Mind, Matter and Descartes"Cogito Ergo Sum", "I think, therefore I am", the epitome of René Descartes' logic. Born in 1596 in La Haye, France, Descartes studied at a Jesuit college, where his acquaintance with the rector and childhood frailty allowed him to lead a pleasant lifestyle. This opulence and lack of daily responsibility gave him the freedom to express his discontent both with artificial scholasticism, the philosophy of the church during the Middle Ages, and with extreme skepticism, the doctrine that absolute knowledge is impossible. Through the most innovative logic after Aristotle's death, as well as the application of the sciences, he pursued a lifelong search for scientific truth. Philosophy is believed to have begun in the 6th century in Ancient Greece. In fact, the word "philosophy" is the Greek term for "love of wisdom" (Pojman). After such important minds of the ancient world as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, by modernist standards, original thinking ceased for many centuries. Throughout the subsequent period, later known as the Middle Ages, the world was dominated by the dogmas of the Catholic Church. Scholasticism, combined with severe punishment for heresy, prevented rationalization outside of religion. Descartes was the first to bring philosophy to its "Renaissance" (Strathern 7-9). He questioned the reality of everything, including God. Although he was a devout Catholic and later mathematically proved the existence of God, he founded and popularized the concept of questioning what was taught. Descartes' philosophy was an attempt to create an authentic foundation upon which further scientific developments would be established. His devotion to the methodical nature and invariability of mathematics leads him to apply these concepts to all other ideas. He hypothesized that "those propositions that one could understand completely would be self-evident, since one's knowledge about them would not depend on one's knowledge of other propositions; therefore they were suited to constitute fundamental assumptions, to be the starting point from which to start." other propositions could be deduced" (Walting). He realized that he knew nothing for sure except that he was thinking, which proved that he existed; "Cogito Ergo Sum." "Descartes holds that all ideas which are as clear and distinct as the Cogito must be true, for, if they were not, then even Cogito, as a member of the class of clear and distinct ideas, might be doubted" (Walting). Descartes theorized that every person has an innate idea of ​​a perfect being.