profess any more. Though this was not always true (it turned out that he was very proud and sometimes unwilling to be corrected), his philosophy can be paralleled to Socrates. Descartes was a student at La Fleche in Anjou at the age of eight. He studied the classics, logic, medicine, and traditional Aristotelian philosophy until 1612. From La Fleche he went to the University of Poitiers, where he received a degree in law. Between 1616 and 1620 Descartes took a slig