Rene Descartes walks into a restaurant. The waiter asks: Will you be having the paper today, sir?. Rene Descartes replies: I think not. And disappears.

I hope you enjoyed that joke. But seriously i saw that descartes was the only one in the people to know without any papers or materials to study so i looked for some info on him. I used Dr. Burton's suggestions in his blog to use other methods of searching. there are a lot of suggestions the one i focused on today was using the google blog searcher. Here are my simple findings on Rene Descartes:
Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye, Touraine, France. His is considered the father of modern philosophy. but he is not just a philosopher, he is also a scientist. his contributions to science are as far reaching as his philosophy.
He came up with the idea of cartesian dualism or that the mind an body are connected and that physical and spiritual things are all governed by a set of scientific rules. (he used this dualism to prove the existence of god, way cool). along that same vein, what he is probably most famous for is this argument for existence: "cogito ergo sum" or "i think therefore i am".
He arrived at this conclusion because he couldn't prove the existence of any physical object. his eliminations led him to only believe in his own existence because if there is not an existence than he hasn't anything to make him ponder it. and he therefor concluded that his very thoughts proved his own existence. I found a blog that used this conclusion to show that dreams also prove our existence even if we are asleep.
Descartes also made great strides in the science and math fields. I will only focus on one of those contributions. Physicists know descartes as the discoverer of the Law of Refraction. He wasn't the only one to discover the relationship between the angle of incidence and the material that the light is being refracted in as is shown in his formula: n1 sin(theta1)=n2 sin(theta2). however he was the first person to publish it. and despite some studies by a greek and an arab scientist long before him, his was the most accurate model for refraction. 
I also found a great list of quotes by descartes. one of which i really liked; enough to share on my blog. He said "an optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?" i love it. it is philosophy that is not above my head. 
so my question is this: where are the Descartes of our day? where are the people who are pioneering in multiple fields at once? leaving ginormous fingerprints all over our textbooks and society? are they still out there? i found Descartes Fascinating and i have only barely touched the surface of researching him.
For a brief summary of Descartes and his Philosophy visit this site.